eGovernment Foundation - Policy Manager - Academic & Research Partnerships

About eGovernments Foundation & DIGIT:

eGov Foundation is a philanthropic mission that exists to improve the ease of living for citizens.

Our focus areas are urban, health, sanitation and public finance management.

Our mission is to make sure that everyone can access services from their local governments with ease and transparency. We do this through our core offering DIGIT (Digital Infrastructure for Governance, Impact and Transformation), which is a digital public good. In other words, it is an open, interoperable free-to-use platform that offers solutions for citizens, first mile employees, administrators, commercial players and policy makers.

It is made available to the federal government, states & cities for them to create programs and solutions for their contexts, in keeping with the federal structure of urban governance in India.

DIGIT is also offered to commercial players, so that they can leverage it to build solutions and deliver programs working with governments.

In run-time this translates into states, cities and commercials players using the building blocks from DIGIT to tailor solutions and programs that meet their needs and innovating on top of it to solve emerging problems.

Over the last 20 years, eGov has partnered with more than over 3 countries, 2600 towns and cities in 16 states across India, and more than 16 crore citizens have benefited from its platform.

We offer several things that sets us apart from other opportunities:

1. The possibility of having massive societal impact. Our products and platform touches the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

2. Solving hard governance and societal challenges.

3. Work directly with central and state government leaders and other dignitaries.

4. Mentorship from world class people and rich ecosystems.

Read more about the work of eGovernments Foundation:

1. https://egov.org.in/

2. https://www.digit.org/

At eGovernments Foundation, we are committed to creating diversity, equity and inclusion. Therefore, we actively recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool.

We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives to apply.

Position : Policy Manager - Academic & Research Partnerships

Location : Bangalore

About the role :

- The Academic & Research Partnerships Manager will work closely with Team Leads at eGov, as well as with members of the Global Policy & Partnerships team.

- In this role you will be responsible for stewarding the knowledge management, evidence generation and dissemination around the efficacy of key programs leveraging the DIGIT platform.

- In order to do this, you will also need to build and manage partnerships with academic institutions, think tanks, civil society organizations, researchers, M&E experts, and survey/data collection agencies.

The broad goals of these engagements will be to :

- Initiate studies by academics / researchers in the context of DIGIT implementations, and to ensure the findings of such studies are communicated well to intra-eGov teams, partners and stakeholders, and the ecosystem at large, leading to a growing body of knowledge products and evidence around digital transformation of government and public services.

- Build partnerships with academic institutions, towards establishing Centers of Excellence and/or capacity-building initiatives (focused on DPI and digital transformation of governance).

- Identify experts and practitioners with knowledge relevant to the work of Initiatives at eGov, and enable knowledge sharing between them and the relevant Initiative teams.

- You will be responsible for knowledge management, and drive the dissemination and uptake of MERL outputs (field reports, monitoring data / analyses / reports, research findings, etc.) within eGov, to support the overall strategy of the organization.

- You will support Initiative leads to practice a thesis-led approach, with periodic reviews of how each Initiative's theses are playing out.

- This will include designing or commissioning M&E studies / surveys / data collection exercises, and ensuring findings of these studies are integrated into the Initiative's strategy and communications.

Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

- Learning, Knowledge Creation and sharing

- Scoping joint initiatives, projects, and publications with partners, and presenting these to Irrelevant leaders for review and approval.

- Projects could include research papers, technology innovations, policy labs/seminars/events, case studies, etc.

- Reporting to and advising team leads and eGov leadership on the status of projects, and driving (together with the relevant initiative or project lead) said projects.

- Inviting partners to be speakers in panel discussions, floor talks, workshops, etc., and coordinating their participation.

- Supporting initiative leads to contract and manage M&E services and/or data collection services.

- Facilitating collaboration, both intra-eGov and with partners, to create a growing body of knowledge assets on digital transformation of governance and service delivery.

- Serving as overall owner and curator of such knowledge assets; ensuring that these are widely discussed, and encouraging their use both intra-eGov and by the ecosystem at large.

- Supporting colleagues, including Initiative leads and eGov leadership, in their engagement with key stakeholders (policymakers, program owners, funders etc.), by providing them with relevant knowledge assets / excerpts / syntheses.

- Academic partnership development

- Initiating exploratory conversations with partners, to learn more about their work and interests and present those of eGov.

- You should be able to identify colleagues who will be needed for or could benefit from these calls, and coordinate their participation.

- Identify and develop relevant strategic partnerships with academic institutions, think tanks and research organizations to support the learning and evidence gathering efforts around eGov's work.

- In the next two years, build out a robust academic network in the states of Punjab and Odisha to support the transformation programs in these states.

- Maintaining a landscape and stakeholder map of all academic and research partners, and reviewing and updating this with the policy team leadership.

- Maintaining a regular cadence with partners, based on eGov and Initiative priorities.

- Capacity Building and Centres of Excellence.

- Develop capacity-building courses, programs, workshops, etc., with a particular focus on policymakers (elected leaders, senior civil servants) and policy implementers / program owners (civil servants, government PMU leads, etc.)

- Identify and onboard key experts / practitioners as faculty or guest speakers in capacity-building courses.

- Support the development of a body of knowledge, with multiple types of knowledge products (e.g. reports, case studies, whitepapers, etc,) and ensure these are incorporated into capacity-building course curricula.

Required qualifications, skills, and experience [please apply only if you can demonstrate all or almost all of these]:

- Graduate degree in public policy / public administration / development studies / social sciences.

- 4-5 years of experience in a research management, policy & communications role including contract management on research projects with a focus on delivery on cost, time and quality parameters.

- Demonstrated experience in quantitative or mixed methods social science research, including a clear understanding of research design, data collection methods, and data analysis methods and tools. (You should be able to review proposed research methodology, data collection quality, and quantitative / econometric data analyses, identify and pre-empt errors, and make recommendations for improving their quality, feasibility, costs, etc.)

- Demonstrated experience in intervention design, including familiarity with systems thinking, theories of change, monitoring and evaluation, indicator design, etc.

- Excellent facilitation skills, including with academic and policy stakeholders.

- Excellent communication skills, both spoken and written.

- You should be able to convert research proposals and/or findings into a crisp 2-4 page memo or 8-10 slide presentation, and to present these to various audiences.

Preferred qualifications, skills, and experience [if you can demonstrate these, you will have an advantage over other candidates]:

- Post - Graduate degree in public policy / public administration / development studies / social sciences.

- 6-7 years of relevant work experience.

- Expertise with data analysis software, e.g.STATA, R.

- Experience with data visualization tools / software.

- Experience organizing events (conferences, panel discussions, workshops, webinars etc.)

- Experience translating between technical and policy audiences, including briefing senior stakeholders on policy or research ideas, findings, etc