DEPUTY HEAD OF OPERATIONAL CELL

M decins Sans Fronti res

As Deputy Head of Cell 1

 General -Operations Management and Support (under delegation of RECO).

• Contribute to the definition of MSF OCBA operational vision, strategies, and orientations.
• Contribute to analysing context and defining the strategy of missions within the portfolio.
• Participate in providing operational inputs to define strategies for the portfolio departments.
• Provide sparring and contrasting with the RECO on context and security strategies and their impact on the operation and on the practical security measures.
• Lead any security-related processes, as delegated by the RECO.
• Support the RECO on the constant critical review of context and humanitarian situation of assigned portfolio in order to guarantee that operational response is properly handled.
• Contribute to the analysis of the project activities through the regular visits to the projects and analysis of the project outcomes, challenges, indicators and medical statistics. Ensure monitoring and analysis of the missions reporting and other management information, organize discussions and feedback process in the portfolio and with the missions.
• Ensure the collection of information internally and externally to contribute to improve analysis and operational response in the assigned portfolio (regional context analysis, technical expertise in Dakar and the region, humanitarian affairs, etc).
• Flag serious issues and that affect program implementation and engage in proactive identification of practical solutions. Support the organization of the portfolio annual planning and regular reviews.
• Act as the portfolio focal person for specific transversal dossiers and priorities (i.e. PCA, Behavior, LHS development).
• Coordinate the internal cell activities, manage, facilitate in organizing the cell planning meetings and events. Supports the identification of appropriate technical support for program implementation and works with relevant technical referents to ensure follow up on programmatic quality issues.
• Facilitate multidisciplinary support when necessary. Works closely with other MSF OCBA departments and units (evaluations, fundraising, PCA, CHAM etc) and take responsibility of some transversal dossiers as required.
• Promote knowledge management. Ensures key operations monitoring information is collated and disseminated to the appropriate team members.
• Carry out briefings and debriefings, involving technical referents when needed, and identify individual training needs.
• Replace the DRECO when requested by the RECO.
• Assure gap-filling of senior coordination positions in his/her portfolio as needed.
• Participate actively in interdesk meetings, emergency committees, punto info s and security core group meetings, as per delegation from RECO.

Operational Support

• Act as the focal point for provision of support to OCBA mission teams (transiting or hosted) in Amman, liaising with the back-office/AMSO and the Protocol Office.
• Participate in strategic discussion within the Ops department and with the Cell 1 during the Plan of Action cycles to ensure the best possible support for the missions.
• Ensure surveillance of the region with particular focus on countries where OCBA is not present to facilitate a regional perspective of the context dynamics, quickly identifying political-economic and social indicators of change that could impact the region or MSF operations and the main humanitarian issues to support decisions-making.
• Available to support the mission teams in regular programs & emergency response in terms of strategy definition, specific tools development, ops support, M&E, context analysis, inductions, mentoring and training facilitation, etc. including gap filling.
• Actively contribute to the reflection and critical analysis on medical and humanitarian challenges, stakes and practices in order to identify potential new areas of work/dossiers to develop, in collaboration with the Directorate of Operations and relevant counterparts/colleagues.

Representation, Networking & Partnership

• Ensure an updated mapping of humanitarian actors in our countries of operations (Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Palestine later on) that could be potential partners of our operations in the region.
• Develop and maintains relationships with other humanitarian organizations, Jordanian authorities, diplomatic missions, academic institutions and experts.
• Support the identification of potential collaboration opportunities with external partners on specific topics, ensuring OCBA external engagement in Amman and proposing partnerships for operational benefits.
• Maintain and expands a network of regional analyst to (a) gain an outside-MSF perspective of contextual development and (b) be ready to engage ad-hoc expertise for work requested by mission (usually analytical work).
• Engage with the different donors and actors present in the region to identify possible exit strategies/handovers in our areas of intervention.

Information & Knowledge Management

• Act as Focal person for information flow between the Cell and the CAHM.
• Ensure good collaboration and good dynamic between the Cell and the CAHM.
• Participate in essential ops meetings e.g. programmatic Cell 1 meetings during AP and MYR and attend the Cell 1 weekly meetings, others to be identified by the RECO.
• Prepare and delivers the weekly PuntoInfo, if and when needed.

Thematic work & dossiers

• Contribute to OCBA analytical work pursuing specific areas of work of relevance for the missions via lessons learnt studies, capitalizations, desks reviews etc. Themes are identified jointly with RECO & DRECO.
• Organize events, roundtable/ workshops on topics relevant for region and Cell 1 missions.
• Lead, in collaboration with L&D, the development of various learning and experience sharing events in Amman.
• Engage in a relevant network of experts in Amman and in the region that can be consulted for deepening OCBA and Cell 1 understanding of the contexts, dynamics etc.
• Follow up specific dossiers as per delegation from the RECO.