Chief Technical Adviser, Population and Housing Census - UNFPA

The Chief Technical Adviser (CTA) will coordinate the planning, organization, execution and management of the forthcoming population and housing census in Ghana, and will work under the overall leadership of the UNFPA Country Office Representative.

S/he will regularly be advising and guiding the census process and ensuring that any challenges are quickly identified and raised with management. S/he will also provide recommendations for measures required to ensure census process continues to move forward in a timely manner.

The CTA will be embedded in Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) offices. S/he will work under the guidance of the Government Statistician and will provide technical and managerial advice to him on the day-to-day conduct of the Census. S/he will work with the Census Technical Team based in GSS and liaise with other national and international stakeholders and development partners, including United Nations agencies. S/he will personally lead and manage a core census Project Implementation Unit (PIU) comprising a certain number of staff.

The CTA will work closely with the Population and Development (P&D) team at the country office, together with the One UN Data and M&E Group.

How you can make a difference:

UNFPA is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled. UNFPA’s new strategic plan (2018-2021), focuses on three transformative results: to end preventable maternal deaths; end unmet need for family planning; and end gender-based violence and harmful practices.

In a world where fundamental human rights are at risk, we need principled and ethical staff, who embody these international norms and standards, and who will defend them courageously and with full conviction.

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UNFPA is seeking candidates that transform, inspire and deliver high impact and sustained results; we need staff who are transparent, exceptional in how they manage the resources entrusted to them and who commit to deliver excellence in programme results.

Job Purpose:

In line with UN/UNFPA policies and guidelines, and internationally established standards and recommendations for census undertaking, the CTA will perform various tasks and provide vital technical inputs to all activities pertaining to census operations throughout all stages of the process. In addition, s/he will provide support in implementing and documenting activities aimed at increasing stakeholder participations throughout the census process.

Qualifications and Experience

Education:

• Advanced University Degree, preferably PhD, in Demography, Statistics, Populations Studies, Social Sciences or other related discipline.

Knowledge and Experience:

• A minimum of 10 years of relevant, progressive experience in the field of population and housing censuses, particularly:
• Knowledge and experience in population and housing census preparation and implementation phases in developing countries especially in Africa;
• Knowledge of programming for using new technologies (new UNDG guidelines), especially with digital census operations, would be an asset;
• Knowledge and experience with census data processing software (CSPro, REDATAM), demographic data analysis (Mortpak, Fertpak, PAS), statistical packages (SPSS, Stata) and projection programmes (e.g. Demdiv, People, Spectrum, RUP);
• Experience in the dissemination of census data and socio-demographic analyses to broad audiences as well as in motivating the utilization of data and results in development planning and policy issues;
• Experience in providing on-the-job training to local staff on data quality, analysis and report writing;
• Experience working with the United Nations System and demographic household surveys and censuses will be an asset;
• Communication skills especially for transfer of knowledge.