Key Responsibilities
This is a senior role within TBI and will be held by an exceptional candidate with deep and extensive experience helping senior political leaders generate, and then act on, insights from data to solve the key challenges of the public sector and support new opportunities for growth in private and third sectors.
Key responsibilities will include:
- Design and implementation of data governance and infrastructure: Advise governments on national data governance, including strategies, architecture, standards, and interoperability (i.e. broader enterprise architecture vision, with interoperability rules and norms & standards for open data).
- Policy advisory: Provide expert input on the ethical and secure use of data for service design and delivery, economic development, and digital government reform.
- Capacity building and institutional strengthening: Support the development of internal data capabilities, including upskilling civil servants and strengthening data governance mechanisms.
- Insight generation and analytics: Work with public institutions to turn raw data into actionable insights for policy, planning, and operational improvement.
- Stakeholder coordination: Advise on how to facilitate collaboration across ministries, departments, and development partners to align data-related initiatives and infrastructure.
- Delivery support: Apply TBI’s delivery model to help governments turn strategy into action, using data to monitor and drive implementation.
- The Senior Advisor will be responsible for :
Strategy and programme development
- Design the advisory services needed to strengthen governments’ capacity to establish the enabling foundations and use data for decision making and service delivery as part of TBI’s tech offer to governments, including practical ways in which TBI can support governments to better use data to set policy and strategy, deliver on priorities and design and deliver more proactive and personalized public services. This will include assessing and adjusting existing data governance models, as well as change management as governments create new data-driven cultures and capabilities.
- Work closely with other GCS advisors and relevant colleagues across TBI to enable TBI’s broader Digital and Tech Transformation vision and cross-functional strategy (e.g. working with the Delivery Team to see how actionable insights can improve policy implementation in real time, with the AI and DID senior advisors to support governments in increasing the availability of quality data).
- Work closely with TBI’s embedded country teams, providing technical expertise and thought partnership to scope and design opportunities in support of countries’ top challenges, leveraging disruptive technology (e.g. AI), digital identity/digital wallets, generating innovative solutions, connecting to related agendas (e.g. cloud strategy and public sector innovation), and framing them in a compelling way for political leaders.
- Drawing from the thought leadership of the Policy & Politics team, identify and apply emerging data-related technologies – including AI – into a cohesive offer for governments.
External engagement and partnerships
- Develop and enhance our relationships with leading innovators, technology companies, implementation partners, and thought leaders, deepening TBI understanding of emerging innovation and improving our offer to governments.
- Provide senior-level representation and presentations for TBI at external fora and events.
- Engage with relevant external stakeholders such as other not-for-profit organisations, donors, suppliers, and agencies.
Programmatic delivery
- Support TBI’s embedded country teams to maintain effective and trusted government relationships, which enable the successful delivery of the Data for Decision Making work, as part of our Tech Offer. Where required, develop relationships with relevant country counterparts and stakeholders.
- Provide technical guidance to teams in supporting client governments to establish the data governance – including institutional set up, data architecture and standards, interoperability frameworks, policies, strategies – as well as data capacity and structures required to improve availability, access, sharing, and reuse of quality data across public sectors to improve public sector delivery and outcomes.
- Lead the development of assessment frameworks and other assets TBI teams can use with government counterparts to increase understanding of how to leverage the latest innovations such as AI or to inform decisions on data analytics tools more broadly.
- Work with the Senior Director for Government Innovation and AI to troubleshoot and ensure country teams can access the best of the Institute to support their work.
Enabling Systems
- Support the development of instructional and implementation material for both TBI country teams and government counterparts.
- Work closely with the TBI Impact team to contribute to a learning culture which effectively captures and utilises lessons to continuously improve our work.
- Support country and regional teams as needed to attract and hire talent in support of our work, contributing to the recruitment, induction and support for new hires and mentoring and coaching where needed.
- Shape and embody a positive culture that drives innovation and delivery. Play a key role in the broader community at TBI, building strong working relationships across the Institute.
Qualifications
Technical skills
Data strategy & governance
- Data governance frameworks: Understanding how to set up and manage data governance structures in government, including roles, responsibilities, and stewardship.
- Data lifecycle management: Experience with policies and practices for collecting, storing, securing, sharing, and deleting data.
- Metadata and data cataloguing: Familiarity with data standards, classification, and interoperability frameworks relevant to public administration.
Data analytics & insights
- Quantitative analysis skills: Proficiency in statistical methods, forecasting, and econometrics, ideally with practical experience applying these to public policy problems.
- Data visualization tools: Use of tools for presenting insights to policy audiences.
- Experience with data analysis tools: Familiarity with R, Python (pandas, NumPy), or STATA/SAS for analysis, especially in areas such as social policy, fiscal reform, or service delivery optimization.
Digital infrastructure and interoperability
- APIs and system integration: Understanding how to enable secure and ethical data sharing across ministries or agencies.
- Enterprise architecture awareness: Ability to navigate how data systems interrelate across government departments (e.g., registries, CRMs, MIS platforms).
- Cloud platforms: Experience in data infrastructure on AWS, Azure, or GCP, especially in low-resource or developing settings.
Ethics, privacy, and regulatory frameworks
- Data privacy laws & compliance: Knowledge of GDPR and other relevant data protection laws, and how these apply to government use of data.
- Ethical use of data and AI: Understanding frameworks to ensure non-discrimination, transparency, and accountability in data use.
- Risk management and cybersecurity basics: Awareness of the vulnerabilities in public digital infrastructure and mitigation strategies.
Public sector use cases & policy understanding
- Domain expertise: Familiarity with how data is used across sectors such as health, education, social protection, and economic development.
