Re-Advertisement: JO# 18990 – Assistant Information Management Officer (Data Curator) – NOA – UNHCR Temporary Appointment - Beirut, Lebanon

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT.

Eight years into the Syria crisis, Lebanon remains the country hosting the largest number of refugees per capita, with nearly 950,000  Syrian refugees registered with UNHCR, about 20,000 refugees of other origins - mostly Iraqi - and Palestine refugees under UNRWA’s mandate.  There are no formal camps for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and refugees are living in hundreds of communities and locations across the country.

The refugee response is led by the Government and UNHCR and UNDP, supported by the international community. As the designated lead agency in the refugee response, UNHCR has established a sector-based structure in Beirut and in the field. The structure brings together over 150 UN agencies, national and international NGO partners [over 150 actors, including UN agencies, national and international NGOs and Ministries] in identifying and agreeing on the strategic priorities to address the needs of Syrian refugees and vulnerable Lebanese communities. The Lebanon Chapter of the Response Plan falls under the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP), whereby UNHCR guides the refugee response and UNDP facilitates the resilience and stabilization component.

The UNHCR operational response in Lebanon is one of the largest for the organization. Media attention and the frequency of influential high-profile visitors is high. The Office has grown substantially in the past years and is currently operating with around 650 staff. Aside from the country office in the capital city of Beirut, UNHCR has field offices in Mount Lebanon, Qobayat, Tripoli, Tyre and Zahle.

The Assistant Information Management Officer assists in the production and dissemination of information on the population of concern, including but not limited to Protection and Programme information.

The incumbent operationalizes data standards developed at the central level in field operations, compile data and analyse information from all populations of concern. S/he supports the Programme Team and UNHCR's implementing partners in the choice of indicators for monitoring to be included in sub-agreements as well as the Protection Team in operationalizing protection monitoring systems.

UNHCR operations have several data collection activities that fall outside of UNHCR corporate data systems.  While the analytical products may be retained, often times the datasets underlying these products are lost.  The UNHCR Data Curation project will collect, index, process, store and, for some datasets (not all), make available these datasets for use by others.  The goals are to improve institutional memory and to improve efficiency by re-using existing datasets.  Doing this will also make UNHCR a more predictable source of data at regional and global levels, and with partners, both development and humanitarian.  Making anonymized microdata publicly available ensures that maximum use is made of the data, improves data quality and credibility and may prevent duplication of surveys and thereby reduce the costs for humanitarian and development organizations that are in need of data to inform their programming. 

UNHCR routinely supports a number of household survey data level collections each year, conducted directly by UNHCR or implemented by partners.  Traditionally this data has not been retained in formats and locations that make it available for future use, either in country, by UNHCR globally, independent researchers, or by partners such as the World Bank UNHCR Joint Data Centre.

To support an institutional shift towards augmenting open data, UNHCR has created an internal data library (RIDL) for data storage and the external-facing UNHCR Microdata library, an online repository which will allow public and/or licensed access to anonymized data collected in these surveys, and users to perform directly their own analysis.  UNHCR is also a data provider to other open data platforms, including the Humanitarian Data Exchange.

The first priority for the Assistant Information Management Officer Microdata Curator is to retain, clean, index, document and anonymize microdata from surveys or censuses and, to a lesser extent, administrative registers. The data may be available for all or a subset of variables covered by the data collection exercise.

The second priority for the Assistant Information Management Officer Microdata Curator is to source, retain, clean, index and anonymize microdata from protection monitoring systems, programme monitoring systems, needs assessments, shape files for mapping and other data systems that relate to the population of concern.

The Data Curation Officer does not need to index datasets from PRIMES, MSRP, Focus or any other corporate system that already has a centralized data warehouse or business intelligence repository.

Microdata that is relevant to national, regional and global level decision making should be prioritized.  Data that is useful at a sub-national level is second priority.

Datasets are also available with a varying degree of quality which requires careful assessment and substantial amount of cleaning and preparation before they can be shared. Additionally, datasets must also be properly and carefully anonymized before they can be shared.    

The Assistant Information Management Officer Microdata Curator will be responsible for:

¿ assisting with data selection and assessing the suitability of the data for publication,
¿ cleaning data,
¿ identifying and addressing missing data,
¿ applying imputation methods as needed,
¿ anonymizing personally identifiable data,
¿ populating the microdata library with datasets and corresponding metadata.

The Assistant Information Management Officer Microdata Curator will more specifically performing the following activities:

¿ Identifying and obtaining historical datasets suitable for sharing.
¿ have data stored within RIDL according to data security and data protection protocols.
¿ Work with different units and partners to ensure relevant metadata is provided along with the data.
¿ Develop instructions and guidance documents to evaluate the quality of the selected datasets and assess suitability for publication, removing and correcting errors if necessary, and work with field locations as relevant.
¿  Apply statistical disclosure control (SDC) techniques used to anonymize all datasets ensuring that no person or household is identifiable from the results of an analysis of survey data (at an appropriate level of risk), or in the release of microdata, utilizing the R-based sdcMicro package. This will be done in consultation with the data producer that will guide in the determination of key and sensitive variables. Such anonymization will be performed both at the household level and individual level, and applying different methods for public use and licensed use files.
¿ Perform statistical analysis on pre vs post anonymization utility variables to verify anonymized data maintains validity and should be recommended for sharing.
¿ Generate the appropriate metadata according to the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) metadata standard and any other documentation needed to catalogue, record and communicate to users all the salient characteristics of the micro-datasets shared on the MicroData Library.
¿ Where applicable, the Assistant Information Management Officer Microdata Curator will apply HXL tags to microdata.

FUNCTIONAL STATEMENT

Accountability

- The Office delivers reliable, accessible and user-friendly, relevant, predictable, appropriate and timely information. 
- Global data standards, and where appropriate, the establishment of country-specific common data standards are adopted by UNHCR and its partners.

Responsibility

- Operationalize country-specific common data standards and promote them with partners.
- Compile, aggregrate and analyze data and information elements required to produce standardized information products and implement data/information collection plans for baseline and context-specific data. 
- Support the operation in the analysis of processed data and information and perform data quality and consistency control.
- Facilitate the analysis of cross-border information between relevant countries.
- Support and leverage geographic data for map production and use in geographic information systems (GIS).
- Share UNHCR data with partner agencies and maintain Portal population figures in-line with aggreed frequencies.
- Provide technical Information Management support to Needs Assessment processes, specifically in data collection, processing/collation and analysis.
- Perform other duties as required.

Authority

- Liaise with partners and represent UNHCR in meetings related to the functions.
- Make recommendations and provide advice on the technical information management requirements.