Result of Service
Expected outputs and delivery dates
By 31 August 2026: Detailed plan of activities, specifying key outputs and timelines, based on documents, online consultation, and coordination meeting with the national statistical offices IT team to gather information on existing IT system implementation.
By 30 September 2026: Progress report of activities and work supported, in accordance with detailed plan of activities and work assignments as outlined above, also providing links or attaching concrete results of the work
By 31 October 2026: Progress report of activities and work supported, in accordance with detailed plan of activities and work assignments as outlined above, also providing links or attaching concrete results of the work
By 30 November 2026: Progress report of activities and work supported, in accordance with detailed plan of activities and work assignments as outlined above, also providing links or attaching concrete results of the work
By 31 December 2026: Final report of activities and work supported, in accordance with detailed plan of activities and work assignments as outlined above. Performance indicators
Timely delivery of all outputs.
Quality of the materials and documentation provided with every output.
Effectiveness of proposed data integration architecture provided
Work Location
The consultant will work remotely, except for potential technical assistance missions depending on specific country needs and requests, as well as on the availability of funds. Communications will mainly take place through remote web conference meetings. Travel or commute time, as well as related expenses, are not part of the consultancy. Travel The consultancy will potentially include 1 or 2 technical assistance missions to selected participating country or countries, depending on need and feasibility. If taking place, Travel will be processed in accordance with Organization’s regulations and rules and the related costs will be obligated separately.
Expected duration
The consultant will perform the activities specified in this Terms of Reference in the period between 15 August 2026 and 31 December 2026.
Duties and Responsibilities
There is an urgent need to strengthen the capacity of national statistical systems to leverage the use of innovative and administrative data for statistical purposes, to fill gaps in the data that is available to policy and decision makers to monitor progress and implement the 2030 Agenda and to address emerging challenges.
Many countries are still struggling with the lack of modern IT infrastructure and technical skills, along with adequate institutional arrangements, for the efficient integration and processing of data and metadata from administrative and other innovative sources, to produce official statistics. The UN Statistics Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) is engaged in capacity development efforts aimed to address some of these challenges, including through the “Data for Now” initiative, including through the “Data for SIDS” DATAS project.
These initiatives support various countries in their work to improve and increase the use of innovative and administrative data sources for statistical purposes, with a different area of focus in each country. The learnings and experiences from participating countries will be further shared with other countries to create synergies and multiplicative effects, including through cross-cutting guidance materials that will supplement existing thematically focused materials and tools.
Objective of the consultancy The objective of this consultancy is to support national statistical offices (NSOs) in modernizing their IT architecture, in particular through the design, configuration, and deployment of a modular, open-source data lake technology stack (e.g. Apache NiFi, MinIO, JupyterHub, Trino, open-metadata, Kubernetes) aligned with international standards.
The consultant will support the development of in-house data engineering skills in NSOs and provide practical guidance and other reference materials to enable the sustainable modernization of their data and IT architecture. Work Assignment The consultant will:
Work closely with IT and statistical focal points of NSOs to gather information on existing IT systems, assess hardware, software, and skillset requirements, draft technical requirements, and provide technical advice to modernize them, including on data ingestion, storage, processing/analytics, dissemination, and security and access management.
Develop a report with a summary of requirements and technical recommendations for the modernization of IT architecture in at least 2 Data for Now project and DATAS countries.
Delivery of technical assistance and advice (through remote sessions and potentially country missions) to facilitate the implementation of the technical recommendations for the modernization of IT architecture, including hands-on support for deployment and configuration of the minimum data lake technology stack.
Provide trainings and knowledge sharing of the platforms and technology stack deployment and use on data lake architecture to internal and external stakeholders.
Support development of country case studies around the modernization of IT architecture that facilitates the integration and use of innovative and administrative data sources into the production of official statistics.
Support development of general guidance on IT architecture and infrastructure related to the use of non-traditional data sources, initially for administrative data, but potentially also expanded to other innovative sources.
Where and if applicable, ensure adherence to UN policies and data governance frameworks
Qualifications/special skills
Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in computer science, data science, data engineering, or related field. with five
(5) years of experience. A bachelor’s degree in combination with seven
(7) years of experience may be accepted in lieu of an advanced degree. A minimum of five
(5) years of progressively responsible experience in enterprise data management systems, data warehousing infrastructure, big data technologies, GIS analytics, and/or cloud-based data storage and data access solutions is required.
Hands-on experience configuring and using open-source technologies, including data ingestion/pipeline tools (e.g. Apache NiFi), object/distributed storage solutions (e.g. MinIO, S3-compatible storage), collaborative analytics environments (e.g. JupyterHub/JupyterLab with Python and/or R), container orchestration/DevOps tools (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Git) is required. Experience working with National Statistical Offices, particularly within developing country settings, is desirable.
Demonstrated experience in planning and implementing IT architecture solutions for complex statistical data production systems or data science projects. Demonstrated experience in agile project management and facilitation of IT trainings and workshops. Experience in coordination with various stakeholders is desirable.
Languages
Full command of spoken and written English is required and French is desirable. Knowledge of other UN languages is an advantage.