Vienna, Austria
UNODC Vienna
Posting Title: Individual Contractor (Cocaine database support)
Department/Office: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
Duty Station: VIENNA
Posting Period: 14 July 2020 – 14 August 2020
Job Opening Number: 20-United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime-138238-Individual Contractor
United Nations Core Values: Integrity, Professionalism, Respect for Diversity
Result of Service
Under the supervision of the Research Officer (Cocaine) and the overall guidance of the Chief of DRS, the Individual Contractor will undertake the following activities:
- Liaise with national authorities in charge to collect and report relevant statistics on individual drug seizures. Manage the communication with national counterparts related to the data collection process;
2. Liaise with other staff within RAB and in UNODC Field Offices to collect all relevant data available on individual seizure cases (focus on cocaine and its precursor chemicals);
3. Design, in liaison with the DMP team, a data structure, compliant with the DMP requirements while catering for the CRIMJUST cocaine research needs, to host individual drug seizure data;
4. Collect and incorporate feedback on the new data structure;
5. Establish a best practice to process, harmonize and consolidate information on individual drug seizures collected from several data sources to ensure data validation;
6. Collect and validate data, from official as well as open sources, on individual seizure cases and organize them into a harmonized dataset following the data structure defined as per (3) above;
7. Ensure data on all individual seizures are efficiently transferred and included into the DMP, including through programming techniques as necessary;
8. Contribute to the development and refinement of a software-based algorithm to validate data on individual drug seizure to ensure the removal of duplicates;
9. Other cocaine research related tasks as needed.
Work Location
Vienna
Expected duration
September 2020 – December2020 (with the possibility of extension)
Duties and
Responsibilities
This assignment is located in the Drug Research Section (DRS), Research and Trend Analysis Branch (RAB), Division for Policy Analysis and Public Affairs (DPA), United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in Vienna.
DRS has recently launched new activities, under the project ‘Strengthening criminal investigation and criminal justice cooperation along the cocaine route in Latin America, the Caribbean and West Africa’ (CRIMJUST), to produce regional and global strategic, and action-oriented, knowledge to support evidence-based policy making and field operations in order to reduce the cocaine threat.
In the framework of UNODCs research on cocaine, and in collaboration with other officers in Vienna and in the field, the Individual Contractor will contribute to the development of UNODC’s data collection/monitoring capacity on cocaine markets and trafficking routes.
The Individual Contractor will organize the input into the Drug Monitoring Platform on individual drug seizure cases and will assist with soliciting data from further sources.
S/he will in particular assist with the collection of data on individual drug seizures from a number of data sources, organize the collected information in a harmonized dataset whose data structure definition is compliant with the DMP standards and facilitate the incorporation of the data into the DMP web platform.
Qualifications/special skills
Academic Qualifications:
- Advanced university degree (Master’s or equivalent) in statistics, computer sciences, mathematics, economics, social sciences or in a related field is required.
- A first level university degree in similar fields in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
Experience:
- A minimum of two (2) years of experience relevant to the assignment is required, including familiarity with statistical packages or programming techniques amenable for statistical purposes (for example, R, SPSS, Python, Visual Basic for Applications and Excel).
- Ability to manage, process and validate large multi-source datasets is required.
- A record of analytical work based on quantitative methods, preferably in drugs or crime issues, is desirable.
- Good planning and organizational skills is desirable.
Language:
- English and French are the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat. For this post, fluency in oral and written English and Spanish, including excellent drafting skills is required. Knowledge of other United Nations languages is an advantage.
No Fee
THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.
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