1 Background Information

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is mandated to lead and coordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. In more than six decades, the agency has helped tens of millions of people restart their lives. Today, a staff of over 7,000 people in more than 125 countries continues to help some 33.9 million persons of concern to UNHCR.

UNHCR’s position on refugee identity management has helped the agency to propose processes, methods, and technologies that establish and maintain the trusted identities of the people it serves. UNHCR exercises its protection role, in part, by re-establishing refugee’s lost identities and preserving them over time. As such, UNHCR has formulated a policy on biometrics which specifies that the collection of biometric data should be a standard feature of its population data management activities. Measures to define and implement UNHCR’s identity management systems have advanced considerably in the past year.

Through the Biometrics Implementation Project, the agency has defined a system to deliver a fast, intuitive, secure, durable and easy to use biometrics enrolment solution; one that will enable teams in field locations across the globe to capture biometric information of asylum seekers and refugees in varied and challenging environments. The system is designed around a central database system located in Geneva, Switzerland, with enrolments taking place in UNHCR operations around the world. Following a successful engagement with a System Integrator to pilot the tool in a UNHCR field operation in early 2015, UNHCR is ready to deploy the tool for global implementation.

The system has several key functions, including the enrolment of individuals, the capacity to later verify the same population and other functionalities related to these processes. It integrates with UNHCR’s existing population data management application (“proGres version 3” a global, distributed system of local networks) and a new iteration of the system currently under development (“proGres version 4”, which is as an online, Microsoft Dynamics CRM-based tool).

To support the deployment and ongoing support of the global biometric solution, UNHCR is now seeking an Associate Biometrics Technical Officer to plan, prepare and implement deployments, including travelling to deployment sites to train local staff, and also to ensure that the system is adequately supported from a technical perspective.

2 Purpose and Scope of the Assignment

The Associate Biometric Technical Officer provides systems and infrastructure support, including the implementation, operations, and disaster recovery aspects of network, server, and storage for the UNHCR Global Biometrics System. The incumbent supports high availability and high performance of the Global Biometrics System, with the objective of maintaining integrity and availability of the Biometrics System and the confidentiality of its assets. The incumbent is responsible for the establishment of standards and procedures for the efficient and secure operation of the Global Biometrics System, both centrally and in local deployments of the system. In addition, the incumbent is responsible for liaising with field staff, the System Integrator, and UNHCR IT resources for troubleshooting and resolving technical issues relating to the System. Lastly, the incumbent supports the deployment of the System by managing the technical building and packaging of System Deployment Kits, including pre-configuring of deployment software and proper setup and configuration of hardware components prior to deployment.

Considerable on-site deployment assistance in UNHCR field locations is a requirement of this position.

3 Key Roles / Specific Tasks

· Support the implementation of the Global Biometrics System infrastructure, with the overall aim of providing a well-engineered, secure solution which is integrated with UNHCR’s enterprise architecture.

· Provide on-site assistance with field System deployments.

· Closely monitor System capacity performance and perform optimization procedures at the application, server, network, and storage levels, to ensure the System is performing to its fullest potential.

· Work closely with security coordinators and advisers to remediate security risks through technical and procedural endeavours

· Initiate and implement architecture and design changes, while ensuring that existing infrastructure and System services are not negatively impacted.

· Ensure the safety, security, reliability and availability of the System

· Manage and monitor data replication/protection and disaster recovery strategies, to ensure the recoverability of data and systems in a timely manner and for appropriately defined periods of retention.

· Work as part of the Biometrics team to design and plan for growth, ensuring the System infrastructure and architecture are adapted to support increasing volumes of biometric records and/or increased usage, while maintaining security, reliability and availability of the System.

· Manage the installation, configuration, tuning and maintenance of the System, including a test environment for UNHCR to perform UAT and ongoing testing of new enhancements, patches, and other new functionality or features.

· Ensure the agility, reliability, security and availability of the Biometrics System virtualization infrastructure, specifically in the areas of servers, storage, and network virtualization, with the aim of providing both flexible and cost-effective solutions.

· Act as a technical expert for the Biometric System solution and work closely with field staff and the Solution provider to troubleshoot and resolve Level 3 Support cases requiring technical knowledge or intervention, including managing the deployment of System patches and upgrades.

· Provide pre-deployment support for field System deployments, including the configuration of System hardware and software, pre-loading of relevant biometric data, and other necessary tasks to provide a ready-to-go solution for field deployments.

· Create and maintain technical documentation on the System architecture and infrastructure, as well as central System configuration, optimization, and tuning techniques.

· Contribute technical expertise and knowledge to the establishment of standards and procedures for the efficient and secure operation of the System, both centrally and in field deployment scenarios.

· Develop technical briefing and/or training material on field systems management as required by field operations.

4 Qualifications and Experience

4.1 Education:

· Degree in Information Technology, Computing or related field

· Professional level vendor certifications, such as PMP, ITIL, Cisco, Microsoft, and/or F5.

4.2 Work Experience:

· 4-8 years of professional experience in technical design and support of global, distributed corporate information systems.

· Experience with Wide Area Networks and high-latency, low bandwidth links

· Experience with delivering ICT services to users in developing countries or similar UN field operations environments

4.3 Required Experience and Competencies

· Extensive experience with Microsoft Server products and systems, including SQL Server and Active Directory

· Experience delivering and supporting solutions providing high availability, high scalability, security, and disaster recovery, ideally both cloud-based and internally-hosted.

· Experience in supporting a virtualized, multi-site network, driving resiliency and versatility at the firewall, switch and load-balancing layers.

· Experience in WAN design and optimization techniques.

· Thorough understanding of enterprise system administration challenges and methodology.

· Availability to travel to UNHCR field locations

4.4 Desired Experience and Aptitudes

· Understanding of biometric identity management, including enrolment of persons and verification/matching technologies will be an advantage

· Previous experience in working for humanitarian organizations, in particular with refugees and vulnerable persons will be an advantage