Job Openings Program Associate

About the job Program Associate

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.


Responsibilities:

  • Data Collection, Review, and Analysis:
    • Keep track of data from different sources for accuracy.
    • Analyse complex datasets to extract important insights relevant to key stakeholders.
  • Data Management, Quality, and Security:
    • Prioritise and address data issues promptly to support ongoing project progress.
    • Ensure data management, quality, and security standards are maintained.
  • Research, Diagnosis, Solutioning, and Reporting:
    • Independently conduct research and root cause analysis.
    • Document and present insights for effective problem-solving.
    • Collaborate with vertical teams to lead co-creation efforts for project-specific solutions.
  • Analysis and Insights:
    • Produce comprehensive presentations and documentation for critical project insights.
    • Assist in gathering information for stakeholder communication.
    • Summarise and document project progress for internal and external audiences.
  • Project Management and Project Deliverables:
  • Regularly updates internal and external stakeholders on project progress.
  • Collaborates with project delivery teams and stakeholders to align data diagnostics and analysis plans with project objectives.
  • Ensures that all project activities are strategically directed towards the achievement of overarching goals.
  • Develops and delivers high-quality outputs, including reports, notes, and analyses.
  • Conduct literature review, prepare project collaterals, and manage files for efficient retrieval.
  • Stakeholder Mapping, Engagement and communication:
    • Map relevant external stakeholders and conduct regular stakeholder analysis.
    • Coordinate with stakeholders to plan meetings for both communicating project progress and decisions, as well as ensuring effective communication.
    • Synthesise project information into documents, presentations, and dashboards.
    • Cultivate and strengthen stakeholder relationships, fostering deep connections.
    • Suggest innovative ideas to nurture partnerships and drive project advancement.
  • Documentation and Knowledge Creation & Facilitation:`
    • Support knowledge management processes to achieve project and organisational objectives.
    • Conduct literature review, prepare project collaterals, and manage files for efficient retrieval.
    • Support the team in acquiring, preserving, and sharing domain-specific information.

Qualifications:

  • 1 to 3 years of experience with a Bachelor's degree (Masters degree or equivalent preferred) in economics, public policy, social science or related fields from a reputed institution.
  • Proven experience in project management and analytical contributions.
  • Strong communication, collaboration, and leadership skills.
  • Experience in client servicing/government projects would be preferred.
  • Knowledge of Kannada language is required.
  • Commitment to CEGIS's mission and values.

Location and Compensation

Location: The role will be based out of Bangalore. Travel to other states may be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidates experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

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