Digital Innovation Officer

Organizational Context

The World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, committed to saving lives and building pathways to peace. In the Dominican Republic, WFP supports the national digital transformation agenda as a strategic partner. This involves an advisory-focused approach, prioritizing national ownership, capacity strengthening, and sustainability to achieve an ambitious vision for digital innovation and governance.

Job Purpose

The Digital Innovation Officer serves as a senior technical advisor, guiding the Dominican Republic's comprehensive digital transformation efforts in alignment with national strategies and the overarching WFP Country Strategic Plan. This pivotal role involves actively co-designing, implementing, and rigorously monitoring innovative digital initiatives, with a strong emphasis on ensuring their long-term sustainability and delivering measurable impact across various sectors. The officer is instrumental in fostering robust multisectoral collaboration among government entities, the private sector, academia, and international partners, thereby promoting genuine national ownership and strengthening local capacities. A core responsibility is to strategically drive the country's innovation portfolio, which includes meticulously selecting and prioritizing projects, and providing expert guidance on critical aspects such as business modeling, effective adoption strategies, and crucial resource mobilization. Ultimately, the purpose of this role is to empower the government and its citizens through advanced digital solutions, significantly enhancing operational efficiency, fostering greater transparency, and contributing directly to the nation's long-term development, stability, and resilience.

Responsibilities

The Digital Innovation & Business Transformation Officer will act as a senior technical advisor, collaborating with government counterparts to design, implement, and monitor digital transformation initiatives aligned with the Dominican Republic's national strategies and the WFP Country Strategic Plan. This role involves fostering multisectoral collaboration, ensuring the sustainability and impact of digital solutions, and driving the national innovation portfolio. Key responsibilities include providing strategic advice, facilitating collaboration between government, private sector, and academia, and overseeing digital innovation projects from ideation to implementation. The officer will also lead or support the co-design of digital solutions, ensure government ownership, and develop capacity-building programs for public sector staff. Establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and monitoring frameworks to track progress and impact, reporting on results, and ensuring appropriate regulatory and legal frameworks are in place are also crucial. The role requires developing a co-created digital transformation roadmap, a prioritized project portfolio, capacity-building plans, and a monitoring and evaluation framework, alongside formalizing partnerships and creating knowledge products. A sustainability and exit strategy ensuring government ownership will be a key deliverable.

Work Experience

Requires at least 8 years of progressive international experience in digital transformation, technology, innovation, or start-up leadership. Experience should include exposure to both private and public sectors.

Skills

Digital Transformation, Innovation Management, Business Strategy, Stakeholder Engagement, Capacity Building, Project Management, Resource Mobilization, Monitoring & Evaluation, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Partnership Building

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