Job Description Statistician
Primary Location
: Egypt-Cairo
Organizational Setting The Regional Office for the Near East and North Africa (RNE) leads FAO's support to countries in the region in transforming their agrifood systems to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It identifies regional priorities for food security, agriculture and rural development and ensures the planning and implementation of FAO's strategic response in the region through a multidisciplinary approach. It implements approved programmes and projects, monitors programme implementation and ensures that they contribute to addressing regional priorities. RNE also advises on the incorporation of regional priorities into the FAO Strategic Framework and Programme of Work and Budget.
RNE supports regional policy dialogues, facilitates the emergence of regional partnerships, and supports knowledge exchange, capacity development and resource mobilization for food security, agriculture and rural development in the region. It develops and maintains relations with region-wide institutions including the Regional Economic Integration Organizations (REIOs).
The post is located in the Regional Office for the Near East and North Africa (RNE) in Cairo, Egypt.
Reporting Lines
The Statistician reports to the Senior Economist/Head of Strategy and Policy and works under technical guidance of the Director/Chief Statistician in the Statistics Division.
Technical Focus
The position focuses on improving the availability and quality of food, agricultural and rural statistics in the countries of the Near East and North Africa.
Key Results
Comprehensive technical, statistical, analytical and/or policy analysis services and the development of specialized tools, methodologies, systems and/or databases to support the planning, implementation/delivery and monitoring of the programme of work and related products, projects, publications and services.
Key Functions
• Plans and leads components of multi-disciplinary teams and short-term work groups, leads and/or participates in Divisional teams, participates in Organization-wide committees, project teams and working groups and provides specialized expertise on international technical networks and or technical policy and standard setting bodies.
• Coordinates the collection, review, processing and/or analysis of key social/economic/environmental indicators, based on either traditional statistical methods/sources or on unstructured sources and data science methods to support the delivery of economic and social development programmes of work whether focused on products, projects, publications or services.
• Designs and develops improved/updated technical, statistical and/or analytical tools, systems and databases.
• Designs and conducts research, data collection, validation, analysis and/or reporting in support of the development of technical standards, international instruments, innovative tools and methodologies to be used within the Organization or by external stakeholders.
• Coordinates the production of a variety of technical reports and provides input in flagship publications, technical documents, Divisional publications and/or web pages.
• Coordinates and provides responses to requests and provides technical and/or policy advice, assistance and solutions to Regional, Sub-regional and Country Offices including technical backstopping of field projects.
• Coordinates and provides capacity development services, including the planning and organization of training workshops and seminars and the preparation of related information, materials, on-line tools and information kits.
• Coordinates the organization, conduct and follow-up of meetings, consultations and conferences, the development/production of required materials and the provision of information and assistance to partners.
• Participates in resource mobilization activities in accordance with Corporate Strategies and Divisional plans.
• Promotes international cooperation and collaboration, advocates best practices, knowledge sharing, increased policy dialogue, and provides technical expertise at international meetings and conferences.
Specific Functions
• Identifies, formulates and backstops statistical field projects and contributes to formulation and backstopping of projects with statistical components; participates in the selection, briefing, guidance and monitoring of FAO field experts/consultants, and review of technical reports.
• Advises on the design and conduct of agricultural censuses, farm surveys and household surveys related to food and agriculture, including the use of appropriate methodologies and technologies for monitoring the 21 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) indicators for which FAO is custodian agency; organizes and conducts training of national personnel.
• Assists countries in the implementation of the official methods/guidelines for the production and dissemination of the FAO-relevant SDG indicators.
• Promotes the implementation of the FAO guidelines and handbooks in the countries for the production of official statistics.• Organizes, coordinates and participates in meetings, seminars and training courses on food and agricultural statistics, and represents RNE at regional statistical meetings.
• Supports country reporting to FAO databases with the objective of improving response rates and data quality.
Represents RNE in the meetings of the Data Coordination Group at technical level (DCG-T).
• Supports the preparation of the UN Common Country Analysis and the FAO Country Programming Frameworks (CPFs), particularly to ensure adequate prioritization of statistical capacity building, and supports the implementation of country-level actions in order to transform FAO's knowledge products into country-level results and impacts.
• Provides other units in the Regional Office with relevant inputs for region-wide planning and programming exercises and other report requirements, including gender analysis.
• Provides support to the preparation of the Regional Overview on Food Security and Nutrition of the Region.
• Cooperates and develops partnerships with other agencies and regional organizations to promote effective and efficient food and agricultural statistics systems.
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CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING
Minimum Requirements • Advanced university degree in statistics, mathematics, economics, agricultural economics or a related field.
• Seven years of relevant experience in the compilation and analysis of food and agricultural statistics in national or international organizations and in the coordination of high-level statistical publications and management of statistical dissemination platform.
• Working knowledge (proficient - level C) of English and limited knowledge (intermediate - level B) of another FAO official language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish).
Competencies
• Results Focus
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Building Effective Relationships
• Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement
Technical/Functional Skills
• Work experience in more than one location or area of work, particularly in field positions.
• Strong command of statistical methods including: data presentation, analysis and descriptive statistics; main continuous and discrete random variables (binomial, normal, standard normal, log-normal) and their properties; probability distributions; conditional probability, probabilities of intersections of events, Bayes' theorem; correlation and rank correlation; sampling and sample size: simple, stratified, and multistage random sampling; Inference, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing and significa
