Document and Records Management Consultant. UN Women, New York. Open until 5 July 2011

UN WOMEN: DOCUMENT AND RECORDS MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT
Location : New York, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Application Deadline : 05-Jul-11
Additional Category Women’s Empowerment
Type of Contract : Individual Contract
Post Level : International Consultant
Languages Required :
English
Duration of Initial Contract : 3 months

Background
Grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, UN Women will work 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. Placing women's rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN women will lead and coordinate United Nations System efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It will provide strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States' priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

UN WOMEN is dedicated to advancing women's rights and achieving gender equality. It provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programmes and strategies that foster women's empowerment. UN WOMEN works on the premise that it is the fundamental right of every woman to live a life free from discrimination and violence, and that gender equality is essential to achieving development and to building just societies. UN WOMEN maintains strong ties to both women's organizations and governments, linking them with the UN system to join national and international political action, and to create momentum for change.

UN WOMEN focuses its activities on one overarching goal: to support the implementation at the national level of existing international commitments to advance gender equality. In support of this goal, UN WOMEN works in the following thematic areas:
Enhancing women's economic opportunities and empowerment;
Ending violence against women;
Expanding women's voice, leadership and participation;
Peace and security, ensure women's engagement in conflict resolution;
Making gender equality priorities central to national, local and sectorial planning, budgeting and statistics.
Active in all regions and at different levels, UN WOMEN works with countries to formulate and implement laws and policies to eliminate discrimination and promote gender equality in such areas as land and inheritance rights, decent work for women, and ending violence against women. UN WOMEN also aims to transform institutions to make them more accountable to gender equality and women's rights, to strengthen the capacity and voice of women's rights advocates, and to change harmful and discriminatory practices in society.

UN WOMEN has more than 1000 staff members and consultants. Its headquarters is based in New York, USA and it has a presence in around 80 countries world-wide through its 15 Sub-regional Offices, country programmes and liaison offices.

Background to the document and records management consultancy

With the increased mandate of UN Women, it has become apparent that the current paper file system is growing ever larger. The space available to accommodate the number of paper files is limited. On the technology front, UN Women is currently using different platforms to store the documents that include the Shared/Network drives and Intranet/ Internet Web sites, resulting in the duplication of efforts and increased maintenance.

UN Women has recently signed a lease for a new office building at NY and is planning to consolidate all of its HQ offices into one building. Therefore one of the requirements is to cost-effectively and efficiently consolidate the filing of documents and implement a uniform filing system within the various sections/units to eliminate duplication in the new office. It is critical that this exercise commence and complete prior to the move to the new space in August/September 2011 so as to avoid unnecessary transportation of documents from the old space to the new space which is highly inefficient and expensive. This needs to be done with minimal disruption to work and in support of UN document management rules and regulations. Functional space for filing and storing required documents has already been identified in the new space.
The Office of Internal Audit (OAI) has also commented that UN Women has no formal document management systems and has highlighted this as an institutional weakness.

To address these problems, UN Women would like to develop a strategic roadmap for implementing an organizational wide electronic document and records management solution for the document storage, retrieval and information sharing purposes in order to improve the organizational performance and to ultimately become a paperless office.

At the same time, UN Women is working towards a strategic knowledge management framework to respond to challenges regarding content management for different websites/intranets and the facilitation of online collaboration, networking and knowledge exchange. The implementation of SharePoint-based Intranet project is already in progress and it is expected to complete the rollout for HQ offices by end 2011. It is planned to utilize the document management and records management features of SharePoint for the organizational needs.

Duties and Responsibilities
Under the overall administration of Project Manager, International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS), the consultant will study and analyze the existing document management practices and devise a roadmap for the development of an information management policy and procedures that will support the various document management needs. The consultant will also work closely with the Manager, Information Systems, and the Office Manager, Knowledge Management Team as well as the focal points in various UN Women sections/units to learn the current document management practices and challenges faced by the users. The incumbent will primarily be responsible for the following:
Perform business process analysis and inventory of the existing filing practices including paper and electronic documents across the HQ sections/ units and few selected field offices (remote analysis for the field offices);
Draft a document management policy and a comprehensive records retention schedule based on the requirement analysis and corporate statutory, legal and compliance requirements;
Prepare a roadmap for the implementation of Document management system across the organization.
Deliverables:
The assignment will be of 3 months duration with the following key deliverables:
A matrix with clear and detailed recommendations on how to implement the document management policy based on the business process analysis. This would include how to classify documents; procedures for handling confidential and sensitive information, etc.
A brief roadmap paper addressing the management of documentation and how to have a proper document management system at UN Women. This paper should be in line with UN Women Financial Rules and Regulations and should specifically: (i) Establish policies and procedures addressing relevant issues such as the types of documents that are needed to be retained, where they are to be stored, how long there are to be retained (retention schedule), how they are to be handled, and related responsibilities; including the categorization of different types of documents and specification on what should be saved on UN Women Intranet, Shared Drive; and what on the UN Women's Public Website.
(ii) Address how and when documents are created, reviewed, shared, utilized, retained and destroyed. This applies not only to electronic documents such as emails, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Excel spread sheets, but also to hard copy paper documents;
Reorganization of central repository (SharePoint library & Shared Drives) and make sure that it will be user friendly, and assign custodial responsibility for the repository. This reorganization must meet the document and records management requirements for classification, information sensitivity, and disposition.


Competencies
Core Values / Guiding Principles:
Integrity: Demonstrating consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct;
Cultural Sensitivity/Valuing diversity: Demonstrating an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrating an international outlook, appreciating differences in values and learning from cultural diversity.
Job Knowledge/Technical Expertise:
Strong background in information and knowledge management including document and records management;
Demonstrated proficiency to have analytical ability and thorough understanding of document/ records management best practices and international standards;
Knowledge of information technology platforms for document/ records management implementation.
Planning and Organization:

Ability to establish priorities and to plan, coordinate and monitor own work plan;
Proven ability to work under pressure and produce output that is accurate, timely and of high quality;
Ability to manage conflicting priorities a good sense of when to act independently versus when to seek advice.
Communications:

Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, including the ability to set out a coherent argument in presentations and group interactions.
Teamwork:

Good interpersonal skills, ability to establish and maintain effective partnerships and working relations with people in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic environment with sensitivity and respect for diversity.


Required Skills and Experience
Education:

Advanced university degree in Information or Knowledge Management, or other related field, or first university degree and equivalent combination of education, certification and experience in relevant area;
Knowledge of information management procedures, processes and policies is also required.
Experience:

Minimum 10 years progressively responsible professional experience in undertaking knowledge and information management exercises;
Previous work experience with UN or other development agencies in knowledge and document management is highly desirable;
Experience in Microsoft SharePoint is also highly desirable.
Language:
Fluency in English (oral and written).
Knowledge of another UN language is an asset .
In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women's empowerment.