Public Sector Innovation and Partnerships Specialist - Home Based [Open to Tier 0, 1 & 2 applicants]

Background

Governments across Asia-Pacific are increasingly embracing digital transformation to enhance service delivery, improve governance, and respond to citizens’ evolving needs. However, the journey is complex and uneven marked by significant capacity gaps, fragmented institutional coordination, and the challenge of translating digital ambition into sustained, inclusive implementation. Many public sector institutions face limited digital and data literacy, weak ICT infrastructure, and policy environments lagging rapid technological change. Cross-government coordination is difficult where digital responsibilities are distributed across agencies without clear mandates or accountability, and efforts can become technology-centered rather than focused on making policies and services fit for purpose.

The UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub (BRH) is UNDP’s regional platform for policy advisory services, technical assistance and programme support to Country Offices across Asia and the Pacific. Within BRH, the Regional Innovation and Digital (RID) Team support governments and Country Offices to design and deliver digital transformation that is inclusive, sustainability and implementable. Guided by UNDP’s Digital Strategy, RID Team prioritizes long-term capability and institutional strengthening over short-term fixes, providing hands-on support through: (i) Digital by Design and Portfolio Approaches, (ii) Public Sector Innovation Support, (iii) Digital Stewardship Community of Policymakers.

Building on these foundations, and in partnership with ADB, IsDB and other development partners, RID Team is advancing regional initiatives and service offers, including AI /DPI Stewards, Transformation Teams, DPI Safeguards (in collaboration with the Digital and AI Hub), and South-South Digital for Development Model for countries to learn, share, customize and experiment digital transformation models, while supporting cross-thematic application such as air pollution, climate and health, and system finance.

RID Team is hiring a Public Sector Innovation and Digital Partnerships Specialist to help support UNDP Country Offices and partners to codify the abovementioned workstreams into project pipelines, programmes and forging new partnerships that scale impact across region.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Public Sector Innovation and Partnerships Specialist will report to the Team Lead- Regional Innovation and Digital Team and will work closely with UNDP colleagues regionally and globally, as relevant to the work being undertaken. The Specialist will undertake the following scope of work:

Lead the Digital Stewardship Community of Policymakers (Asia Pacific).

• Maintain the community’s workplan and reporting of engagement.
• Facilitate webinars, learning sessions, masterclasses, and virtual or in-person peer-learning missions for policymakers.
• Curate and coordinate story-telling, light research and development (R&D) and “spotlighting” of policymakers’ initiatives, to foster a practical ‘learning by doing’ culture (including coordination of short written outputs such as blogs/ op-eds where relevant)

Support the co-design and delivery of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and AI Stewards programme.

• Work with governments and Country Offices to translate national priorities into practical stewardship journeys, use cases, and pilots.
• Help anchor interdisciplinary teams across ministries to strengthen institutional capacity on digital public infrastructure, responsible AI, and whole-of-government transformation.
• Work with Digital and AI Hub (DAI Hub) Team in anchoring DPI Safeguards initiative across countries, through DPI/AI Stewards country workstreams.

Design and Develop “South-South Digital for Development” Offer

• Together with other specialists in the team, develop coherent offers on Financing Models, AI-DPI Economics Proposition, and South-South Digital for Development offer by identifying, packaging, and operationalizing DPIs, DPGs, stewardship models, and policy innovations from Asia-Pacific.
• Facilitate cross-country peer learning, learning missions, and expert exchanges to enable contextualized adoption of proven digital and governance solutions.

Facilitate and Co-Create Public Sector Innovation Offers on Air Pollution, Climate, Health and Cross-Thematic Systems Engagement with other GPN Teams/ Country Offices.

• Anchoring and socializing the ‘Transformation Teams’ concept.
• Design and deliver experimenting and capacity building offers for civil service reforms/ innovation.
• Design and deliver initiatives under Policy Labs/ Innovation Labs within the region.
• Support Country Offices/Cross-Team programming on systems and digital innovation for air pollution
• Coordinate and convene multistakeholder engagements emerging from new workstreams with Digital and AI intersection including Climate and Health, Disaster Risk Resilience, Gender, Systems Finance, and related thematic areas

Lead on Partnerships and Resource Mobilization