Team Lead - DAU

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Job Description:

  • Position Summary

About Maharashtra - Decision Support System (DSS)

The Decision Support System is envisioned to be the CMOs first port of call for enabling data-driven governance backed by analytical evidence. The key objectives of the DSS include 1) Setting and measuring outcome goals against benchmarks from national and international indices, 2) Triangulating administrative data with own/national surveys to reduce data discrepancies, 3) Improving citizen feedback through efficient use of existing supervision mechanisms at the department level. A Data Analytics Unit (DAU) will be set up to conduct analytics for the DSS.

The primary objective of the DAU will be to deliver advanced analytical work on programmatic data (outputs, outcomes) and its determinants, typically:

  • Utilise administrative data to assess district-level performance of priority schemes and enable benchmarking against relevant national and international indices, thereby informing strategic goal-setting.
  • Address known limitations in administrative data quality by instituting systematic, periodic collection of citizen-level data focused on outcomes across sectors such as health, education and nutrition.
  • Diagnostics to determine causality and correlations
  • Regular and ad hoc data aggregation, analysis, and developing dashboards as required for senior stakeholders

The Team Lead for the Data Analytics Unit will oversee operations, strategic alignment, and stakeholder engagement for this critical analytics initiative within the Government of Maharashtra. This person will be the bridge between the analytics unit and key governmental stakeholders, ensuring the analytics units contributions are strategically positioned, visible, and impactful within the broader government ecosystem. They will report to the administrative head of the department (or equivalent).

Roles & Responsibilities

Problem statement formulation and strategy communication

  • Guides the team to carry out issue identification and analysis using secondary research and techniques such as root cause analysis, pattern analysis, among others to develop data frames and analytical solutions.
  • Present and vet the problem statement with govt stakeholders to help prioritise the unit's work
  • Drive strategic positioning and visibility of the analytics unit within government departments, policymaking bodies, and external forums.
  • Identify opportunities for leveraging analytics to influence policy formulation, program implementation, and evidence-based decision-making.

Research & Development

  • Present analytical findings clearly and persuasively in governmental meetings, forums, conferences, and strategic discussions.
  • Engage regularly with internal technical experts, including data scientists and analysts, to ensure methodological rigor, quality, and innovation.
  • Collaborate proactively with external experts, including economists, academic researchers, and subject matter specialists, to incorporate cutting-edge methods and diverse perspectives into the units work.
  • Stay informed about emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and advanced analytics tools, evaluating their potential to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the unit.
  • Foster partnerships and collaborations with academia and research institutions to maintain the units relevance and lead in applying innovative analytical approaches.

Project & Team management

  • Act as the primary liaison between the unit and government stakeholders, ensuring effective communication, alignment, and stakeholder satisfaction.
  • Oversee the smooth operational functioning of the unit, including project management, workflow optimization, and quality assurance.
  • Mentor and guide the analytics team, ensuring individual members professional development and high-quality outputs.

Required Qualifications, Skills and Abilities

  • Masters degree or higher in Economics, Engineering, Management, or related fields from a recognized institution.
  • Skilled in statistical modelling and data analysis.
  • Knowledge of R, Stata, Python, PowerBI, Tableau a plus.
  • Minimum of 10 years of relevant professional experience, preferably within government or public sector environments.
  • Demonstrated experience in stakeholder management, policy communication, or governmental liaison roles.
  • Proven experience in overseeing data-driven projects or analytics units.
  • Prior experience in presenting complex analytical findings to diverse, non-technical audiences, especially senior government officials.
  • Must be fluent in Hindi and English. Working knowledge of Marathi is highly preferred.

Personal Characteristics and Desired Qualities

  • Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills, capable of articulating complex information clearly and compellingly.
  • Strategic thinker with strong leadership and organizational capabilities.
  • Ability to manage competing priorities and deadlines effectively.
  • Diplomacy and professional maturity, able to navigate complex stakeholder environments.
  • Proactive, innovative mindset focused on continuous improvement and learning
  • Detail-oriented and ability to manage multiple concurrent tasks
  • Public-spirited and generous temperament
  • Stay abreast of industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices in data analysis

Location and Compensation

This role will be based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidates experience levels.

Pre-reads

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 Chancellors 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 Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance, systematically analyses Indias governance challenges and provides actionable, evidence-based strategies, emphasising state-level reforms as critical for Indias 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 Indias 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.

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance to 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 of misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please Click the link for self-declaration.

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

Working Place:

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Department :

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS)
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