eGov Foundation Looking For Odisha State Lead – Government Partnerships at Bhubaneswar, Odisha, Full Time

About the Role:

This is a change agent role – part thinker, part leader and part doer, with the responsibility of getting government actors to become partners in scaling and sustaining missions by creating an enabling policy environment and commitment of public funds.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Account Management and Governance

• Align needs of the Government and ecosystem partners in the state for eGov’s Missions – Public Finance, Sanitation and Urban.
• Identify where the decisive energy of the state ecosystem lies and connect the dots to identify potential opportunities for engagement.
• Get participation from Government actors to build state capacity to manage digital transformation.
• Create the governance and legal frameworks to ensure that there is a positive impact on citizens.
• Develop and own the account plan for the state. Be accountable for delivery of outputs and outcomes for eGov programs in Odisha, adhering to timelines, and ensuring high quality work as committed to both governments and donors. Track and monitor progress to ensuring timely resolution of issues and risks in order to achieve program goals as per plan.
• Engage with internal teams to manage prioritisation and alignment critical for well coordinated project delivery as per plan. Provide regular briefing and updates to eGov senior leadership to ensure timely decisions and action.

2. Stakeholder Engagement and Management

• Ensure regular engagement with the multiple state departments, including Housing and Urban Development, Finance, Rural Department, Water, among others, in driving the account plan for the state, while serving as the primary point of contact for eGov in Odisha. Identify opportunities to fast track eGov’s impact missions through alignment with existing and new Government Policies, Programs and Missions.
• Provide policy and support to key stakeholders ensuring that eGov’s views are incorporated into statewide mission implementation efforts.
• Establish a regular cadence for eGov Leadership with the leadership of relevant departments and ministries, and support monthly/quarterly meetings with briefing notes and regular follow up on agreements with relevant officers.
• Develop and maintain healthy working relationships with senior government stakeholders of relevant departments, meeting them regularly to provide and receive feedback on program progress, identify new opportunities for systems change, and identify and address any roadblocks or escalations on priority.

3. Advocacy

• Advocacy for eGov’s existing initiatives and solutions in the state, including promotion of their adoption and scalability
• Ensure eGov is represented in the right forums, committees and groups to influence policy and decision making, and participate as eGov’s representative at these discussions
• Synthesise the organisational, ecosystem needs and policy environments to build a core narrative that catalyses collaborative action and projects on the ground
• Drive/ Support the development of advocacy material and collaterals including concept notes, proposals, RFP drafts, among others

Required Skills and Competencies:

• Robust understanding of how governments in India are structured across national, sub-national and local.
• Deep understanding of government procedures and protocols
• Analytical and strategic thinking skills to influence Government stakeholders
• Ability to collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, leveraging diverse expertise to drive problem-solving and solution development with a proactive and results-driven approach
• An advanced university degree (Master’s Level or higher) in one of the following disciplines – law, political science, international relations, economics, public policy or management from a tier 1 school.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Strong diplomacy and negotiation skills

This role is ideal for you if:

You are deeply motivated to work with Government stakeholders to improve the functioning of our public institutions. You believe that technology is a key lever to change. You have a track record of working with government stakeholders across a variety of projects and initiatives and maintaining strong relationships to enable project success.

You enjoy engaging with bureaucrats and multilateral stakeholders, around policy ideas and are unafraid to speak your mind with diplomacy and courtesy. You are able to draft policy recommendations to present a point of view using data, linkages to existing policies and mandates as well as implementation recommendations that are able to leverage existing institutional structures and programs.

You should have had about 10 years of experience with at least 5 years in a variety of government facing roles where you have had the primary responsibility for managing government relationships for your organisation.

We aspire to be an inclusive and diverse organisation and encourage qualified individuals irrespective of their religion, caste, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age, or any other dimension of identity, to apply.

About eGov Foundation

eGov Foundation is a philanthropic mission that exists to improve the ease of living for citizens. Our focus areas are urban, health, sanitation and public finance management. Our mission is to make sure that everyone can access services from their local governments with ease and transparency.

We do this through our core offering DIGIT (Digital Infrastructure for Governance, Impact and Transformation), which is a digital public good. In other words, it is an open, interoperable free-to-use platform that offers solutions for citizens, first mile employees, administrators, commercial players and policy makers. It is made available to the federal government, states & cities for them to create programs and solutions for their contexts, in keeping with the federal structure of urban governance in India. DIGIT is also offered to commercial players, so that they can leverage it to build solutions and deliver programs working with governments. In run-time this translates into states, cities and commercials players using the building blocks from DIGIT to tailor solutions and programs that meet their needs and innovating on top of it to solve emerging problems.

Over the last 18 years, eGov has partnered with more than over 3 countries, 2600 towns and cities in 16 states across India, and more than 16 crore citizens have benefited from its platform.

We offer several things that sets us apart from other opportunities:

1. The possibility of having massive societal impact. Our products and platform touches the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
2. Solving hard governance and societal challenges.
3. Work directly with central and state government leaders and other dignitaries.
4. Mentorship from world class people and rich ecosystems.

Read more about the work of eGovernments Foundation:

1. https://egov.org.in/

2. https://www.digit.org/

At eGovernments Foundation, we are committed to creating diversity, equity and inclusion. Therefore, we actively recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives to apply.