Director of Community Computer Centre
(1 Position)Internationally recruited position
- Department: Office of the Vice-President
- Directorate: Community Computer Centre
- Grade: D1
- Salary: USD 92,866.73
- Supervisor: Vice President of the ECOWAS Commission
- Reference: ECW-COMM/REC/VPO-D/001/2010
- Duration: Permanent
- Closing date: 07-03-2011
Following the restructuring of the ECOWAS Commission from an Executive Secretariat in 2006, the number of Directorates was increased from 16 to 25. A Directorate in ECOWAS Community Institutions is a subset of Departments headed by Commissioners. Directorates are headed by Directors.
Directors are responsible within the Commission for providing the technical expertise in particular technical areas for the design and implementation of technical projects within the region in line with ECOWAS objectives.
Directors in ECOWAS provide leadership and management to major sector(s) of technical activities which are substantively important to the accomplishment of the Institution’s mandate. They are responsible for interpreting governing bodies’, the President’s and the Commissioner’s broad visions and policy guidelines, and for developing and managing goals and objectives to meet that mandate. D1 positions typically supervise 10 or more professionals some of who may be Division Chiefs at the P5 level and thus supervise other professional staff.Directors are responsible within the Commission for providing the technical expertise in particular technical areas for the design and implementation of technical projects within the region in line with ECOWAS objectives.
Duties and responsibilities
Directors report directly to respective Commissioners who head Departments. As the principle link between the Directorate and the wider beyond, the Director is responsible to:
- Clearly communicate the President’s and Commissioner’s vision to staff, explain how the Directorate’s activities aligns with them and how the Director expects the Directorate to carry-out set tasks on it.
- Stay on top of fast-moving technical, political, social or economic changes.
- Remain in frequent contact with the other Directors in the Institution to ensure that the work is harmonized with that of other Directorates as needed.
- Maintain a network of peer technical specialists and decision-makers in Member States, needed to ensure the smooth introduction of ECOWAS programmes.
The Director will supervise staff of the Directorate including Professional and General staff. He or she will utilize a range of transactional managerial skills to ensure that staff of the Directorate performs efficiently and effectively, and that they deliver the regular outputs needed at sufficient quality and in a timely manner.
Managerial tasks will include:
- Plan annual goals, objectives, activities and budget tied to the Commission’s overall plans; measure and monitor goal achievement; negotiate suitable adjustments to goals and budgets;
- Implement performance-based budgeting within the Directorate;
- Organize the Directorate in an efficient way with clear reporting lines, minimal bureaucracy and optimal delegation of responsibilities and authority;
- Work with the relevant Directorate to ensure efficient and effective services such as recruitment, action on performance decisions, promotions and related matters;
- Set standards of work and creating mechanisms to monitor staff output and ensure that standards are maintained and deadlines met without compromising quality of work;
- Manage the system of setting individual performance planning and standards through available Performance Planning and Evaluation systems;
- Provide regular and prompt performance feedback to direct reports;
- Actively engaged in the development of staff to ensure skills are built to match plans, goals and existing structures;
- Create productive working atmosphere within the Directorate to encourages staff participation.
While the Director will have a staff of skilled professionals to draw upon, he or she may at times be called upon to apply his or her personal expertise directly in the relevant technical field in any of the following ways:
- Direct technical guidance on programme design or implementation in an area where he or she has high-level technical expertise;
- Represent ECOWAS in professional meetings or working groups; make speeches, negotiate agreements, mediate disputes;
- Lead or participate in technical missions to develop projects and programmes;
- Advise President, Vice President and Commissioner on issues relating to his or her area of technical expertise;
- Work with the relevant specialized Parliamentary Committee on regional legislation, as needed.
Strategic
- Develops, communicates, and maintains an information and communication technology vision, strategy and action plans that align with ECOWAS strategic goals
- Drives the development, review and communication of ICT policies and standards throughout ECOWAS Commission and Institutions, ensuring consistency and pragmatism in the maintenance of these policies and standards
- Directs the development of integrated short, medium and long-term plans for ICT in ECOWAS Commission and Institutions with clear indications of expected value contributions and ensuring realistic overall IT work program with clear achievable targets
- Contributes to the shaping of ECOWAS strategic objectives, ensuring that ICT requirements and opportunities/trade-offs are fully understood and grasped at the highest level within the organization
- Monitors and controls the technical content of ICT within ECOWAS to ensure business relevance, scope realism, suitability for relevant and intended purposes and timely obsolescence
- Partners with user departments in identifying business requirements in alignment with departmental operational plans and enabling return on investment on adopted technologies
- Accountable for overall direction of multiple, large, complex ICT operations or projects, which may contain significant scope, ambiguity, risk & geographical diversity
- Evaluates resource requirements ensuring adequate provision of resources, of high availability, assuring a consistent, improved and optimized ICT environment within ECOWAS Commission and Institutions
- Ensures that a supporting ECOWAS technical architecture is designed, built, tested and deployed in compliance with business needs and security requirements, factoring business continuity requirements
- Ensures availability of ICT services (infrastructure, hardware, application, support) throughout ECOWAS Commission and Institutions, providing continuous maintenance of all ICT equipment
- Promotes the exploitation of ECOWAS ICT solutions that enable seamless cross-functional workflow as well as organization-wide knowledge sharing and collaboration
- Directs major periodic performance reviews to ensure that key ICT projects are delivered on time, within budget and to specification and that ICT services meet agreed service levels
- Actively monitors the development of staff to achieve a motivated and competent ICT workforce that will guarantee a good level of service and user satisfaction
- Critically reviews business process gaps within the organization and provide pragmatic technology solutions to enhance performance and productivity within ECOWAS
- Ensures that the department accomplishes required operational performance to user department’s satisfaction, against service level agreement and ensures achievement of key performance indicators/project milestones
Qualifications/Experience/Skills
Educational Qualification
- Master’s degree (or equivalent) in the Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Business Systems Analysis & Design, Information Systems Management or any related ICT field
- A Bachelor’s degree or equivalent
- Minimum of 12 years of progressively responsible and relevant experience in ICT.
- Minimum of 5 years work experience managing others, preferably in a supervisory capacity within an international organization;
- Must have experience of analyzing and designing information technology and systems for large organizations in challenging environment
- Proven track record of managing and delivering highly complex information systems projects
- Must be conversant with the operations of international organizations, and the ability to adopt and work freely in a multi-cultural environment.
- Ability to chair meetings efficiently and effectively;
- Good communication skills for influencing groups of peers and stakeholders outside the organization (public speaking, writing, persuasiveness, credibility, negotiation, problem-solving)
- Good interpersonal social skills for working with peers and subordinate staff (listening ability, approachability, clear oral expression)
- Able team-player with peers (creates solutions to problems, creates ideas, takes on share of the work, reliable). Ability to align self and Directorate to the Commission;
- Drive and energy;
- Demonstrates fairness;
- Self-control and stress management methods;
- Good personal organization with ability to prioritize comfortably, adjust to rapidly changing priorities and to manage time well;
- Ability to delegate authority clearly and effectively to staff. In particular, ability to use support staff available to the Directorate
Age
Candidates must not be fifty (50) years old or over at the point of recruitment and must be a citizen of one of the ECOWAS member states.
Languages
Must be fluent in one of the official languages of ECOWAS: English, French and Portuguese. A working knowledge of a second official language would be an advantage.
