Senior Manager for Asia at Open Contracting Partnership
Role: Senior Manager for Asia
Location: South Asia, East Asia or Southeast Asia
Salary: Commensurate with reputation, experience, and location
Background
Asia Pacific stands out for its diversity of countries and cultures, and its size – with 60% of the world’s population living in the region. With half of the world’s top 12 spenders on public contracts in the region, public procurement has the potential to change billions of lives for the better.
This is why we are doing big things to open up public contracting in Asia and the Pacific. We have exciting projects from India to Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. You can also read more about our regional champions here.
The Senior Manager for Asia will join a team of 30 highly motivated members to lead transformational reforms. You will be a smart, hard-working self-starter able to work across the region's diverse cultures and stakeholders, from government to civil society to businesses, to build coalitions of reformers to drive radical change.
How we work together as a team and with our partners is also very important; we are intentional in modelling our values of being open, bold, curious and human-centred. You can read more about our people practices here.
Your Role
Lead implementation of open contracting in the region (40% time)
The Asia Senior Manager will help lead the strategic identification, design and delivery of high-impact opportunities for open contracting reforms in Asia and the Pacific. This means designing and implementing targeted open contracting projects to secure political, policy and practical changes to public procurement processes, prioritizing those most likely to achieve measurable outcomes for citizens.
You will be a skilled and efficient project manager, who is able to effectively manage a complex and diverse portfolio of open contracting programmes, projects, budgets and related administrative tasks in Asia and the Pacific. You will scope and shape interventions, knowing how to engage internal and external resources to maximize impact.This includes project activities such as drafting work plans, ToRs and project reporting, working closely with our data and other teams to plan and deliver the projects, managing project partners and reviewing their work to ensure quality and timely deliverables, reporting to donors and sharing lessons learned to OCP team members and our wider community which includes documenting evidence, progress and impact.
Advocacy for change (20%)
You should be a confident and sophisticated advocate who is excited to work towards establishing open contracting as a global, regional or national norm. This includes advocating for open contracting inclusion in government legislation, policies and processes to create an enabling environment for meaningful open contracting implementation.This means building relationships with existing stakeholders as well as identifying and engaging new high profile targets, stakeholders, programmes, high level events, convening, delivering or speaking at high level global, regional or national events.
You will also lead the development of relevant advocacy, research and communications materials for OCP and support partners on related content creation.
Community Building (15%)
You will lead on expanding OCP’s network and community in Asia and the Pacific to build lasting capacities and meaningful engagements with relevant stakeholders. This means facilitating outreach or making introductions to high level government, business, civil society, academia and media who could be allies and partners of OCP in the region.You will help to build effective working partnerships in the region, for example with the Asian Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, UNODC Asia, OGP Asia Pacific and other development actors. You should be prepared and confident to deliver workshops and regular training to local partners and allies.
Fundraising (25%)
You will identify and pursue funding opportunities for open contracting in Asia and the Pacific. This means cultivating and maintaining strong relationships, especially with funders focused on Asia, including those who might provide funding directly to OCP partners as well as to OCP.For example, global or regional philanthropic organisations, or regional development banks as well as embassies in countries where OCP either has a strong presence or aspirations for implementation projects. You will also carry out regular mapping of funding opportunities and potential partners with whom OCP could submit joint funding proposals.
Other
As a relatively small team, we all roll our sleeves up and ‘muck in’. As such, mundane tasks will sometimes fall to you, including facilitating meetings, coordinating travel etc. You will support administrative and logistical tasks where needed to get things done proactively.
Candidate Profile
Qualifications & Knowledge- Degree in international development, public policy, public sector reform or other relevant discipline. Postgraduate qualification is desirable.
- Extensive knowledge and experience on public procurement, good governance/open government, transparency and accountability.
- Understanding of how technology (inc. open data and open data solutions) can help deliver better outcomes for people and our planet. Knowledge of the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) or the Open Contracting for Infrastructure Data Standard (OC4IDS) is desirable.
- Intimate understanding of political, social, and cultural contexts in the region especially how/when it relates to governance, transparency and accountability.
- Deep experience in designing, managing and delivering projects to achieve impact, providing strategic and technical assistance, building capacities of partners.
- Skilled in designing and delivering interactive workshops, training or other learning/knowledge sessions. Experience with multi-stakeholder approaches is desirable.
- Proven track record building and maintaining productive working relationships across all levels, including high level government officials, civil society, academia and media.
- Highly skilled in advocating for and influencing public sector reforms, with a strong in-country/regional network linked to open government, transparency and accountability, anti-corruption or public procurement.
- Experience in pitching and winning projects and/or organisational funding.
- Experience in programme development and management including subgrant/regranting, donor reporting and regularly reviewing projects for impact.
- Innovative, adaptive and flexible, with the ability to work under pressure, prioritise tasks and deliver on time and within budgets.
- Effective and proactive communicator with excellent verbal and written communication skills, especially in English. Additional Asian languages are desirable.
Reporting
The Senior Manager for Asia will report to Bernadine Fernz, OCP’s Head of Asia and Infrastructure.
Compensation and benefits
We offer opportunities for professional development as well as an excellent benefits package and compensation that is commensurate with reputation, experience and location. You can read more about our people practices here.
The Senior Manager will work remotely and must have the right to work in the Asian country they intend to be based in. OCP is unable to facilitate working visas.
Note to candidates: We know that long lists of criteria can be daunting and that some candidates will not apply for a role unless they feel they are 100% qualified. If you feel you meet at least some of the essential criteria above, we still encourage you to apply.
This offer from "Open Contracting Partnership" has been enriched by Jobgether.com and got a 75% flex score.