DATA ANALYST

OPM TA Team Short term technical assistance ToR

Title: Data Analyst

Working with

MEHE SIMS teams and relevant directorates

Reports to

Director General and OPM TA Team Leader

Contribution to Output:

Output 2: Improve Data Management

Scope and description of the Task

In recent years, Lebanon has become the country with the highest refugee per capita in the world. Officially, there are more than 1.5 million registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a third of which are school going aged children. In 2013, the Government of Lebanon (GoL) opened a second-shift in its public education system to cater for the enormous numbers of refugee students. In 2017/2018, non-Lebanese students outnumbered Lebanese students in the public education system. The responsibility for educating all these students resides with the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE) who, alongside external donors, launched the Reaching All Children with Education II (RACE II) programme in 2016.

The World Bank (WB) and GoL, especially the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE) and the Centre for Education Research and Development (CERD), designed Support to RACE II (S2R2) to deliver on significant parts of RACE II as the strategy relates to the formal education sector. S2R2 is designed to complement other work developed to support RACE II, such as activities planned and implemented with UNICEF, UNHCR and UNESCO.

The UK FCDO in Lebanon’s contribution to the education sector includes support to S2R2 as well as the provision of a technical assistance team to MEHE and a separate team to CERD. In March 2018, a three-year technical assistance project was awarded to Oxford Policy Management, which expanded an existing TA facility to serve MEHE priority areas to achieve the objectives of RACE II. The TA team supports the GoL to deliver the immediate objectives of the S2R2 programme while building the capacity, systems and processes which underpin a medium-term sector development strategy.

Level of effort

1. Objectives and deliverables

BACKGROUND:

During the last quarter of 2019, MEHE prepared an “Information Management Strategy” along with the “Information Management Implementation Plan”. The overall objective is for MEHE to be able use evidence-based and more effective decisions in policy formulation, planning, monitoring, and optimization of resources. Since 2010, MEHE has implemented a School Information Management System (SIMS). The current SIMS platform collects and analyses data for improved management oversight and enhanced internal efficiency. SIMS is still in the process of operationalization. Yet, the full potential of the system is not yet leveraged to improve data quality and assure its completeness.

The Information Management Strategy will help in enabling the environment for a data-driven decision-making in MEHE and in securing the quality of data and turning it into usable information. This will include managing change and gaining endorsement of MEHE stakeholders, implementing the appropriate procedures, mandates, data cleaning and checks methodology, along with improving user’s skills and awareness on SIMS benefits via targeted training.

HUMAN RESOURCES REQUIRED AND RATIONALE:

The first component of the Information Management Implementation plan is: “Improve and demonstrate data quality: reliability, completeness, accuracy, validity of the data.” The implementation of this component requires a “Data Analyst” with a strong data base management expertise, a proven experience of the usage of school information management system, and a proven experience in Lebanese education public administration.

The SIMS data quality assurance team in MEHE currently consists of two components: an OPM-provided element which support the establishment of sustainable systems and a MEHE element which works with and will take over ownership of a robust Information Management System.

This OPM element is delivered by a three person team provided through the FCDO-funded TA facility. It currently coordinates immediate data management needs, longer-term information management strategy and high level reporting/dashboards. In addition, a data quality team (two consultants) have provided technical support, data cleaning, and extraction of relevant datasets from SIMS.

WORKING RELATIONSHIP AND STATION:

The consultant will work from MEHE and report to the Director General and OPM Team Leader and will work under the guidance of OPM Information Management workstream lead.

The specific tasks under this role include:

• Data Quality Assurance on SIMS:
  • Contribute in the planning and management of the Data Quality Assurance project with the designated MEHE working group.
  • Prepare and agree on the action plan for organizing data completeness tasks at the level of schools.
  • Perform daily quality check of data inputted on SIMS by schools by retrieving SIMS reports and cross-checking with other sources of available data.
  • Follow-up daily on the data completeness and coordinate with regions to meet the deadlines.

• SIMS platform enhancement:
  • Verify the quality of SIMS generated reports and identify potential bugs
  • Recommend SIMS enhancement solutions and liaise with IT department for the change request initiations and follow-up and testing of development.

• Capacity building and ownership of SIMS:
  • Identify Directorate staff who would the usage of SIMS and Microsoft office tools in their daily  work
  • Build capacity on designated MEHE administration staff on:
    • Basic and intermediate IT skills (MS excel and word)
    • Designing relevant reports in the more immediately usable formats
    • Request process for development of reports by SIMS teams
    • Where necessary, transformation/combination of reports into wider data analysis reports
    • Usage of SIMS reports in their daily activities
  • Contribute in preparing and organizing the awareness and training plans for the importance of data for decision-making and SIMS usage at all MEHE level (Administration, Regions and schools)
  • Recommend options to encourage or “enforce” the usage of SIMS modules for administrative processes, at the level of schools.
  • Make sure the resources are available at the level of schools and REO for SIMS usage and recommend solutions.

• Data Interpretation and usage
  • Retrieve data from SIMS and other available sources and implement databases.
  • Analyze data and provide ongoing reports used within the data quality assurance project and requested by MEHE management
  • Contribute and participate in education statistical studies and impact analysis for a management decision based on evidence.

• Project Deliverables and Timeline:
  • Daily follow-up reports for data quality assurance addressed to regions and schools
  • Bi-monthly progress reports for data quality assurance addressed to MEHE data quality assurance working group
  • Project timeline: 6 months -
  • Start date: September 1, 2020, end date: Feb 28, 2021

DELIVERABLES AND TIME FRAME:

Deliverables

Dates

No of months

1. Data quality and completeness

1.1

Prepare and agree on the action plan for organizing data completeness tasks at the level of schools. (every 2 weeks)

September 2020 to Feb   2021

Ongoing throughout contract

1.2

Perform daily quality check of data inputted on SIMS by schools by retrieving SIMS reports and cross-checking with other sources of available data.

1.3

Identify potential bugs in SIMS reports and application and provide recommendations

1.4

Provide ongoing reports used within the data quality assurance project and requested by MEHE management

1. Capacity building

2.1

Support to MEHE officials on basic and intermediate data literacy skills

September 2020 to Feb   2021

Ongoing

2.2

Design/usage of SIMS reports and their transformation into usable information

2.3

How to take well-formulated datasets and use them effectively for decision-making

1. Other deliverables

3.1

Contribute in the preparation of the data bases for the School costing study and financial model

Aug to Sept 2020

1 month

3.2

Contribute in the preparation of “Education Highlights Report”

Oct 2020 to Jan 2021

4 months

Total Months

6 months

1. PROFILE AND SKILLS

• Bachelor degree in technology or equivalent.
• Master’s degree is an advantage
• Minimum of 10 years’ experience in the Lebanese educational system.
• Minimum of 5 years’ experience in education management.
• Experience in training and problem-solving in the educational technology field (both K-12 and higher education)
• Minimum of 5 years of teaching experience using ICT in education technologies 
• Understanding of existing capacity for educational technology
• Expertise working on field data collection methods and their interfaces with suitable databases
• Experience with a wide range of educational technologies.
• Experience working with technology to collect and analyze large datasets, run appropriate monitoring reports and present evidence in a visual and accessible format
• Excellent communication, inter-personal, and managerial skills
• Fluency in Arabic and English.