Information Management Consultant

Job Posting: 06/Sep/2019

Closure Date: 27/Sep/2019, 9:59:00 PM

Job Type: Non-staff opportunities

Type of Requisition: Consultant / PSA (Personal Services Agreement)

Grade Level: N/A

Primary Location: Various Locations

Duration: Up to 11 months, with 3-month probationary period, on a WAE basis

The assignment may involve fulltime or part-time functions. The assignment can be from 1 month up to 11 months. The possibility of extension is subject to satisfactory performance and depending on the resources and needs of the Organization.

The objective of the call is to attract suitable individuals to undertake B-level consultancies and/or PSAs in the areas of work of the division, including support capacity development and information management. In particular the Consultants or PSAs will help with the management at information and content level of the Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) Programme, the International System for Agricultural Science and Technology (AGRIS) Programme and/or the AGROVOC Multilingual agricultural thesaurus.

Individuals meeting or exceeding the requirements of the Call will be included in the Partnerships Roster. Experts who are registered in the Roster are available for consideration whenever relevant opportunities arise matching the required profiles.

Reporting Lines

The Consultants or PSAs will report directly to officers within the unit they are selected to work in. 

Tasks and responsibilities

The assigned tasks and responsibilities related to technical support in the area of information management can include some of the following elements:

• Provide overall strategic guidance and maintenance of agricultural information services dedicated to information provision, in particular, to enhance accessibility and visibility of the scientific data production in agriculture in low-income countries.

• Review and publish structured data describing bibliographic resources such as articles, monographs, theses, conference papers, presentation materials, research reports, learning objects, etc. – in print or electronic format – about current scientific literature in food, nutrition, agriculture and related biological and environmental sciences produced and submitted by journals, institutional repositories and other databases.

• Support information integration, in particular in the areas of Semantic Web, metadata models, schema and data translation.

The assigned tasks and responsibilities related to capacity development in the information management can include some of the following elements:

Implement and deliver training programs, online seminars and workshops in the context of access to scientific information resources in agriculture, to enhance the visibility, accessibility and usability of agricultural data and science, particularly in low-income countries. 

• Deliver capacity development activities to increase capacity and awareness on how to manage, access, exchange and use information and data more efficiently and to strengthen the capacity of data producers and consumers to manage and use open data in agriculture.

• Support the organization of international events in the area of research data management.

• Report about recommendations and good practices on metadata, vocabularies and ontologies for different type of data related to agricultural sciences using FAO methods for documenting good practices.

• Facilitate communities of practices and networks of information of research data providers and practitioners related to PSPC information services.

• contribute to drafting reports/working papers and to disseminating results