Associate Operations Officer/Operations Officer- Yerevan, Armenia

Job #:	122159
Title:	Associate Operations Officer/Operations Officer
Job Stream:	Operational Services
Location:	Yerevan, Armenia
Closing Date:	10/04/2012
Background / General description:
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on the private sector. We help developing countries achieve sustainable growth by financing investment, providing advisory services to businesses and governments, and mobilizing capital in the international financial markets. In fiscal 2011, amid economic uncertainty across the globe, we helped our clients create jobs, strengthen environmental performance, and contribute to their local communities—all while driving our investments to an all-time high of nearly $19 billion. For more information, visit www.ifc.org. The IFC’s Armenia Investment Climate Reform Project (Project), started in 2011, aims at improving the investment climate in Armenia, with a particular focus on SMEs, through the reduction of the administrative burden and regulatory barriers in 4 areas: (i) Business Inspections, (ii) Food Safety, (iii) Trade Logistics and (iv) Tax simplification. It includes several components: survey, policy work, consulting and outreach. The Project introduces best international practices in business regulations and works with the Government of Armenia and other stakeholders to adapt such best practices to local reality. The Project’s approach is to combine local knowledge of its national staff with global expertise of its international and regional ones to deliver high quality services to the government. Major direction of the Project is assisting the Government of Armenia in implementation of business regulatory and simplification reforms. The reforms are coordinated by the Ministry of Economy (IC Reform Unit- hereinafter ICRU) with technical assistance from the IFC.
Duties and Accountabilities:
Business Regulatory Reform Specialist will be part of the ECA IC team. S/he will contribute to Business regulatory analysis and policy recommendations in Armenia. In support of the ongoing IFC Armenia Investment Climate Reform Project, the Business Regulatory Reform Specialist will perform the following tasks and duties: • Update and refine the project’s legal analysis of the regulatory process in Armenia, describing the existing or potential constraints for the private sector that result from either the legal basis for a procedure or its application at the local level. Identify the legal or administrative source of constraints; • Develop concrete recommendations to improve the enabling environment for SMEs in Armenia; present findings/recommendations on policy issues, procedures, and questions from the Project Manager or outside counterparts; prepare background papers, written records of proceedings, memoranda summarizing documents, legislation and other legal source material, or equivalent; • Under the supervision from the Project Manager, work with government officials to enact and implement business environment regulations changes recommended by the project; • Keep abreast of activities conducted by donor agencies working on SME issues and facilitate collaboration with them; • Conduct and maintain full stakeholder analysis and mapping of key public and private sector stakeholders involved in the design and implementation of the sector-specific policy and regulatory recommendations of the IFC Armenia IC Reform project; • Proactively cultivate industry/ association links on a continuous basis to check back on implementation of reforms and/or new constraints. • Proactively engage with the GoA (Ministry of Economy and relevant government agencies) on the development of an IC Regulatory Reform Action Plan and on the strengthening, as well as establishment as needed, of permanent public-private working groups to identify and address sector-specific investment climate regulatory and policy constraints. • Engage in legislative drafting in areas of Tax, Trade and Inspections; • Assist the Project Manager with firm procurement (drafting TORs, getting contracts through procurement system, overseeing consultants, etc.). • Spend 10- 20% of the staff time as cross support to other projects in the region; • Perform any other tasks, as necessary, of the IFC Armenia Investment Climate Reform project.
Selection Criteria:
1. Advanced degree in business, economics, law, public administration or related field. 2. 5+ years of proven practical experience in working with complex projects, delivering technical advisory services to governments and/or private sector, some comparative international experience would be an advantage. 3. Experience in field of regulatory governance. 4. Strong legal analytical skills and knowledge of Armenian legal and institutional system. 5. Excellent interpersonal skills; ability to relate easily and openly with high-level government officials, private sector and academic stakeholders in the field of regulatory reform. 6. Fluent in Armenian and Russian– written and oral - for an audience that includes public officials and a wider public audience; and a very good command of English language (writing/reading/speaking). 7. Computer literate.
Apply Online

Economic Development Learning Hub Lead -- Location: Yerevan

PURPOSE OF POSITION:

Reporting to the Field Support Director this role will have two primary purposes: 1) networking across a diverse region, partnership, and external partners, so that our teams have access to learnings, innovation, knowledge, skills, and experiences; 2) facilitate collaboration for mutual benefit and CWB impact. A central component of the role is to connect all internal and external stakeholders in Economic Development (ED), to generate learning through mapping and selecting aligned projects across WV Middle East/Eastern Europe Region (MEER) NOs, to transfer learning to general NO program implementation with a focus on driving quality results, and to transmit learning to our people through an action oriented learning methodology. This position will lead these four functions with the aim to achieve the objective of increasing our impact on Child and Youth Well-being by increasing effectiveness, scale, reflection, and evidence-based review.

