Senior Information Management and Digital Transformation Expert - CDR

POSITION INFORMATION

• Organization: UNDP Lebanon Through Stars Orbit Consultants and Management Development

• VA No.: UNDP/LBN/VA26/200

• Position Title: Senior Information Management and Digital Transformation Expert - CDR

• Duty Station: Beirut

• Duration: 3 months (without exceeding 16 working days per month).

• Vacancy Date of Issue: 14 October 2026

• Vacancy Closure Date: 21 October 2026

• National or International consultancy: National consultancy

To review the full Terms of Reference (TOR), please follow link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JFJvvMi0X1CMbBMR4IhA-Zv5eASVx6wv/view?usp=drive_link

BACKGROUND

For over six years, Lebanon has been facing a prolonged economic, financial, and social crisis. The country experienced multiple shocks, including economic and financial collapse, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Beirut Port explosion, and, most recently, more than a year-long armed conflict that caused extensive damage and losses. These developments led to a severe economic contraction, depreciation of the Lebanese Pound, soaring inflation, fiscal imbalances, and a sharp decline in the real value of income, particularly affecting public sector employees. As a result, state institutions have been struggling to deliver on their mandates due to lack of financial resources and a significant loss of skilled professionals in the public sector. Against this backdrop, the capacity for evidence-based policymaking, regulation, and the delivery of priorities has been severely constrained by the crises.

The state continues to face major resource and capacity constraints in responding to the crisis, supporting post-conflict recovery, and addressing structural challenges. At the same time, there is limited visibility over development aid directed to Lebanon. Since the 2019 collapse, most donors have made funding conditional on broad reforms and progress toward an IMF agreement. As a result, only a small share of aid has been channeled through government systems. Most grants and loans remain off-budget, creating a disconnect between aid inflows and national public finance management.

The Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR), operating under the Council of Ministers, plays a central role in Lebanon’s development planning, infrastructure projects, coordination with development partners, and reconstruction efforts. The prolonged crisis has placed pressure on its human resources and operational capacity, highlighting the need to strengthen its institutional arrangements, organizational structure, and business processes to respond effectively to evolving priorities.

In response, a comprehensive Functional and Business Process Review of CDR was undertaken to assess the institution’s existing functions, organizational arrangements, business processes, governance mechanisms, and staffing requirements, and to identify measures to improve its efficiency and effectiveness. The findings and recommendations of the review have been consolidated in an implementation roadmap. The roadmap distinguishes between measures that can be implemented within the existing legal and regulatory framework, referred to as the Interim Arrangements, and reforms that require amendments to Decree No. 10941 of 2003 and Decree No. 10942 of 2003, referred to as the Target Roadmap. The implementation of these reforms is structured in stages, with the present assignment supporting measures identified for implementation under Stage 1.

The successful implementation of CDR’s digital transformation requires the establishment of a clear governance and implementation foundation before major technology investments and platform deployments can proceed. This includes defining ownership and decision-making arrangements, validating the target structure and functions of the Information Technology Department, establishing an enterprise architecture and data governance framework, and ensuring that core business processes are appropriately re-baselined to reflect the future operating model. It also requires a clear understanding of CDR’s existing technology, systems, data, infrastructure, and security environment, together with a structured approach to prioritizing investments and addressing critical gaps.

Therefore, a set of foundational measures have been identified to be undertaken during Stage 1 of the Digital Transformation Roadmap. These measures are intended to establish the rules, governance arrangements, technical and organizational architecture, inventories, and implementation baseline required to guide subsequent phases of digital transformation. They include the establishment of programme governance arrangements, validation of the target IT Department structure and enterprise architecture, definition of data governance principles, risk-based re-baselining of core processes, and preparation of the inventories, procurement strategy, terms of reference, and multi-year budgets required to move from planning to implementation. Immediate actions have also been identified to strengthen CDR’s existing backup, recovery, and cybersecurity arrangements using available tools and resources, alongside urgent remediation measures that need to be initiated.

