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.

The four key characteristics of any high-performing organisation are (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and monitoring progress towards these goals; (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 is based on evidence and cost- effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). The Indian State needs to perform better on all four fronts above, by enhancing its capacity. CEGIS partners with states to improve this capacity by focusing on these four pillars of the State.

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. This vision and Theory of Change (ToC) is an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and strategic philanthropic support provided by Mr. Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

Prof. Karthik Muralidharan is the Tata Chancellor's Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. Over the past two decades, he has led extensive research projects in India across education, health, and social welfare. His book, Accelerating India's Development: A State- Led Roadmap for Effective Governance, systematically analyses India's governance challenges and provides actionable, evidence-based strategies, emphasising state-level reforms as critical for India's advancement.

Ashish Dhawan is a leading Indian philanthropist and the Founder-CEO of The Convergence Foundation (TCF). He is also the Founding Chairperson of Ashoka University and the Central Square Foundation, and is a governing board member of the Gates Foundation. Before his second career as a philanthropist, Ashish was among India's most successful private equity investors. 

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning

Our solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states with 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.

In alignment with our four principles or pillars of change - outcome measurement, personnel management, strategic public finance, states and markets, CEGIS is currently working with the governments of Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, NCT of Delhi, Assam, and a few Government of India entities like the NITI Aayog and Capacity Building Commission (CBC) across a range of projects and sectors. Through CEGIS' flagship offering, the KPI (Key Performance Indicators) Survey, we are helping enable state governments we are working with to collect better quality citizen level data, make informed, evidence-based decisions, and institutionalise this process of securing periodic citizen-level feedback.

We are setting up a Financial Analytics Unit (FAU) to enhance analytical capacity and increase the effectiveness of budgetary allocations of the Finance Department in another state. In alignment with our personnel management workstream, we are also working with the HR/Administrative Reforms & Training Department to set up and institutionalise an in-house Capacity Building Unit (CBU) that aids the adoption of competency-based Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Performance Management Systems (PMS) with a few of these entities. Similarly, to improve the value of public money, we are working at the interface of states and markets which encompasses procurement, regulation, and policy formulation. Our solutions are constantly being refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to be customised and replicated across contexts.

CEGIS@5: A Journey of Learning & Building Capacity

Since its incorporation in 2019, despite the enormous challenges posed by COVID, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with the 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 2 state government engagements in the first 2 years of its inception, today CEGIS is working across several Indian states with 15+ projects across several sectors, including education, nutrition and local governance. From a small group of founding members, we have grown by leaps and bounds to become a team of 150+ members located across the country. Helmed by a former bureaucrat with invaluable governance experience, state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise, and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate careers,the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors - from developmental economics, research, and governance to management consulting and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 5 years, we have also been able to garner support for our vision and theory of change from a diverse range of foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our own organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. We believe that this approach will gradually enable all government officials to achieve their goals more effectively, thereby improving the ability of the State to deliver services to all Indian citizens in the decades to come. 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.

About the Team

Within CEGIS, the OD_ECD teams' role is to support the WCD Department to ensure "Under 5 Nutrition is a top 3 priority across the state and is diligently executed and monitored to keep it at below 5%." The team works with the State Department on 3 key verticals of Outcomes Measurement, State and Public Finance and Personnel Management to improve state level outcomes on key indicators of Wasting, Stunting, underweight and EBF. OD_ECD is establishing District Teams to anchor and test implementation of solutions at field level. This will serve as a key feature of our approach to put our theory to practice, benchmark, refine and scale our solutions. Through our District Nutrition Programs we will also be able to directly impact change with District as a unit.



Position Summary

The Program Associate will serve as the critical, on-ground position of our state-level technical support unit, embedded directly within the District Social Welfare Office (DSWO). The core mandate of this role is to pilot, refine, and ground-truth our solution stack across three priority pillars: Administrative data quality, financial planning/utilization, workplace capacity optimization.The Program Associate will translate state-level strategy into local execution whilefeeding ground realities back to the state team to iterate the model for scale. This is an action-oriented role requiring a balance of data fluency, public finance understanding, and exceptional stakeholder management skills within government systems.

