United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Humanitarian Adviser, Lessons

Organization: Department for International Development
Country: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Closing date: 28 Jun 2017

Job title: Humanitarian Adviser, Lessons

Location: London (DFID's offices)

Type of contract: 12 month Maternity Cover

Salary: Approximately £52,000

Application deadline: 28 June 2017

The Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Operations Team, contracted by Crown Agents but working within and alongside the Department for International Development (DFID) is an established and highly respected team supporting the UK Government in Global Humanitarian Disaster Preparedness and Response.

We are now looking for a Lessons Adviser to support DFID’s humanitarian policy, and to support existing and emerging CHASE and DFID lessons learning initiatives through commissioning, managing, leading and participating in reviews of operations, ensuring the results of these are integrated into policy and practice.

Roles and responsibilities include:

Ensure that the process for identifying and tracking lessons from DfID responses is maintained and adapted as needed (lessons reviews of responses/programmes, working with focal points for lessons, quarterly updates on progress etc.)
Identify or develop an accessible format for storing, updating, and synthesising identified lessons and progress in addressing them.
Produce timely and on-demand summaries of past lessons based on this store and relevant other evidence.
Provide support to DFID CHASE, country offices, policy makers and practitioners in identifying what works and what does not through combining examined experience from programmes, with rigorous evaluation and research findings.
Give advice to DFID CHASE on using research information, and guide them to different sources of research evidence, including humanitarian evaluation.
Collaborate with DfID country offices and regional teams to document, aggregate, summarise, and disseminate lessons learned from their humanitarian programmes.
Work with DfID implementing partners, peer donors, and research & analysis networks to ensure evidence is available as a public good and better used in humanitarian policy and practice. This covers evidence supported by DfID e.g. through the Humanitarian Innovation and Evidence Programme, but is not limited to DfID-supported evidence.
Identify and extract key research evidence to help with the production of accessible evidence products e.g. guidance notes on priority issues (such as preparedness, multi-year funding, needs assessments and accountability) for DfID advisers and potentially other actors.
Contribute to the design of systems for monitoring partner performance, including for emergencies, and provide general advice on monitoring as needed
Deploy to humanitarian emergencies to support the establishment of systems for capturing lessons and monitoring performance, outcomes and impact.
Advise ministers and senior officials on humanitarian policy issues including drafting high quality briefing, and providing input into correspondence and parliamentary submissions as required.
Essential Qualifications, skills and experience
Educated to Masters level or the equivalent level of academic and professional experience in a subject area clearly related to humanitarian work.
Knowledge and experience gained working extensively on or in developing countries and/or in fragile and conflict affected environments
Demonstrable knowledge and experience of humanitarian theory, practice and architecture, humanitarian risk assessment and planning and managing humanitarian responses.
Demonstrable knowledge of the development effectiveness agenda and the international development system.
Demonstrable success in internal advocacy and consultancy, and an understanding of organizational culture and change in large, public sector organisations.
Exceptional research and analysis skills, and proven ability to produce high quality, evidence-based, quantitative and qualitative reports
Significant proven experience of carrying out evaluations including impact assessments
Experience of managing lessons learning processes within organizations and with external networks/partners
Experience of developing and using tools for evidence based processes