Accordingly, UNDP seeks to recruit a Senior Information Management and Digital Transformation Expert to support CDR in delivering Stage 1 of the Digital Transformation Program. The Expert will establish the programme governance arrangements and implementation baseline, validate the target IT Department structure and enterprise architecture, define the foundations for data governance, and validate the priority use cases of the document management system and the shared workflow system. The Expert will also prepare the key inventories, procurement strategy, terms of reference, and multi-year budget requirements needed to enable subsequent digital investments and implementation.

Through this assignment, the Expert will support CDR in moving from the recommendations of the Functional and Business Process Review to a structured and implementable digital transformation programme, ensuring that the institutional, governance, process, technical, procurement, and financial foundations are in place before major digital platforms and systems proceed to implementation.

SCOPE OF WORK, RESPONSIBILITIES AND DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPOSED ANALYTICAL WORK

Under the general supervision of the UNDP Senior Economist and LPARD-P Project manager, and in close coordination with the initiative’s team leads from UNDP and CDR, the Senior Information Management and Digital Transformation Expert will be responsible for the following:

Workstream 1. Program Governance and Mobilization

• Within two weeks of mobilization, agree with CDR the process scope, the technical changes, the available working days and the resources required for this assignment, and prepare a work plan that schedules the remaining work with its owners, dependencies and costs.

• Support CDR in establishing the governance bodies of the Digital Transformation Program, comprising the ICT Steering Committee, the Data Governance Committee and the Technical Review Committee, and prepare their terms of reference, their decision rights and the responsibility matrix that assigns each decision to a named body. The terms of reference of the ICT Steering Committee cover its decisions, escalation arrangements, meeting frequency and progress reporting. Support CDR management in formally designating the interim ICT Transformation Lead and the business and technical owners of critical systems and services.

• Support the establishment of the Digital Transformation Program Office function, comprising the integrated roadmap, the dependency register, the risk register, the benefits plan, the procurement plan, the architecture decision log and the reporting calendar, and hand the instruments over in working order.

• Assist in validation of the target structure and staffing of the Information Technology Department against the functions the program requires, the existing staff and their workload, and coordinate the resulting job descriptions with the human resources workstream so that a single set of descriptions is produced. Prepare the responsibility matrix of the Department, identify staffing and skills gaps, and recommend interim assignments, training and specialist support. Formal appointments and organizational decisions remain with CDR.

Workstream 2. Architecture and Data Governance

• Develop and validate the enterprise architecture and the digital building blocks against the baseline covering the business, data, application, integration, technology and governance domains. Produce an updated high-level application and integration diagram, confirm the roles of JDE, the document management system, ArcGIS and the planned systems, and record the compatibility issues, dependencies and decisions required before procurement.

• Support in establishing the standing coordination arrangement with the Office of the Minister of State for Administrative Reform and, where relevant, with the national digital acceleration program, with a designated focal point, a defined agenda covering hosting, interoperability, digital identity and electronic signature, and a reporting line to the ICT Steering Committee.

• Prepare the initial data governance principles, covering named business data owners, authoritative systems, shared project and contract identifiers, minimum metadata, access and classification, data quality, retention and controlled sharing. Submit the principles, with the validated enterprise architecture, to the ICT Steering Committee for endorsement.

Workstream 3. Process Re-baselining and Technical Readiness

• With the business service owners, review the process maps to identify the common requirements for the document management system and the shared workflow system. Validate representative use cases, bottlenecks, document types and control needs to the level required for the terms of reference. Validate the approval thresholds and segregation of duties for these use cases, and record unresolved decisions and required authorizations. Produce a prioritized catalogue of business flows for later implementation. Full process redesign and configuration follow in later stages.

• Prepare the system, application, asset and workload inventories, including hardware, software licenses, contracts and support arrangements, and record the baseline performance indicators, or the method for collecting them where data are not yet available, against which the benefits of the program are later measured. The inventories record quantities, condition, capacity, hosted workloads, owners, dependencies, support status and renewal dates. They also assess workstation upgrade readiness and the priority server, storage, backup, scanner and power-protection needs. The workload inventory of the hosts designated for retirement, prepared by the firm contracted for the server refresh, is incorporated rather than repeated.