You will report to the Nutrition Project Lead based in Bhubaneswar, work closely with the OD-ECD team, and have active interactions with other team members across our states for effective project delivery.



Roles & Responsibilities

1. Data Integrity and Monitoring Systems

  • Data Ground-Truthing: Audit and cross-verify digital dashboard entries (e.g., Poshan Tracker data) with physical registers at the sector and Anganwadi Centre (AWC) levels to identify gaps in data quality.
  • Analytical Support: Analyze monthly district progress reports to spot low-performing blocks and present actionable data to the DSWO to drive data-backed administrative reviews.
  • Feedback Loops: Design and implement simplified, routine data validation protocols for field functionaries (Supervisors and Child Development Project Officers - CDPOs).

2. Financial Planning & Budget Utilization

  • Expenditure Tracking: Work with the district finance/accounts team to map fund flow bottlenecks and trace delays in scheme utilization (e.g., supplementary nutrition, flexi-funds).
  • Actionable Planning: Assist the DSWO office in preparing realistic, data-driven annual and quarterly District Action Plans based on historical spending capacity and actual local needs.
  • Compliance and Reporting: Help streamline the documentation and tracking of Utilization Certificates (UCs) to ensure smoother financial cycles.

3. Personnel Management and Capacity Building

  • Skill-to-Role Mapping: Conduct diagnostic assessments of district/block personnel (CDPOs, Supervisors) to map existing competencies against their operational mandates.
  • Training Delivery: Co-design and facilitate hyper-localized training modules on data driven decision-making, financial tracking, and operational management.
  • On-the-Job Mentorship: Provide hands-on troubleshooting support to block/field-level staff to ensure the solution stack tools are adopted in their daily workflows.

4. Liaison and Knowledge Management

  • State-District Conduit: Synthesize weekly insights, challenges, and operational bottlenecks from the field and relay them to the state team to inform iterative design.
  • Operational Documentation: Document process maps, success stories, and structural hurdles discovered during the pilot phase to create a blueprint for statewide scaling.

Required Qualifications, Skills and Abilities

  • 2 - 4 years of experience with a Masters degree or equivalent in economics, public policy, social science, computer science, or related fields from a reputed institution.
  • At least 1 year working closely with government systems, public health, or nutrition programs (ICDS/WCD preferred) with demonstrated experience in managing data dashboards, grass-roots project coordination, or capacity-building programs
  • Proven experience in data cleaning and analysis of large and complex data sets and econometric analysis.
  • Experience in client servicing/government projects would be preferred.
  • Proficiency in MS Office. Knowledge of any other productivity and AI tools is a bonus.
  • Public Finance Familiarity: Basic understanding of government budgeting processes, fund flow mechanics, and how administrative financial cycles operate.
  • Comfort with ambiguity; a "builder" mindset capable of figuring out alternative pathways when standard administrative processes stall.
  • Must be fluent in Odia (speaking and reading) and English.
  • The role will be a field based role anchored from District level offices requiring frequent travel to working with key field officers and institutions.

Personal Characteristics and Desired Qualities

  • Commitment to CEGIS's mission and values.
  • Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills, capable of articulating complex information clearly and compellingly.
  • Ability to build and maintain positive and collaborative relationships within and outside the organisation, collaborate and actively listen to others, understand and value others' views.
  • Ability to set priorities, plan timelines, and meet deadlines.
  • Detail-oriented and able to manage multiple concurrent tasks.
  • Intellectual curiosity and the ability/willingness to constantly learn.
  • Public-spirited and generous temperament.
  • Stay abreast of industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices in areas such as measurement, data analysis, and governance.

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