About the World Bank Group:

Established in 1944, the WBG is one of the world’s largest sources of funding and knowledge for development solutions. In fiscal year 2018, the WBG committed $67 billion in loans, grants, equity investments and guarantees to its members and private businesses, of which $24 billion was concessional finance to its poorest members. It is governed by 188-member countries and delivers services out of 120 offices with nearly 15,000 staff located globally.

The WBG consists of five specialized institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The World Bank is organized into six client-facing Regional Vice-Presidencies, several corporate functions and thirteen Global Practices to bring best-in-class knowledge and solutions to regional and country clients.

The Governance Global Practice (GGP) comprises a variety of different professional disciplines working on public institutions, including public sector management, governance and anti-corruption, procurement, financial management, social accountability and justice reform. The GGP has the following four thematic areas:

• Public Resource Mobilization and Management to provide policy advice and support to institutions and processes across the entire cycle of public financial management, both to countries and to WBG operations.
• Solutions and Innovations in Procurement to provide policy advice, institutional support, assistance and capacity building for more transparent, honest and accountable governments.
• Public Service Performance to support a continuous and sustainable improvement in the delivery of public goods and services both from central government, local governments, SOEs, PPPs and through regulation.
• Governance and Inclusive Institutions to support countries in building sustainable, inclusive and trustworthy governance systems, including institutions beyond the executive branch of government.

The GGP interventions range from diagnostics, technical assistance and advisory services, knowledge management and sharing, creating peer learning platforms, lending and reform project implementation, and monitoring and reporting. An important part of its responsibilities is to deliver operational support to other Practices, including through inputs for policy-based operations, hands-on implementation advice and direct fiduciary due diligence of investment financing.

The Solutions and Innovations in Procurement (SIP) Department convenes a leading group of practitioners focused on advancing cutting-edge practices and innovations in the fields of procurement, anti-corruption and open government. In that context, the SIP Department supports governments and non-governmental actors in institutional strengthening and capacity building, improvement and modernization of procurement and information systems, ensuring efficiency of transactions, in order to ensure improved governance and enhanced development outcomes. The SIP Department advances these efforts across sectors and across all regions of the world.

Furthermore, the Procurement Team in the Latin America and Caribbean Region works with client countries of procurement reform and policy and strategy development. Many of these engagements are based on insights from data analytics. Many countries in the region have e-procurement, contract management and payment systems that provide the data necessary to work on big data analytics applied to procurement. In this context, the LAC Procurement Team is seeking a Research Analyst (RA) who will be responsible for data preparation, cleaning, analysis and research activities related to procurement policy-making.

• Provide technical advice on procurement fiduciary activities and lead policy dialogue on procurement with client countries
• Support client countries in achieving value for money in public procurement in order to enhance service delivery and development outcomes with integrity
• Create the space for procurement/governance innovation to happen
• Establish proactive processes to identify and deploy knowledge to solve specific problems, and improve development outcomes in client countries
• Facilitate and join global platforms to share knowledge and practices across the world
• Carry out research that will inform policy and strategy decisions for better procurement outcomes.

Roles and responsibilities:

The Research Analyst will provide support to the Practice Manager and staff in Washington DC as well as work in collaboration with the decentralized procurement staff across the Latin America and Caribbean (LCR) Region.

The responsibilities of the position include a mix of the following:

• Prepare and produce clean datasets from raw procurement, contract and payment data. This will involve working with field staff and clients for clarifications and corrections, creating and merging various sources of data. It may require programming matching algorithms, linking up with field staff for additional information, and performing manual matching;
• Construct and clean key indicators;
• Work with the supervisor(s) to design a thorough plan for the analysis of the data and carry out the coding of programs to perform this analysis;
• Produce descriptive statistics and regression analysis using the datasets;
• Contribute to producing reports and briefs for client and the World Bank team;
• Carry out research on specific markets and procurement categories per instructions from the supervisor;
• Deliver training and technical assistance to client countries;
• The analyst will document her/his work electronically and share the following files:
• Data queries provided to the field staff and clients, responses received, and actions taken;
• Data cleaning in one do file, (a working master do file when multiple clean files are produced);
• Merging data and constructing variables in one do file;
• All data analysis will be documented in a do-file or multiple clearly labeled sub-files that would be called in one master file; all tables will be automatically created from the analysis do files;
• Prepare an index linking do files with output files (dta and table xls files).
• Prepare a dictionary of final data sets.

Selection Criteria

Essential Specialized Skills/Knowledge/Competencies:

• Excellent oral and written communications skills in English/Spanish; able to independently prepare a variety of written outputs and edit technical reports,
• Knowledge and understanding of the Bank's procurement policies, processes and practices as applied to diverse types of Bank Group procurement. Proficiency: Intermediate
• Good knowledge of Bank Group operations, and, in particular, of critical linkages and relationships between procurement processes and business operations and objectives. Proficiency: Intermediate.
• Proven analytical and evaluative skills, including the ability to independently provide well researched analyses of key procurement issues and problems. Proficiency: Fully Proficient or Specialist
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with ability to prepare, present and discuss findings in written and oral form. Proficiency: Fully Proficient or Specialist
• General knowledge of procurement planning for projects. Proficiency: Intermediate.
• Excellent administrative and organizational skills as well as attention to detail,
• Flexibility and willingness to work overtime at short notice,
• Demonstrated ability to function under time pressure and handle multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment of changing priorities, with initiative and resourcefulness,
• Excellent interpersonal skills, flexibility, and ability to work in teams in a multi-cultural environment,
• Ability to: deal sensitively and diplomatically with internal/external contacts at all levels; work independently, prioritizing work, taking initiative, and solving problems; follow through on team priorities in absence of the team leader responding to requests for information; adapt to changing business needs by continuous learning/training.
• Recognized ability to exercise good judgment and in handling confidential and sensitive information,
• Knowledge and interest in learning about Bank policies, procedures, operations/portfolio and activities.

Minimum Education/Experience:

• Master degree or Ph.D. student in economics, development economics, statistics, mathematics or other related field, preferably with at least 6 months of relevant data analysis experience.
• At least 2 years of relevant professional experience or equivalent combination of education and experience
• Knowledge of impact evaluation methods
• Previous research assistance or data analysis work using large datasets and administrative data
• Advanced statistical programming skills in Stata or R are required
• Familiarity with other statistical or mapping software (GIS, SPSS, SAS, CSPro, etc) would be advantageous
• Previous research publications will be an advantage
• Excellent writing skills
• Fluency in Spanish and English languages; Portuguese will be an advantage.

Source:https://worldbankgroup.csod.com/ats/careersite/JobDetails.aspx?id=3366&site=1