Радник/ця з регіональної політики

NIRAS is looking for a Policy Adviser in regional development for a Swiss-Ukrainian UCORD project. This is a full-time position and it is expected that the successful candidate will become a permanent core team member.

Duration of assignment: 01.03.2024-30.11.2026
Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
Expected start date: 01st of March 2024

Description of the assignment context

The Ukraine’s Cohesion and Regional Development (UCORD) is a Swiss-Ukrainian project implemented by NIRAS Sweden AB with the support of Switzerland.

The overall goal of the project is that citizens, businesses and public authorities contribute to and equally benefit from effective and coherent regional development that fosters improved quality of life, resilience, peace and social cohesion in Ukraine.

The project consists of three components: 1) Support to regional development agencies, 2) Improved public services delivery with a focus on environment, 3) Social cohesion through culture.

Tasks

A Policy Advisor in regional development will provide technical assistance in institutional capacity building, provision of methodological guidance and coordination of preparing regional development strategies and policies and insure liaison of UCORD with MinInfrastructure and other project stakeholders.

The tasks and duties of Policy Advisor include the following:

• Under the supervision of Project Leader and Deputy Project Leader of UCORD collaborate with MinInfrastructure and other project stakeholders.
• Contribute to the elaboration of regional development legislation, strategies, policies, and programmes.
• Prepare analytical papers, notes in accordance with UCORD’s goals and tasks.
• Facilitate the UCORD’s methodologies, approaches and concepts developed in the process of cooperation in the pilot regions in for replication into other regions.
• Liaise with the RDAs and regional authorities to provide support in preparing recovery plans and programmes, as well as regional strategies if and when required.
• Contribute to the development and operation of an improved system for knowledge management for regional development.
• Support the development and sharing of UCORD emerging practices with partners and stakeholders utilising various online platforms, websites, and other communication platforms.
• Support UCORD initiate and deliver public events to promote and inform regional policy development.
• Participate in awareness raising campaigns on cohesion policy and reginal development.
• Provision of technical assistance and capacity building to partner institutions at the national and regional levels, ensuring sustainability, effective upscaling, and dissemination of project results.
• Constant monitoring of the national and regional contexts, identification of new development opportunities that can be covered by the project to amplify the project impact.
• Ensure integration of gender and other cross-cutting aspects into project planning and activities.
• Provide other services of relevance for the implementation.

Qualifications

• Knowledge of Ukraine’s political landscape, decentralisation and regional development reforms priorities.
• At least 10 years of experience in the sphere of regional policy development, strategic planning.
• Knowledge of EU cohesion policy, as well as requirements and steps for Ukraine’s EU accession.
• Proved experience in national legislation development and/or update, in particular, in the field of regional policy development.
• Strong communication skills.
• Fluency in Ukrainian.

Evaluation of response & selection

Interested applicants should send their proposals to NIRAS no later than January 8th, 2024 9 p.m. Kyiv time.

Applicants must be independent and free from conflicts of interest in the responsibilities defined by the Terms of Reference.

The proposal should contain the following documents:

1. a) A short explanation of the applicant’s suitability for the assignment (maximum one A4-page)
2. b) Up-to-date CV indicating relevant experience and qualifications, indicating at least three contact references.

The proposal should be submitted in English.

The selection will be done based on the expert’s competence and suitability – based on the requirements described above. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted to be followed by an interview with selection panel.

Proposals and questions should be sent by email to: [email protected].