Lead the continuous quality improvement of WV Middle East/Eastern Europe Region’s Economic Development programs, by providing program support to the 9 countries, promoting innovation through research and piloting. Learning Hub Lead for Economic Development will also stimulate cooperation amongst WV, partner organizations, government bodies and Academic Institutions active in the field.


KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Strategy
• Ensure that the EDLH is impact driven toward generating internal and external learning that strengthens NOs in their focus and capacity to successfully reach the partnership Global Targets and MEER and NO strategies.
• Ensure that the EDLH operates based on the principle of inclusiveness. Align contextually diverse youth empowerment projects from NOs to the EDLH. Ensure the learning from the aligned projects is transmitted back to NOs so as to strengthen impact, scale-up and action.
• Ensure that the EDLH does not become infrastructure heavy, but instead loosely embraced by the host Armenian NO making the EDLH flexible, adaptable, and collaborative.
• The EDLH should develop and celebrate a unique design and implementation plan (DIP) with the aim to generate, transfer and transmit learning into action and impact on CWB in MEER.
  
  Generate Learning for impact
• Ensure the EDLH is grounded within the real issues facing WV field staff, and that an ED impact evidence base will emerge equipping a network of NO interested in ED with the knowledge to expand their financial donor base, deepen their internal and external partnerships, and turn failures into opportunities.
• Conduct a mapping process, based on solid criteria, to select the NOs best practices within ED projects. Elevate and connect these projects into a network or ED aligned projects to generate shared evidence and learning.
• Work through the ED network of aligned projects managed by NOs to develop Regional ED Platforms for the purpose of influencing and reforming ED policy.
• Through this network or aligned projects, use the evidence and learning to facilitate the process of raising up ED issues, regionally – for the purpose of advocacy (facilitating change)
• Identify and explore creative ways to fill ED skill and systems gaps in producing a professional evidence base needed to informed decision making, investment, and ministry impact.
  
  Transfer: Impact through collaborative learning
• Build a EDLH that has a goal driven orientation toward transferring ED knowledge ensuring scale up of what has been discovered and deemed contextually useful across the NOs to improve child and youth well-being in MEER;
• Establish a EDLH with a strong field oriented approach based on experimenting, daring to fail, innovating, incubating, discovering, monitoring, and evaluating to ensure that the network of aligned projects in the hubs will organically transfer learning for operational scale-up and fundraising;
• The EDLHs Lead is accountable to ensure a high level of cross-pollination of learning occurs between the network of hubs with the aim to create an open and fluid platform that will effectively disseminate information and ideas, attract innovation, and sharpen impact of our core ministry;
• Work with FSDs and Ministry Line Director, other LH Leads, and the NOs to develop a learning agenda from evidence collected through the LHs with a shift from an instructional methodology to a “learning by doing” methodology.
• Develop a system whereby the learning is captured from the ED aligned projects for knowledge refinement and management. Create a mechanism that can simply transfer this knowledge to NOs as requested and needed to enhance their impact on CWB.
  
  Transmit: Impact through partnership and scale-up
• Collaborate with Ministry lines (MLs) to ensure that F&D, Advocacy and HEA are integrated in EDLH designs, implementation plans, and selection of aligned projects.
• The EDLH Leads extensive internal and external network must attract cutting edge thinking and strategic and technical partnering opportunities;
• Ensure the EDLH plays its part in fundraising by strengthening our comparative advantage through positioning WV NOs as a credible thought leaders in key topics within ED based on a network of evidence and impact driven aligned projects;
• Ensure that the learning from the EDLH works to enhance NO expertise building credibility and organizational reputation with governments positioning and enabling stakeholders and NOs to influence reforms and promote “aligned projects to policy adoption” for sustained impact;
• The EDLHs Lead is accountable to ensure innovative scaled-up for impact by involving and enhancing partnering with governments, coalitions, donors, universities and thought leaders stimulating programmatic experimentation and creativity for permanent impact for the most vulnerable;
• Provide advice and guidance to national offices in drafting and submitting proposals in alignment with their Youth strategies.
  

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & ABILITIES:

REQUIRED:
• Post graduate qualifications and / or Professional background in Economic Development / business or other relevant field
• Knowledge in international Economic Development standards (including microfinance)
• Knowledge in programming resources and tools in Community based Economic Development programming
• Strong analytical, organizational, problem solving, negotiation, collaborative and influencing skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Computer literacy
• Experience in management of/consultancy on Economic Development and/or microfinance programmes at a national or regional level
• Experience in Economic Development / microfinance programming in developing countries
• Significant leadership experience in an international organization
• Demonstrated experience in program or project design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting.
• Experience in working in MEER countries
• Extensive travel is expected (40%-50%). This role involves the facilitation and coordination of a virtual, geographically dispersed Economic Development teams in the National offices

Economic Development Learning Hub Lead -- Location: Yerevan