Result of Service

Under the supervision of the Drug Control and Crime Prevention Officer (DASS), the individual contractor will undertake the following activities to further improve the workflow to collect, validate, and update individual drug seizure data: • Perform quality control on web-scrapped data and assist with processing and validation of data from other sources. • Assist in the collection, processing, validation, deduplication and standardization of IDS data (including officially reported by Member States) for upload in the DMP. • Support the anonymization of existing/historical data contained within the DMP. • Assist in maintaining workflow documentation and guidelines. • Monitor communication with Member States and keep a corresponding contact database and communication log up to date. • Assist in the search for additional sources of drug data.

Work Location

Home-based

Expected duration

02.01.25-30.06.25 (with the possibility of extension)

Duties and Responsibilities

The Drugs Monitoring Platform (DMP) is a geo-coded system for collection and dissemination of individual drug seizure data (case by case). This data is processed using artificial intelligence and statistical programming methods aimed at web scraping, cleaning and validating the data, as well as generating data outputs for dissemination. Automation and standardized processing have become critical to analyzing text-based data efficiently to address the vast quantity of unstructured data that is generated daily. For UNODC to process large quantities of critical information ‘harvested’ in the form of external content as well as data submitted to the UNODC by Member States, a combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI), as well as data processing and analytical methods need to be deployed to collect, generate, visualize and ensure the delivery of quantitative data. At the same time, efficient and regular monitoring of communication with Member States must take place to ensure regular data submissions of such data. The main purpose of this assignment is the processing of data on individual drug seizures using tools and statistical procedures to convert unstructured information harvested from open content and from other sources into consolidated outputs. The assignment will advance the work of the DMP team by improving the validation and quality of published data on drug seizures using standardized data validation techniques. This assignment will also advance the work of UNODC in increasing the capacity for faster production of larger quantities of data for empirical evidence and for the early warning threat identification potential of the DMP. The outcome of this exercise will provide the statistical evidence to track trends and patterns of drug and trafficking globally. This contractor will work under the day-to-day technical guidance of the statistics assistant and under the overall supervision of the Drug Control and Crime Prevention Officer.

Qualifications/special skills

• High School Diploma is required. • Experience in management of large datasets and data processing via statistical packages such as R, Python and Stata is required. • Good statistical reasoning, analytical and organizational skills are required. • Extensive experience in Microsoft Office package is required. • Demonstrated skills in communication and planning preferably in an international environment requiring cultural sensitivity and knowledge of different political, administrative and legal systems is required. • Experience in working with the United Nations system or similar international organization is desirable.

Languages

• English and French are the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat. For this position, fluency in English, with excellent drafting and communication skills, is required. Knowledge of another United Nations official language is an advantage.

Additional Information

Not available.

No Fee

THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.