Workstream 4. Procurement and Funding Readiness

• Prepare the phased procurement strategy. The strategy specifies the document management system and the shared workflow system during this assignment, establishes and accepts the platform in a later stage, and configures the priority business flows in successive releases. Identify the packages, dependencies, lead times and owners, and define separate deliverables and acceptance gates for the platform foundation and for each business-flow release.

• Prepare the technical specifications, quantities and supplier pricing schedule for the justified priority hardware, infrastructure and services. Compare reuse, support renewal, repair and replacement, and include capacity, compatibility, migration, warranty, support response, acceptance testing and staff handover requirements.

• Reconcile the installed software and its use with entitlements and contracts. Verify the current vendor lifecycle and upgrade terms for operating systems, productivity tools, server and database licenses, electronic mail, endpoint protection, backup, firewalls and core applications. Identify renewals, unused entitlements and license gaps, and prepare a costed renewal and upgrade schedule.

• Prepare the terms of reference for the document management system and the shared workflow system, assessing the modernization of the existing SharePoint environment against its replacement. Define document capture, metadata, search, versioning, retention, permissions and audit trails; reusable forms, routing, approvals, notifications and monitoring; configurable roles, approval rules and audit controls; integration with JDE and identity services; and migration, hosting, licensing, training and support. Specify the platform acceptance tests and the later releases of priority business flows. The requirements preserve CDR data ownership, editable documentation, interoperability, portability and exit rights, with brand-neutral specifications where feasible.

• Prepare the indicative multi-year budget for the three-year horizon of the roadmap, separating implementation costs from recurring costs, and covering operations, maintenance, staffing, training, security reviews, licensing, hosting, support, hardware refresh, integration maintenance and contingency, and confirm the institutional and budget owner of each system before procurement.

EXPECTED OUTPUTS AND DELIVERABLES

The consultant is expected to complete the above tasks and activities within 3 months (without exceeding 16 working days per month).

INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS

• The consultant shall perform tasks with day-to-day management and the direct supervision of the designated project manager or institutional focal point.

• UNDP will be responsible for providing the contractor with all necessary materials related to the project in a timely thorough and transparent manner. UNDP will be also responsible to provide clarifications and facilitation of the work.

• Day-to-day transportation from home to office (and vice versa) shall be covered by the consultant’s own means. The Consultant will rely on his own means of communication and transportation.

DURATION OF WORK

The assigned duration for this consultancy is 3 months without exceeding 16 working days a month.

The mission is expected to commence immediately after contract signature, and to be completed by the 31st of January 2027.

Any continuation of the services beyond this period, including the second phase of support described in the Background, is subject to a separate contract or a formal amendment of this contract. Continuation depends on satisfactory performance under this contract, the continued requirement for the services and the availability of funds.

The time needed to review/complete/approve deliverables and output is (5) working days.

DUTY STATION

The consultant will work from home with regular visits to CDR - Beirut, Republic of Lebanon.

STANDARD MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• Education: Master’s degree or equivalent in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, Digital Transformation, Information Management, Engineering, Business Administration, Public Administration or a related field. Specialized focus on enterprise architecture, information systems, digital transformation, data governance, cybersecurity, or ICT management is highly preferred.

• Experience: At least 10 years of combined professional experience in: (i) designing, managing, or implementing digital transformation and information management programmes, including ICT governance, enterprise architecture, systems integration, data governance, and business-process digitization; and (ii) providing strategic and technical advice on ICT infrastructure, cybersecurity, information systems, technology procurement, and digital transformation planning, preferably in public-sector or institutional environments.

• Language: Fluency in the Arabic and English languages (both written and oral).

“The Personnel will be covered with Health insurance and Personal accident insurance; the fees shall be deducted from personnel's monthly payment”.