Deputy Advisor, Egypt Impact Lab at the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development - J-PAL MENA

The Egypt Impact Lab (EIL) is a collaboration between the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development (MPED) and J-PAL MENA at AUC. EIL seeks to strengthen evidence-informed policy and improve development outcomes for Egyptians. The Lab was launched in 2022 with several strategic government and founding donor partners. The outcomes of EIL are to evaluate promising and innovative government programs and use results to inform scale decisions; build government capacity to use rigorous evidence to strengthen program design and delivery; and foster the use of partner ministries’ administrative data to generate evidence and improve decision-making.

The Egypt Impact Lab Deputy Advisor will be hired by the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, and will support the EIL Project Director at J-PAL MENA and the EIL Lead at MPED. The Deputy Advisor will facilitate the Lab’s work within MPED and across the Government of Egypt. This position will play a critical role in ensuring the Lab is responsive to government priorities, builds durable and lasting relationships with government champions, research and data analysis operates smoothly and feeds results swiftly into decisionmaking, and the EIL team is able to respond to evolving government needs. This position requires exceptional team, project, and stakeholder relationship management skills, as well as government protocol and communications expertise, technical research ability, and bringing a vision and passion for policy influence and scaling evidence-informed policies.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Ensure Government of Egypt priorities drive Egypt Impact Lab work:

• Prepare briefings for MPED leadership and staff involved in EIL, and for government champions from other EIL strategic government partner agencies
• Build and maintain relationships with EIL champions in MPED and strategic government partners, to ensure EIL research and policy work responds to government priorities
• Guide EIL staff to understand new developments in policy priorities and act quickly where evidence dissemination or generation may be possible and useful
• Ensure government processes and protocols are consistently met across EIL work in communications, coordination, events, and all collaborative efforts
• Support the EIL Team in its mission of institutionalizing an evidence-based approach to policy and scale

Research project development and implementation:

• Support partnership development and ongoing management with strategic government partners to identify top priority policies viable for impact evaluation across government
• Ensure all stakeholders are informed, involved, and supportive of ongoing impact evaluations under the lab; facilitate PI and research teams presenting to government partners on a regular basis
• Address any bottlenecks to timely and responsive research implementation and support EIL research staff

Administrative data access and supervision:

• Identify promising opportunities for existing data to inform policies
• Facilitate data access and supervise data analysis
• Ensure data analysis complies with all laws and regulations

Vision for scale:

• Identify opportunities for evidence (from Egypt or generalizable lessons from elsewhere) to inform the policy debate, and mobilize EIL resources to respond to those opportunities
• Using results from EIL evaluations, develop plans for scale and policy influence in partnership with EIL government champions

Management:

• Manage EIL team at MPED: 2 data analysts and 2 policy, training, and events associates
• Manage monitoring and reporting for EIL activities in MPED 

Support EIL Lead at MPED on all matters.

EDUCATION

• Master's degree (preferably in public policy, international development or economics). 
• A good understanding of impact evaluation methods.

SKILLS and EXPERIENCE

• At least 10 years of relevant professional experience across government and international development organizations
• Government experience: Subject matter expertise in family development, social protection, employment, and gender
• Policy design, implementation, and evaluation experience
• Proven ability to manage stakeholder relationships
• Research experience: Understanding of impact evaluations and randomized evaluations (RCTs) in particular
• Experience with academic-government partnerships
• Data analysis experience: Knowledge of Stata, R, Python
• Experience working with national data sets
• Able to identify uses of gov’t admin data to inform policy design or rapid evaluation
• Brings creativity and vision for how research and evidence can inform scale-up in government
• Management: Prior management experience will be necessary to manage EIL team at MPED of 4 associates and work collaboratively with EIL team based at AUC and PIs based around the world
• Exceptional project management and time management skills, and personnel management skills
• Communication: Excellent writing and presentation skills in Arabic and English