GovStack Building Blocks are growing and our technical community is as well. Join us and contribute with your expertise in different technology domains in the preparation of technical specifications of GovStack Building Blocks.
Women are highly encouraged to express their interest!
Background:
The GovStack initiative aims to build a common understanding and technical practice on fundamental reusable and interoperable digital components, which we collectively refer to as Building Blocks. GovStack’s focus is to enable countries to kick start their digital transformation journey by adopting, deploying, and scaling digital government services. Through the digital “building blocks” approach, governments can easily create or modify their digital platforms, services, and applications while also simplifying cost, time, and resource requirements.
GovStack is a community driven initiative founded by The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Estonia (MFA Estonia), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development of the Federal Republic of Germany (BMZ), and the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) at the UN Foundation. Together, we are collaborating to accelerate digital transformation and digitalization of government services for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) particularly in low-resource settings. The collaboration establishes a global high-level framework for digital government cooperation to assist countries in learning and implementing scalable digital services and applications in a cost efficient, accelerated and integrated manner and that are built applying best software development principles and best countries’ experiences and practices.
GovStack is an extension of the earlier effort established by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) on development of an SDG Digital Investment Framework.
The collaboration is in the process of implementing a “Reference Digital Government Platform” as a “Digital Public Good” based on reusable, standards-based, secure and interoperable ICT building blocks available to the whole-of-government agencies to build and deploy their digital services and applications. Reducing the time and effort needed to introduce new digital services will allow digital services to be scaled up and upgraded in a more agile and cost-effective manner. This will facilitate also delivering solutions that best meet citizens’ needs who expect to have a seamless, consistent and connected experience across the spectrum of government digital services wherever they are and regardless of their income or literacy levels.
As technical contributor to the specifications BB you will undertake according to your contribution availability the following tasks:
- Work in close collaboration with the project technical advisory group, the steering committee and a group of 5-7 experts to develop functional requirements and technical specifications (including Open API specifications) leveraging best practices and state of the art technologies from different countries for the specific domain Building Block. This building block will be implemented as a component of a “Reference Digital Government Platform” that will be built based on the technical and functional requirements developed.
- Ensure that developed requirements are open, standards-based, secure by design and interoperable that leverage already existing standards or any existing similar requirements.
- Ensure that developed requirements will deliver the functionalities identified in a number of targeted use cases that will be provided to the group.
- Coordinate with the Architecture Working Group to ensure that the building block will integrate and fit with the Reference Architecture to comply with information exchange, security and interoperability needs and standards.
- Ensure that developed requirements could be implemented in resource-constrained environments to deliver prioritized use cases and digital government and other sectoral services at national level in developing countries.
- Adapt and adopt best practices and lessons learned from different countries that could be implemented in resource-constrained environment.
- Consult with a wider expert group to collect and incorporate feedback received from the reviewers on the developed requirements
Concrete deliverables in each working group:
- Functional requirements and technical specifications (including Open API specifications) leveraging best practices and state of the art technologies for each Building Block domain specially designed for resource-constrained environments.
Qualifications and experience:
- Advanced university degree in engineering, economics, law, education, management, telecommunications/ICTs or related fields OR education in a reputed college of advanced education with a diploma of equivalent standard to that of an advanced university degree;
- Comprehensive background and understanding in subjects related to e-governance and enterprise architecture;
- More than 7 years of experience in software development at senior level;
- Significant experience and previous engagement preferably at a national level contributing to designing, developing, implementing and maintaining the different domains included in this call for experts;
- Ability to draft and formulate functional requirements and technical specifications including Open API specifications leveraging best practices and state of the art technologies from different countries that could be implemented also in resource-constrained environment;
- Expert experience in Architectural approaches, methods and frameworks and how those could be implemented at country level;
- Demonstrated experience and strong understanding of and engagement with Open-Source Software Development;
- Experience in being part of a technical expert group with strong management experience;
- Strong understanding of how to implement digital services in resource-constrained environment and how to take into consideration that in technical requirements setting;
- Expert experience in and knowledge of applicable standards and how they can be applied for the designated area of work to ensure interoperability and security by design;
Languages: Excellent command of the English language, both written and oral.
Deadline for Expression of Interest: 31 August 2022.