MIS/Database Advisor at Mercy Corps

PROGRAM SUMMARY

The Feed the Future Rural Resilience Activity (RRA) is a five-year USD 49 million USAID-funded project targeting 600,000 participants in Borno, Gombe, Yobe, and Adamawa and expansion states. It facilitates and protects economic recovery and growth in vulnerable, conflict-affected areas and sustainably moves people out of chronic vulnerability and poverty through expanded opportunities. RRA applies adaptive management by continuously assessing and responding to changing contextual factors like economic, climate, and other shocks. The Activity effectively navigates evolving challenges and opportunities by being flexible and adaptive, ensuring its interventions remain relevant and impactful in the face of shocks and stressors.

In recognition of the challenges in Northeast Nigeria, USAID awarded RRA to a consortium of Mercy Corps International Fertilizer Development Centre (IFDC) and Save the Children International (SCI). The Activity facilitates and protects economic recovery and growth in vulnerable, conflict-affected areas and sustainably moves people out of chronic vulnerability and poverty through expanded opportunities. RRA's approach effectively navigates evolving challenges and opportunities by being flexible and adaptive, ensuring its interventions remain relevant and impactful in dynamic market environments, setting it on a path for stability, resilience, prosperity, and inclusion.

The Activity has six components: 1) provide up-to-date evidence for selecting market systems, livelihoods, and employment opportunities that contribute to inclusive and resilient growth and improved nutrition; 2) stimulate market systems growth and diverse economic opportunities; 3) build capacity to take advantage of market systems opportunities, 4) sequencing, layering, integrating (SLI), and collaborative learning to improve activity effectiveness, sustainability, and scale; 5) supporting household and market resilience to COVID-19 shocks; and 6) mitigating the secondary impact of the Russian war on Ukraine.

The Activity’s approach leverages current humanitarian relief responses complemented by social cohesion and peacebuilding, infrastructure rehabilitation, and social services. It considers the risks and vulnerabilities associated with social, ecological, and economic systems and their intersections in the Northeast and builds these factors into the core strategies and interventions. The Activity employs carefully informed systemic interventions that integrate a resilience lens.

General Position Summary

The MIS/Database Advisor will support the Rural Resilience Activity on a full-time basis to provide surge support during a time of program transition and potential expansion (funding dependent). The general duties and responsibilities of the MIS/Database Advisor are to provide oversight of program-level data management and information systems, ensuring the quality and integrity of the program's data infrastructure, information management via the program's reporting system (which may be tied with Mercy Corps' proprietary TolaData systems), and geographic information systems (GIS), where applicable.

The MIS/Database Advisor's role is to also oversee and ensure coordination of various data-related technical areas across the program team members and components. The MIS/Database Advisor is responsible for developing and implementing data management strategies, maintaining database systems, and ensuring data security and accessibility. They will work closely with the MEL team to support data-driven decision-making processes.

The MIS/Database Advisor is responsible for the capacity building and mentoring strategy for program team members on data management, database administration, and effective use of information systems. They will provide technical guidance on data collection tools, data quality assurance processes, and the development of data visualization and reporting solutions to support program objectives.

Essential Job Responsibilities

TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP

• Provide leadership, training, and mentoring in developing M&E Plans, M&E tools, survey design, methodology, data analysis, and other skills required for assessing the impact of programs.
• Lead and/or collaborate with external evaluators on the design and rollout of the program baseline and evaluations while setting up effective systems for learning.
• Ensures programs use the necessary M&E systems and tools to inform and improve each program and feed into the broader country-level M&E system and country strategy.
• Take the lead in aligning, collecting, and reporting on relevant indicators to the organizational-wide M&E systems and other external systems as relevant to feed into USAID reporting requirements.
• Support teams in collecting sex and age-disaggregated data and using gender-sensitive data collection methods in order to understand and respond to program results with diverse participants.
• Participates in the facilitation of country and sector-level strategic planning sessions, assisting program managers and senior management in developing their annual plans.

DATABASE AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

• Works with the program and M&E teams to adopt a holistic MIS and Database Management system that harnesses open-source software and flexible cloud solutions to more accurately collect, monitor and verify program activities and ensure they are aligned with the Activity’s strategic and annual plan.
• Provides guidance, recommendations, and leadership to ensure that the M&E systems meet the needs of program managers and Country Leadership and help address M&E and data management shortfalls affecting program implementation.
• Contributes to program design to ensure adherence to Mercy Corps’ M&E best practices, including the use of standardized indicators, form templates, and documentation methodologies.
• Lead the development of the program’s MIS system, include through the use of software.
• Maintain a comprehensive schedule of private and institutional funding reports for programs and review project/program reports to ensure that reports contain accurate, clear, and high-quality data and are presented in the proper format.
• Develop program and operational reporting templates that facilitate the acquisition, aggregation and flow of information in programs.

CAPACITY BUILDING AND MENTORING

• Develops and oversees the implementation of the M&E staff and partner capacity-building strategy that promotes a culture of learning through systematic analysis and reflection of program data.
• Build the capacity of all relevant team members to develop and maintain an excellent M&E system, including regular reflection and analysis of program monitoring data.
• Work closely with Program Managers, Human Resources and Finance to ensure that M&E skills are incorporated into all program position descriptions and positions are budgeted for.
• Contributes to the knowledge management repository with best practices in M&E and ensure that it is accessible to all staff and partners.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COORDINATION

• Active contributor and collaborator with regional and global counterparts to promote the use of M&E best practices.
• Strengthen linkages with other internal resources, including the LMS, Digital Library, Hub, and Connect, to enhance organizational learning where relevant to M&E.
• Maintain close working relationships with M&E counterparts in other relevant international NGOs, and local NGOs and associations in Nigeria.

SAFEGUARDING RESPONSIBILITY:

• Actively learns about safeguarding and integrates it into their work, including safeguarding risks and mitigations related to their area of work.
• Practices the values of Mercy Corps including respecting the dignity and well-being of participants and fellow team members.
• Encourages openness and communication in their team; encourages team members to submit reports if they have any concerns using reporting mechanisms e.g., Integrity Hotline and other options.

ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING

As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve - we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

ACCOUNTABILITY TO BENEFICIARIES

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Supervisory Responsibility: NON

Accountability

Reports Directly To: Chief of Party

Works Directly With: CLA Advisor, DCoP, MRM team, Intervention Team, Program Sector Managers, Program Managers, Reporting & Communications Officers, Country Director, Finance, and Operations teams. Coordinates withHQ Program Performance team and the Technical Support Unit.

Knowledge and Experience

• BA/S degree in development studies, research methods, statistics, economics, social sciences, monitoring and evaluation, project management or other relevant fields Postgraduate degree preferred.
• 3-5 years of active M&E work experience in emergency and development programming required with the proven use of program technology.
• Experience with theoretical and practical background in M&E and skilled in participatory qualitative and quantitative M&E methodologies and techniques.
• Excellent quantitative skills and power user with Excel; Experience with Access, and statistical packages including Stata, R or SPSS and GIS tools like QGIS, ArcGIS or Google Earth Pro is preferred.
• Experience with data management including the ability to structure and collate data sets for ease of analysis.
• Demonstrated understanding of intermediate statistics and ability to summarize and make predictions from multiple data sets.
• Experience of working on USAID programs preferred.
• Previous experience living and working in challenging or insecure environments.
• Fluency in spoken and written English required.
• Knowledge of Hausa and other local dialects is preferred.