1. Background

The Ukraine Reforms Architecture (URA) is a comprehensive technical assistance programme deployed by the EBRD, in partnership with the European Union, to support critical reform processes in Ukraine. It is financed from the Ukraine Stabilisation and Sustainable Growth Multi-Donor Account (MDA) managed by the EBRD.

URA was designed as a holistic mechanism for stimulating systemic change in Ukraine’s public institutions and improving the business climate in the country. URA fills the critical capacity gaps in Ukraine’s public institutions by supplying reform talent at all levels of government. Since 2016, more than 200 Ukrainian reformers have worked in the project’s various components and contributed to dozens of reform outcomes, strategies and policies.

URA’s operations rest on a number of cornerstone principles: providing support to committed reform champions, ensuring sustainability of reform capacity-building efforts through implementation of Public Administration Reform (PAR), drawing on Ukrainian reform talent and ensuring local ownership of the reform process, and offering demand-driven, results-oriented and flexible assistance in focal points of Ukraine’s public administration.

Contributors to the MDA are Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union, the largest donor. 

2. Scope of Services and Tasks

The Knowledge-Capturing Specialist will carry out the following tasks:

• Help to foster knowledge sharing across URA teams and URA host institutions;
• Ensure continuous identification, capturing, validation, formatting, management, and sharing of critical knowledge among URA teams and URA host institutions;
• Extract high-value knowledge assets for dissemination, in close collaboration with RST and RDO experts and URA host institutions;
• Capture and organise the experiential knowledge of experts throughout URA to populate and grow the Reformers Hub repository of valuable and sharable knowledge assets;
• Interview internal and external stakeholders (RSTs and RDO, URA host institutions, international donors, among others) to extract mission-critical experiences and lessons learned for further sharing, such as management and operational knowledge, experience from reform design and delivery, sector specific knowledge;
• Evaluate the usefulness of knowledge to be captured for replication and scale up;
• Analyse, synthesize, and summarize the captured knowledge and transfors it into formatted knowledge assets that are of high quality, standardized and sharable;
• Populate the attributes and qualifiers of knowledge assets to ensure good findability on the Reformers Hub platform;
• Manage the logistics, set-up, design, and implementation of knowledge capturing activities, including meetings, focus groups, and workshops;
• Edit the knowledge assets in regards to language, formatting and content;
• Use audio-visual tools to capture knowledge at high quality;
• Model active knowledge sharing throughout the URA programme and with partners;
• Develop trusted relationships with a variety of stakeholders within the URA programme and its host institutions.

3. Profile

• A degree in journalism, English, knowledge management, instructional design, learning, public policy, communications or a related field;
• A minimum of 3 years of professional experience in roles with strong focus on analysing, synthesising and summarising information in the form of clear, concise and user-friendly information/knowledge products, acquired through a career in journalism, knowledge management, education, public policy or a related field;
• Excellent interview skills to ensure optimal documentation and extraction of knowledge derived from personal experiences;
• Ability to conduct capturing activities in a positive and motivating atmosphere, emotional capacity and empathy to connect with others and to build trust;
• Good interpersonal communication skills to relate with a variety of stakeholders, including senior stakeholders, and to motivate others to contribute to and make use of the knowledge and learning offerings of the programme;
• Good facilitation skills to be able to tease out knowledge and information from other people;
• Ability to digest information and analyse, synthesise, and summarise it in clear and concise ways;
• Solid writing (in both Ukrainian and English) and media production skills to process captured experiences in a way that they can be communicated or disseminated. This may include basic media and digital literacy skills (e.g. basic video editing);
• Ability to quickly develop a sound understanding of the programme’s knowledge needs and assets;
• Ability to identify and collect experiences that are deemed worth sharing;
• Ability to objectively assess and analyse the skills, competencies, and expertise of co-workers;
• Motivation to share knowledge, successful practices, and lessons learned and interest in improving the effectiveness of the programme;
• Profound interest and curiosity about the field of public policy in general and Ukraine’s reform process in particular;
• Ability and self-discipline to systematically reflect on past assignments to continuously improve;
• Sound time-management skills to adequately balance operational and knowledge work;
• Familiarity with IT tools for producing knowledge materials.

4. Reporting and Deliverables

The Knowledge-Capturing Specialist will be engaged by the Ukraine Reforms Architecture Foundation (URAF). He/she will working closely with the URA team and report to the lead of the Reformers Hub initiative – Project Management Consultant – Evaluation, Learning and Knowledge Management based in London and URA programme Operation Leader.

The Knowledge-Capturing Specialist will liaise with key counterparts internally and externally including: London and Kiev-based URA PM Consultants, the Reform Support Teams, the Reforms Delivery Office, civil servants in URA host institutions, representatives of donors, international organisations, external consultants and experts.

The Knowledge-Capturing Specialist shall carry out the scope of services as set out above under Section 4 in a timely and accurate manner.

The Knowledge-Capturing Specialist shall ensure timely delivery of progress reports from project assignments and provide documents and amendments to documents to the relevant counterparts and the Project Management Team as and when needed.

The key deliverables include:

• Knowledge Assets based on knowledge capturing activities with RST and RDO experts and civil servants;
• 3-5 Knowledge Assets a month, depending on complexity;
• Communications with RST and RDO teams and their host institutions, via the Reformers Hub platform or otherwise;
• Weekly reporting on project implementation;
• Interview and all other material collected through knowledge capturing activities.

 5. Duration and proposed timeframe

This consultancy appointment is expected to start in May 2021 and has an estimated initial duration of up to 3 months. Subject to the availability of funding, the performance of the selected consultant and the specific needs of the URA programme, this appointment may be extended. The probation period is one month. 

6. Funding Source

The funding source of this assignment is the EBRD Ukraine Stabilization and Sustainable Growth Multi-Donor Account (MDA). Contributors to the MDA are Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union, the largest donor. Please note selection and contracting will be subject to the availability of funding.

Important notice: only Ukrainian nationals are eligible to apply; civil servants are not eligible to apply unless 6 months have elapsed since they have left civil service employment.

7. Contact

If interested in the position, please submit a CV and cover letter (in English only) to Andrea Garaiova at: [email protected] by Monday 24 May 2021.