The Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) is a global alliance formed to enable the digital ecosystem to deliver greater scale, efficiency, and social impact as it creates more inclusive digital economies in emerging markets. Working with partners, DIAL generates evidence of what works through a series of demonstration projects, distils insights and tools to promote scale-up and replication, and provides mechanisms for knowledge sharing, collaboration, and co-investment throughout the ecosystem.
DIAL is funded through a collaboration among the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and hosted within the UN Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Software platforms have yet to reach ubiquitous scale in the sector, and commercial software providers have not appreciably adjusted their product design to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Digital investments in global development are most often siloed by programmatic sector and working within constricted timelines, resulting in fragmentation and duplication of effort, de-prioritization of reuse, increased overall cost, and a limited the number of Information Communications Technology (ICT) applications that have built sufficient momentum to develop into broadly reusable software platforms. These ICT investments don’t address the end-to-end needs of government programs, leaving governments to determine how to integrate multiple, often fragmented technologies.
The SDG Digital Investment Framework (a product of the partnership between DIAL and ITU) helps policymakers identify reusable ICT “building blocks” (e.g., ID, messaging and payment services) that can help deliver priority SDG use cases. A key tenet of the framework is that common business processes exist across the ICT systems that support the SDGs. By prioritizing these common use cases, we can map functionality across sectors in order to amplify investment in a comprehensive infrastructure comprising these reusable software components.
The SDG Digital Investment Framework’s calls for a “whole-of-government” (WGA) approach to ICT investment planning. The methodology for discovering building-block-level requirements, however, requires further work to translate high-level use cases and workflows into concrete requirements for existing and new T4D products. DIAL is seeking a Technical Associate to support the effort to map and develop actionable, common requirements and use cases.
The Technical Associate will report to and work closely with Sr. Technical Program Manager, Platforms & Services for overall guidance, work planning and performance reviews. She/he will work closely with DIAL’s Director of Technology, DIAL’s lead consultant for the ICT4SDG work, and members/delegates of the ITU.
Analysis and Solution Definition
- Work closely with the Sr. Technical Program Manager, DIAL’s lead consultant, and members of the ITU in defining common requirements across the ICT building blocks with in the SDG Digital Investment Framework;
- Collaborate with and interview a wide range of technology partners to unearth common requirements;
- Evaluate software products and applications on the basis of usability, functionality, non-functional requirements and performance;
- Support in the facilitation of workshops, focus groups and interviews to collect, analyze, validate and document business requirements, processes, business rules and workflows;
- Document and maintain detailed notes and artifacts to provide evidence and reference for each requirement, use case and business process;
- Reverse engineer business and functional requirements from existing applications and discover the common model and process model that can unify closely related applications in one data and process model;
- Perform fit-gap analysis, business process re-engineering and reverse engineering in coordination with the Sr. Technical Program Manager;
- Translate business requirements into functional and technical specifications;
- 3-5+ years of experience as a technical business analyst, product owner, software engineer, technical business consultant or relevant field.
- Understanding and background in microservice and/or service-oriented architecture; strong knowledge of IT business analysis; thorough analytical skills; demonstrated problem-solving abilities; and experience in requirement gathering in a multi-stakeholder setting required.
- Individual should be detail-oriented, creative, inquisitive, committed and self-motivated.
- Strong technical and documentation skills in standard software programs, web-based applications, databases, data visualization tools, statistical software, enterprise and/or software integration.
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively and thoughtfully across a diverse set of partners and audiences across multiple geographies and sectors.
- Detail and results oriented.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities under tight timelines.
- Excellent communication skills (spoken and written), including ability to convey complex technical concepts both orally and in writing in a clear, concise manner.
- Entrepreneurial, with a talent for creative problem solving, perseverance, flexibility and resilience. Able to thrive in environments of ambiguity and enjoys being a thought partner on new ventures.
- Works collaboratively with colleagues to achieve organizational goals.
- Good interpersonal skills and ability to establish and maintain effective partnerships and working relations in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic environment with sensitivity and respect for diversity.
- Experience implementing and/or building T4D programs and projects is preferred.
- Sense of humor; highly organized; demonstrates grace under pressure; and delivers results in a fast-paced environment.
- A willingness to travel, domestically and internationally and the ability to interact with people from diverse, multi-cultural backgrounds.
- Ascribe to DIAL’s values of Commitment, Collaboration, Empowerment, Courage and Thoughtful Action.
- Ability to meet regular attendance/tardiness policy.
For full-time, benefit eligible employees, UNF offers an excellent range of benefits, including:
- A choice of two health plans through CareFirst (PPO or HDHP with HSA),
- dental insurance,
- vision discounts,
- flexible spending accounts,
- 403b retirement savings plan with a generous matching contribution,
- group term and supplemental life insurance,
- short-term disability,
- long-term disability,
- health club discounts,
- commuter benefits, and
- employee assistance program.
Additionally, all benefit eligible employees have 12 paid holidays, 20 vacation days, 10 sick days, 3 personal days, and 8 weeks of parental leave.