Home-Based Data Quality Assurance Intern at UNDP

Finance November 20, 2023

0 5 minutes read

UNDP is looking for talented, motivated, and enthusiastic intern who will work closely with the PIMS+ team to support VF program support, oversight & compliance, by assisting the VF portfolio management system maintenance and development. The intern will learn how UNDP VF portfolio database is managed by providing daily, directly supervised by the PIMS+ data quality assurance consultant.

Home-Based Data Quality Assurance Intern at UNDP

Background

UNDP is the knowledge frontier organization for sustainable development in the UN Development System and serves as the integrator for collective action to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNDP’s policy work carried out at HQ, Regional and Country Office levels, forms a contiguous spectrum of deep local knowledge to cutting-edge global perspectives and advocacy. In this context, UNDP invests in the Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of field-based and global technical expertise across a wide range of knowledge domains and in support of the signature solutions and organizational capabilities envisioned in the Strategic Plan.

Within the GPN, the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP’s Strategic Plan. BPPS staff provide technical advice to Country Offices, advocates for UNDP corporate messages, represent UNDP at multi-stakeholder fora including public-private, government and civil society dialogues, and engage in UN inter-agency coordination in specific thematic areas.

UNDP’s 2022-2025 Strategic Plan highlighting our continued commitment to eradicating poverty, accompanying countries in their pathways towards the SDGs and working towards the Paris Agreement. As part of the Global Policy Network in the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support, UNDP’s Nature, Climate Change, Energy, and Waste (NCE&W) Hubs promote and scale up integrated whole-of-governance approaches and nature-based solutions that reduce poverty and inequalities, strengthen livelihoods and inclusive growth, mitigate conflict, forced migration and displacement, and promote more resilient governance systems that advance linked peace and security agendas.

BPPS’ VF Program Support Oversight & Compliance, together with Hubs, works with governments, civil society, and private sector partners to integrate nature, climate, energy and waste related concerns into national and sector planning and inclusive growth policies, support country obligations under Multilateral Environmental Agreements, and oversee the implementation of the UN’s largest portfolio of in-country programming nature, climate change, energy and waste.

This multi-billion-dollar portfolio encompasses:

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services including forests;
Sustainable Land Management and Desertification including food and commodity systems;
Water and Ocean Governance including SIDS;
Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation;
Sustainable Energy;
Extractive Industries;
Chemicals and Waste Management;
Environmental Governance and Green/Circular Economy; and SCP approaches.

This work advances crosscutting themes on innovative finance, digital transformation, capacity development, human rights, gender equality, health, technology, and South-South learning.

UNDP is at a strategic position to provide this support to countries using evidence-based policy making backed by data. The portfolio of projects overseen by UNDP, with financing from vertical funds, is immense – spanning more than 1,100 active projects across 140 countries. The data generated by these projects is equally immense. The BPPS VF Program Support Oversight & Compliance Unit’s Project Information Management System (PIMS+) gathers project results and progress data from projects underway in 140 countries.

PIMS+ is a comprehensive project cycle management tool designed to support the VF Program Support Oversight & Compliance Unitin providing high-quality oversight services to the vertical funds. Over the upcoming years, the VF Program Support Oversight & ComplianceUnit is committed to improve PIMS+ dashboards for Country Offices and Regional Bureaux, and continue to build the overall system to support effective monitoring of the portfolio of projects to improve oversight, support, and reporting.

PIMS+ is a large-scale custom information system. Following is a summary of the technical stack of the application:

• Consists of three web applications, one REST API Endpoint;

• Built on PHP 8 engine with Yii2 PHP Framework and libraries including PHPOffice, HighCharts, SAML, MapBox, Select2, AutoNumeric, TinyMCE, GuzzleHTTP, SwiftMailer, etc.);

• JS client-side scripting with jQuery;

• HTML, CSS with Bootstrap 3 and BEM (Block Embedding Methodology) SCSS framework;

• MariaDB Database Server – InnoDB Storage Engine, Shared file system storage for documents management;

• Elasticsearch for advanced search function with possible extension towards AI / ML;

• The system runs on 4 virtual servers (Centos 7), resources are managed with Pacemaker CRM;

• Other technologies and tools that require maintenance: Apache HTTPD Web server, Gitlab with CI/CD pipelines, Zabbix monitoring toolkit, Postfix & Dovecot mail components, Redmine.

Duties and Responsibilities

Summary of key functions:

To assist the PIMS+ data quality assurance by delivering various data monitoring and manual update support
To support the PIMS+ result database improvement
To archive the documentation of PIMS+ modules, guidance, and relevant information
To support the data validation among the different report modules

To assist the PIMS+ data quality assurance by delivering various data monitoring and manual update support

To monitor and update the PIMS+ “system health consistency checking” module on daily basis
To monitor and update the HR data from Quantum and manual update by users
To check GEF7 (all projects), manual checking if financial and RM component are matched in case there are financial changes, to address any error
To improve the PIMS guidance by checking the quality of the existing ones

To support the PIMS+ result database improvement

The Intern will support to the PIMS+ team in system development that include:

To enter the legacy result data from the old projects
To support the PIR data management and monitoring

To archive the documentation of PIMS+ modules, guidance, and relevant information

To archive the PIMS+ documents in Sharepoint, Workspace, Milestones, and others to be used as guidance and reference

To support the data validation among the different report modules

The Intern will support validating the data accuracy and consistency between PIMS reports, dashboard, and PBI analysis, supporting PIMS data expert.

Required Skills and Experience

Education
Applicants to the UNDP internship programme must at the time of application meet one of the following requirements:

Be enrolled in a graduate school programme (second university degree or equivalent, or higher) in fields such as computer sciences, web resources development, web design, programming or other closely related field;
Be enrolled in the final academic year of a first university degree programme (minimum Bachelor’s level or equivalent) in fields such as computer sciences, web resources development, web design, programming or other closely related field;
Have graduated with a university degree (as defined above), and, if selected, must start the internship within one-year of graduation.

Experience:

Relevant work/voluntary/internship experience in working experience in development of robust Web 2.0 information systems (projects of large scale – database model larger than 200 relational entities, complex role based access control preferred);
Knowledge of/familiarity with full stack development (frontend design, backend development, SQL, Linux administration) and in software analysis and design, including knowledge of analytical methodologies and approaches such as Use-Case analysis and use of UML. Hands-on experience preferred;
Excellent knowledge of design and implementation of applications on relational database level – excellent knowledge of SQL;
Knowledge of, and/or prior experience within, the UN system is considered an advantage.

Language requirements