- Experience with M&E systems: Knowledge of designing or using performance monitoring systems to track and improve service delivery.
- Behavioral and operational insights: Ability to design interventions that draw on data insights to improve public service uptake or delivery.
Stakeholder Engagement and Change Management
- Data literacy training: Ability to support capacity building among civil servants and policy staff to improve data literacy.
- Cross-sectoral collaboration: Experience aligning data efforts across government agencies and with external partners (e.g., civil society, academia, private sector).
- Strategic communications: Skill in translating technical insights into actionable recommendations for senior decision-makers.
Additional information
- A Master’s degree in data and information sciences or related fields, or a relevant undergraduate degree with extensive experience in data for policy or data for decision making in the public sector.
- Demonstrated strategic thinker with the ability to deliver in challenging contexts
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Excellent negotiation and influencing skills, with discretion and tact, and the ability to foster trusted relationships with a diverse selection of stakeholders.
- Sensitivity to a broad range of cultural and regional norms.
- Willingness to travel globally and up to approximately 30 percent.
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Key Responsibilities
This is a senior role within TBI and will be held by an exceptional candidate with deep and extensive experience in government advisory and technology-enabled transformation and delivery.
Offer development and thought leadership
- Lead the development and evolution of TBI’s national digital Infrastructure offer strategy which defines our approach to supporting countries to develop and invest in the infrastructure backbone of a digital government and economy.
- Identify and apply emerging trends and opportunities for digital infrastructure and keep us on the forefront of disruptive technology innovation, working in collaboration with the Tech Policy (PP) team to support their research and publication pipeline.
- Develop internal frameworks, guides, tools, playbooks, and documents which effectively capture our offer and solutions and enable team usage adding scalability to your expert advice and input
Technical leadership and expert support
- Generate cohesion across our technology advisory work, capture lessons learned, and develop best practices to inform future efforts, working closely with the other GCS experts and sectoral leads and our new Global Director of Innovation.
- Provide hands-on technical input and thought partnership to country teams in the scoping, design and delivery of digital infrastructure initiatives, (including supporting infrastructure landscape assessments and other enabling efforts) generating creative solutions, and framing them in a compelling way
- Support country directors and teams to effectively consider, assess, and pursue national digital infrastructure initiatives as part of TBI country strategies in response to government demand or propositional solutions.
- Quality Assure, support and troubleshoot the implementation of national digital infrastructure initiatives working collaboratively to ensure impact and that country teams can access the best of the Institute to support their work.
- Develop, and quality assure high-calibre external facing proposal documents and deliverables working with country teams.
- Support country teams to maintain effective and trusted government relationships which enable our delivery of cloud solutions and other digital infrastructure. Where required develop relationships with relevant country counterparts and stakeholders (e.g. ICT Ministers).
- Provide expert input support to country teams as needed with government counterparts,
- e.g. joining and leading workshops as an expert. Provide ongoing support to resolve strategic questions as they emerge during implementation.
External engagement and partnerships
- Develop and enhance our network, relationships, and partnership with leading innovators, technology companies, implementation partners, and thought leaders in the digital infrastructure space (cloud, internet, telcos) which enhance our understanding of emerging innovation and improve our offer and advise to governments
- Represent TBI at a senior level in external conversations, forums, and partnerships
- Lead engagements with existing and future strategic partners for Cloud Infrastructure and Internet Access, in collaboration with relevant parts of TBI.
- With Strategic Partnerships and Initiatives team, support joint strategy and partnership governance, escalating challenges when needed.
- Support joint opportunity development for digital infrastructure solutions with our external partners and technology companies.
- Engage with relevant external stakeholders such as other not-for-profit organisations, donors, media, suppliers, and agencies.
Enabling Systems
- Ensure, and support the development of, training materials and collateral to ensure TBI country teams and government counterparts understand the specifics and value addition of various digital infrastructure solutions and offers
- Work closely with our Impact team to contribute to a learning culture which effectively captures and utilises lessons to continuously improve our work.
- Support country and regional teams as needed to attract and hire, leading talent in support of our work, contributing to the recruit, induction and support for new hires and mentoring and coaching where needed.
- Shape and embody a positive culture that drives innovation and delivery. Play a key role in the broader community at TBI and will be expected to build strong working relationships
Person Specification
- With substantial relevant experience in governments, government or technology advisory
- Who is considered an expert and thought leader in digital infrastructure, with experience designing or leading digital transformation efforts in government
- Who has experience in and understands public service and government functional priorities and challenges in emerging economies, with experience in Africa, Eastern Europe, and/or Asia
- With demonstrable experience in technology enterprises or programmes
- Who is strategic, entrepreneurial, pragmatically optimistic and can challenge the status-quo and develop plans for successful delivery of challenging, ambitious objectives
- With outstanding management and strategy skills -- able to set strategic direction, inspire teams to collaboratively achieve exceptional objectives, and not afraid to be hands-on to achieve results
- Who has a record of accomplishment cultivating and maintaining strategic alliances and partnerships across public, social, and private sector organisations
- Who is a skilled communicator and influencer, from executive office level through to technical level, is adept at speaking to senior leadership
- Adept at navigating ambiguous environments and is comfortable in a rapid growth environment and at managing up and beyond hierarchy
- Who is comfortable speaking in public forums and representing the institute on the global stage
- Who has worked or consulted in a range developing and emerging economies and is sensitive to a diverse range of cultural and regional norms, and fosters a positive spirit of collaboration
- Experience engaging or working on public policy as an enabler of digital transformation (e.g. data sovereignty and privacy)
- Who commits to business objectives and pulls out the stops to make sure they are always met
- Comfortable to travel about 20- 30% of the time to global locations.
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