UN Women: Data Consultant (IATI and Transparency Portal), Home Based, International Consultant

Background:

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

Transparency and accountability are central to UN Women’s mandate and credibility. As a longstanding member of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), UN Women is committed to publishing high-quality, timely, and comprehensive data on its activities, results, and resources. Performance in global transparency assessments, particularly the IATI transparency score, is a key indicator of the organization’s openness, data quality, and compliance with international reporting standards. Maintaining and improving this score is critical for strengthening partner trust, enabling evidence-based decision-making, and demonstrating accountability to stakeholders and the public.

In 2022, UN Women launched its Transparency Portal (https://open.unwomen.org/en), which complements its IATI reporting by providing accessible, user-friendly data on its programmes and financials.

As part of its ongoing efforts to strengthen data systems and reporting, UN Women is developing its next-generation ERP system, PRISM. This transition presents a critical opportunity to improve data structures, enhance data quality, and fully automate data flows to IATI and the Transparency Portal. Ensuring alignment with IATI standards and safeguarding data integrity throughout this process will be essential to maintaining and improving UN Women’s transparency performance.

UN Women therefore seeks a Data Consultant to support this transition. The consultant will work within the Strategic Planning Unit (SPU) and collaborate closely with Information Systems and Technology (IST), the Transparency Portal vendor, and IATI stakeholders. The consultant will report to the Data Analysis and Monitoring Specialist (SPU/SPRED).

Description of Responsibilities/ Scope of Work:

The objective of the consultancy is to support the transition to the new data architecture by aligning IATI and Transparency Portal requirements with Phase IV standards, ensuring high-quality data preparation, and enabling the automation of data flows from the new system to external reporting platforms.

Key responsibilities include:

• Review and assess the new data structure to ensure alignment with IATI standards and Transparency Portal Phase IV requirements, with particular attention to data points affecting the IATI transparency score
• Identify data gaps, inconsistencies and required transformations that may impact data completeness, timeliness and accuracy in IATI reporting
• Extract, clean, validate and prepare datasets for IATI and Transparency Portal reporting, ensuring compliance with IATI data quality requirements and conducting manual work where needed
• Develop and document data transformation, validation and quality assurance processes to improve consistency and reliability of published data
• Manage the design and implementation of data workflows within the new data model and data warehouse, ensuring traceability and auditability of data
• Collaborate with technical teams to establish and optimize automated data pipelines from PRISM to IATI and the Transparency Portal, minimizing manual intervention and risks to data quality
• Contribute to defining data standards, metadata structures and business rules aligned with IATI requirements and transparency best practices
• Perform systematic quality assurance checks on data outputs, including validation against IATI performance and transparency score criteria
• Develop an analysis of IATI reporting outputs and identify opportunities to improve data coverage, timeliness and usability
• Provide troubleshooting during the transition from manual to automated processes, ensuring no disruption to reporting quality
• Engage with internal stakeholders to promote data quality standards and strengthen institutional capacity for transparency reporting

Outputs:

1. Data structure review report outlining alignment of the new system with IATI standards and Transparency Portal Phase IV requirements, including identified gaps and recommendations
2. Cleaned and prepared datasets re