Job Openings Senior Program Associate

About the job Senior 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.

Position summary

Within CEGIS, the Outcome Measurement (OM) teams role is to support institutionalisation of data driven decision making by setting up the required infrastructure and technical capacity with the Planning department and relevant line departments in the State. High quality data and insights generated through this facility are expected to provide assistance to the State in goal setting, progress monitoring and strategic decision making for personnel and budget/ finance management.

Specifically, this will, among other things, entail:

  • Conducting independent household level outcome measurement across various sectors such as school education, health, child nutrition, water & sanitation, jobs & unemployment, public safety and agriculture etc. to assist the government in goal setting and progress monitoring
  • Measuring integrity of administrative data gathered and managed by the state machinery and suggest ways of improving its quality
  • Conducting high-frequency measurement of outcomes and monitoring (of key programs and schemes) using various tools and techniques
  • Generating learning notes to document project milestones and lessons for the future, and share generalizable knowledge with the wider team.

The Senior Program Associate (SPA)- Outcome Measurement will play an important role in contextualising and executing the CEGIS vision in a select state. The role will work closely with the Outcome Measurement technical team and project delivery teams in the respective State team. The Senior Program Associate will be directly reporting to the Program Manager, Outcome Measurement in the state.

Responsibilities:

Data Collection and Organization:

  • Collect, organize, and monitor data from various sources ensuring accuracy and completeness.
  • Validate data sources and conduct verification checks for data reliability.
  • Design and administer questionnaires for data collection.

Data Maintenance and Quality Control:

  • Monitor and maintain secure data repositories ensuring data integrity.
  • Prioritize and address data issues promptly to support project progress.
  • Maintain records of data quality control processes and identify areas for enhancement.
  • Evaluate data quality, analyze trends, and interpret findings to generate critical insights.

Alignment with Project Objectives:

  • Collaborate with project teams and stakeholders to align data diagnostics and analysis plans with project objectives.
  • Support creation of technical notes and analysis protocols.
  • Assist in defining metrics and drafting project diagnostics reports.
  • Communicate project updates, findings, and recommendations to stakeholders.

Engagement and Relationship Management:

  • Support managers in developing and implementing effective engagement strategies with external stakeholders.
  • Share learnings and insights with government officials.
  • Manage relationships with senior officials in relevant departments.
  • Communicate project objectives and requirements to government counterparts.

Project Management and Leadership:

  • Perform assigned tasks with minimal supervision.
  • Independently create and prioritize work plans, ensuring accountability for set timelines.
  • Maintain proactiveness and self-motivation while delivering project requirements.
  • Manage a portion of Project Associates' time and support their onboarding and capacity building.
  • Focus on self-development and deepening expertise.
  • Collaborate with team members to compile and document insights and best practices.
  • Create knowledge products and documents by synthesizing information from different perspectives and participate in knowledge sharing.
  • Identify potential project opportunities and conduct preliminary feasibility assessments.

Qualifications:

  • 3 - 5 years of experience with a Masters degree or equivalent 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 with data cleaning and analysis of large and complex data sets and econometric analysis
  • Knowledge of STATA or R (strongly preferred) or any other data analysis software preferred
  • Experience in client servicing/government projects would be preferred
  • Commitment to CEGIS's mission and values.

Location and Compensation

Location: The role will be based out of Bhubaneswar. 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:

Recommended listening:

  • Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
  • Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.



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