Job Openings State Lead

About the job State Lead

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

As the State Lead for Telangana, you will lead and drive the CEGIS engagement in the state. This will involve directly or indirectly managing all ongoing projects in the state while working with senior Government officials to develop a pipeline of future projects. In doing this, you will interact regularly with senior government officials, researchers and other organizations working in the space. You will be required to build an in-depth understanding of the states major policy developments and priorities.

This role directly reports to the Head of State engagements (South), who comes with substantial experience in government and a proven ability to deliver systemic reform/ programs at scale. You will also be expected to work closely with the founder and Scientific Director (Prof. Karthik Muralidharan) to understand the intellectual vision behind proposed reforms and drive the implementation of the reforms across sectors in Telangana. Finally, you will be expected to work closely with the Vertical Heads and Chief executive officer to support capacity building and organizational development.

Role and Responsibilities

  • Drive CEGISs reform initiatives in Telangana with a strong execution focus. This will involve collaborating with CEGISs functional and sectoral teams (i.e. Outcome Measurement and Nutrition etc.) and drawing on your own knowledge to shape outcomes and create impact at scale.
  • Develop relationships with key officials in Telangana and establish mechanisms for review and institutionalisation of reforms.
  • Source, embed and provide oversight to other key strategic partners for the State. While CEGIS has a small team in Telangana, the extended network team includes government resources in the form of seconded personnel, Fellows available via a GoTS sponsored fellowship program and external partners. As State Lead, you would work with senior state officials to select, embed and ensure alignment and delivery from all the partners under this reform umbrella.
  • Create a culture of impact and enable team building through collaboration and transparency. CEGIS is a young organization. As a startup with a unique goal, managing talent that is energized by contributing to demonstrable impact requires building a culture that is collaborative, inclusive and prioritizes rigour. As State Lead, you will help shape our choices about what we do and how we do it.

Required Qualifications, Skills and Abilities

  • Masters degree or equivalent in relevant fields, including management, economics or public policy from a top global program
  • 10 to 15 years of work experience with managerial responsibilities, demonstrating entrepreneurship, superb project delivery and team leadership
  • Prior exposure to working very closely with senior bureaucrats and designing/implementing large-scale projects is highly desirable
  • Strong interest in improving the functioning of the government combined with interest/experience in using research and evidence to improve policy
  • Excellent problem-solving and strategic thinking skills, ability to analyse complex quantitative and qualitative data, craft possible solutions and recommend actions
  • Excellent writing and communication skills (ability to communicate complex ideas in a meaningful way and across different audiences) in both English and Telugu Ability to build and maintain positive and collaborative relationships both within and outside the organization
  • Ability to set goals and metrics for a team, and manage the team towards delivering those goals
  • Strong planning and organizationalskills, and an ability to be able to set priorities, plan timelines and meet deadlines.

Personal Characteristics and Desired Qualities

  • Ability to align multiple stakeholders and build platforms for collaboration and coordination
  • Passion for working with governments and making Indian states work better Public-spirited and generous temperament
  • Ability to think creatively, willing to take risks to experiment with new ideas and the ability to turn ideas into action
  • Excellent people management skills, with the ability to develop and motivate teams working out of different locations in India towards a common goal
  • High ability to collaborate and actively listen to others, understanding and valuing others views
  • Intellectual curiosity and ability/willingness to constantly learn
  • Operating style suited to working independently and in a small-organization setting, where teamwork and resourcefulness are highly valued

Location and Compensation

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

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