Palladium recruits a Senior IT Business Analyst

Palladium recruits a Senior IT Business Analyst

Company Overview:

Palladium is a global leader in the design, development and delivery of Positive Impact – the intentional creation of enduring social and economic value. We work with foundations, investors, governments, corporations, communities and civil society to formulate strategies and implement solutions that generate lasting social, environmental and financial benefits. 

For the past 50 years, we have been making Positive Impact possible. With a team of more than 2,500 employees operating in 90 plus countries and a global network of more than 35,000 technical experts, Palladium has improved – and is committed to continuing to improve – economies, societies and most importantly, people’s lives. 

Palladium is a child-safe organisation, and screens applicants for suitability to work with children. We also provide equal employment to all participants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, veteran or marital status. 

Project Overview and Role:

 Health Policy Plus (HP+) is a USAID-funded, five-year, $185 million project awarded to Palladium (formerly Futures Group) on August 28, 2015. HP+ has a mandate across global, country, and subnational levels to strengthen and advance health policy priorities in HIV, family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH), and maternal health. It aims to improve the enabling environment for equitable and sustainable health services, supplies, and delivery systems through policy development and implementation, with an emphasis on voluntary, rights-based health programs, and by strengthening in-country partners’ capacity to navigate complex environments for effective policy design, implementation, and financing aligned to their priorities. We carry forward proven approaches to preserve achievements. These approaches inform how we manage programs and engage with stakeholders, and tools and techniques improve decision making and the achievement of predetermined goals.

Under predecessor USAID- and other donor-funded projects, Palladium, and its partners have worked for several years with Mozambican partners and stakeholders to improve the enabling environment for HIV; FP/RH;  and maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH). In the past decade, Palladium (as Futures Group) led the USAID global Health Policy Initiative (HPI, 2005–2010) and Health Policy Project (HPP, 2010–2015). The latter was active in Mozambique and several other East and Southern African countries. HPP Mozambique collaborated with USAID and the Government of the Republic of Mozambique (GOM) Ministry of Health (MISAU) from December 2012 to August 2016 on a field program that supported RMNCAH (Reproductive, Maternal, Neonatal, Child, and Adolescent Health) costing, modeling, gender, advocacy, and capacity strengthening experience.

Through Law No. 09/2002 from February 12th and its regulation approved by the Decree No. 23/2004 from August 20th, the State Financial Administration System (SISTAFE) was created with the aim of modernizing the Financial Administration systems in Mozambique. In an effort to modernize the system, a software to support SISTAFE was created and called the e-SISTAFE. To further this modernization the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) identified the need to integrate the Planning and Budgeting functions into a single instrument, which resulted into restructuring the State budget subsystem into the Planning and Budgeting subsystem.

However, the different program structures throughout the country do not allow for automated mapping of existing activities from the various Ministerial Modules, which inhibits the ability to elaborate and execute the state budget via e-SISTAFE. To ensure that the separate ministerial modules are linked to e-SISTAFE, the MEF requires support to revise the conceptual model and programs at the Ministry of Health (MISAU) and to ensure that budget elaboration and execution can be performed via e-SISTAFE.

The MEF and the Ministry of Health have requested the assistance from HP+ to consolidate the planning and budget functions, via a module that will work in conjunction with e-SISTAFE to produce the desired results. The ultimate goal of the new module is to increase effectiveness in health governance and achieve a more responsive, participatory, transparent, and accountable health financing system. The HP+ team will work with the MEF and MISAU to collaborate on the development and implementation of the new module.

 Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

HP+ is seeking the services of a qualified individual to provide technical assistance (TA) to MISAU and the Center for the Development of Financial Information Systems (CEDSIF) in Mozambique. The TA will be expected to work closely with MISAU, MEF, CEDSIF and HP+ staff to gather, analyze and communicate stakeholder requirements and monitor the development of planning and budgeting module of e-SISTAFE to guarantee that MISAU requirements are fulfilled.

The Senior IT Business Analyst will report to the HP+ Project Lead and support this person to manage and supervise the project team working within CEDSIF, as well as engage directly with key stakeholders when needed. S/he will technically contribute to the implementation and monitoring of the current activities and ensure the accomplishment of the deliverables under this project’s component.

The consultant’s responsibilities will be as follows:

• Identify and engage with MISAU and CEDSIF stakeholders to conduct requirements gathering and information systems analysis based on MEF standards and specifications.
• Define the necessary features and operations that will satisfy the functionality requirements of the information systems, as well as the information needs of end users.
• Support CEDSIF to generate complete system analysis and design documentation based on international standards, such as UML, and socialize it with the IT development team ensuring that they fully understand the functionalities that need to be implemented.
• Provide technical assistance and communicate regularly with the Project Manager, Senior Developer/Architect, and IT developers to ensure that the development of the modules is following the design specifications. Support the team to manage activities against the timeline, assisting the Project Manager to prioritize critical functions and plan for testing and rollout.
• Coordinate and communicate regularly with the Senior Quality Assurance Analyst to define the test plans based on the design specifications.
• Conduct regular meetings with MISAU, MEF, and HEP+ staff to provide progress updates and to receive feedback about the module’s implementation.
• Support communication between MISAU, MEF, and additional partners to ensure coordination of the activities between the agencies for the development of the modules.
• Provide capacity development support on the use of the new modules to ensure that local staff is able to understand the tools and its functions.
• Support the development of an Adoption Plan for the planning and budgeting module to guide CEDSIF in engaging MISAU and other key stakeholders in system design, testing, and rollout.

Required Qualifications:

• Based in Maputo
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in computer science, technology, information systems, business, or related career;
• Minimum 5 years of experience as a business or information systems analyst;
• Minimum 3 years of experience developing software, JAVA programming language is preferred;
• Minimum 2 years of experience managing software development projects;
• Knowledge of information systems design standards and modeling languages, such as UML.
• Knowledge of software development life cycle, waterfall and agile methodologies; ability to work in a dynamic and agile environment with changing requirements and priorities.
• Ability to work independently and solve day-to-day problems, but possess good judgment for escalating issues/problems
• Good diplomatic skills and experience interacting with host country government agencies (i.e. MISAU) including development partners (i.e. USAID).
• Strong facilitation, problem-solving, analytic, and evaluative skills;
• Strong interpersonal, writing, and oral presentation skills in Portuguese and English;
• Ability to work in a multicultural environment;
• Fluency in English and Portuguese is required.

Apply here