Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty, increasing shared prosperity and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. Visit www.worldbank.org.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is a financial mechanism that provides grants and concessional funds to recipient countries for projects and activities to protect the global environment. The governance structure of the GEF includes an Assembly, a Council, a Secretariat, a Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel and an Independent Evaluation Office (IEO). Projects financed by the GEF are implemented by eighteen GEF Agencies. The IEO is functionally independent of, but administratively supported by, the World Bank. It is independent from the CEO of the GEF and reports directly to the GEF Council. The GEF Council authorizes IEO’s four-year rolling work plans, approves annual budgets and receives all evaluation reports (www.gefieo.org).
The IEO has the central role of ensuring the independent evaluation function within the GEF; of setting minimum requirements for evaluation; of ensuring oversight of the quality of evaluation systems at program and project level; and of sharing evaluative evidence within the GEF. The IEO has the responsibility for undertaking independent evaluations which involve a set of projects from more than one GEF Agency. These evaluations are typically on a strategic level, including impact evaluations and evaluations of GEF work across specific themes or country clusters. Evaluations may be highly complex when undertaken jointly with other evaluation units of GEF Agencies.

Key strategic directions GEF IEO

During the eighth replenishment period of the GEF (2022-2026), the IEO seeks to deepen the evidence on GEF’s results and performance through ex-post evaluations as well as provide real time feedback on recent shifts in the GEF’s strategy and programming, such as those related to country level strategies and integrated programs. The IEO seeks to continuously test and implement new qualitative and quantitative methods and approaches to inform the GEF Council on the performance and results of the GEF.

Additional strategic areas of work in the IEO include: (i) Scale up of IEO learning and knowledge sharing; (ii) Continued improvements in evaluation methodology and quality assurance including tapping contemporary information and communication technology to innovate the tools available to evaluators; and (iii) enhanced cost-effectiveness, including productivity improvements in evaluations.

Organizational structure
IEO is led by the Director of Evaluation, who reports directly to the GEF Council. The Evaluation Data Scientist will report to the Team Leader/Chief Evaluation Officer, under the overall guidance of the IEO Director.

IEO welcomes the application for Extended-term consultant - Data Scientist

Duties and Accountabilities
• Collate, clean, and maintain datasets from relevant sources. Write clean and maintainable code systems.
• Use artificial intelligence to extract, process and analyze data and information from large number of sources (internal and external reports, web-based document, published and unpublished documents, as well as meta-data) to answer analytical questions for IEO evaluations.
• Apply state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to extract insights from extensive datasets. Test new approaches and customize techniques to the specific IEO-GEF working environment. In particular experiment with integrating the analysis of data from different sources (e.g., documents, satellite imagery, geo-referenced socio-economic database).
• Collaborate with a diverse, international team to identify opportunities to apply AI and machine learning to the design and monitoring of development projects. Contribute to the development, assessment, documentation, and implementation of tools and methods for nowcasting and forecasting, in close collaboration with economists, statisticians, and subject-matter specialists.
• Work with data producers, data curators, and data engineers inside and outside GEF and the World Bank Group. Participate in the testing and documentation of open solutions developed for the documentation, cataloguing, and dissemination of data, including the production of user guides and training materials.
• Support the adoption of international best practice in data curation and dissemination, and the adoption of international metadata standards, both within and outside the GEF and World Bank Group.
• Contribute to the production of technical guidelines and reference materials related to the application of data science at GEF and the World Bank Group.
• Prepare analytical working papers as inputs for various IEO evaluations, including summary tables and appropriate visualizations.
• Develop dashboards and visualizations using tools like Tableau, Power BI, D3.js, Plotly, or similar. Present data insights to stakeholders in an understandable manner.
• Perform ad hoc analyses as requested by IEO.

Note: This requirement is for 2 positions.

Selection Criteria

• Master’s degree in computer science, information management, statistics, economics, finance, environmental sciences, business administration, public policy, or other related fields focusing on data science and analytics (and research methods). Advanced courses in statistics, programming, and econometrics are required.
• Minimum of three years of relevant experience with hands-on experience using complex databases, database management systems and data warehousing; and use of artificial intelligence and machine learning frameworks, prompt engineering, topic modeling, and natural language processing.
• Knowledge of programme evaluation methods and approaches. Knowledge of evaluation of environmental interventions is not a requirement but a plus.
• Strong conceptual and research/analytical skills with attention to detail and contextual backgrounds.
• Proficiency in data analysis tools, statistical packages, and programming languages like Python, R, SQL
• Proficiency in data visualization tools (e.g., Tableau, Power BI, D3.js, Plotly). Relevant certifications in data analysis, visualization, or related areas are a plus.
• Experience with GIS