24. Okt 2006

Senior social science expert with ideally experience in the implementation, monitoring and/or evaluation of an international Joint Call for proposals in the field of Research and Technology Development RTD.

Duties and Responsibilities

The incumbent’s tasks are as follows:

1) Develop a scheme suitable to assess the performance of the procedures under which the Pilot Joint Call of an Era-Net (network of funding agencies and ministries) is executed.

2) Monitor the implementation of the SEE-ERA.NET Pilot Joint Call (PJC)
a. Find indicators about the background of the applicants, the composition of consortia etc for further analysis
b. Collect Data which shows how the internal performance of the SEE-ERA.NET consortium, espcially the procedures that are linked to the implementation of the Pilot Joint Call work
c. Perception & Expectation of applicants to the PJC (interviews, questionnaires, etc.)
d. Perception and expectations of the funding bodies (that fund the PJC) for a next “Real Joint Call for Proposals” ( to be implemented in 2008)

3) Process the data the successful incumbent has collected:
a. Clustering of the first application round results and analysis
b. Elaboration of statistics, graphs and reports on the data collected
c. Development of Best Practices based on the observation of the PJC

4) Draft monitoring and evaluation reports which will be submitted to the WP6 leader and the monitoring group
a. It is in the responsibility of the successful candidate to deliver a basic monitoring report of the SEE-ERA.NET Pilot Joint Call (PJC) for the first 3 (4) months in operation, showing the response to the PJC and a first estimation on the performance of the implemented procedures for handling of the proposals.
b. Final outcome shall be an evaluation report, to be delivered by October 2008, in which the overall performance of the SEE-ERA.NET Pilot Joint Call is assessed.

The successful candidates will work in an international environment and will stay in close contact with CNRS (Paris, France), SEE-ERA.NET Work Package leaders from Greece and Romania, the SEE-ERA.NET Co-ordinator (Vienna, Austria) and the SEE-ERA.NET Central Administrative Body (CAB). Basic data for his/her work will be delivered by the CAB and the SEE-ERA.NET project partners (14 European countries). He/she will continuously communicate the results and Best Practices of the PJC to CNRS, the Work Package leaders from Greece and Romania and the SEE-ERA.NET Co-ordinator.

A contract for the monitoring expert shall be drafted for the execution of the following activities and could be divided into the following periods:

The first deliverable of this first period shall be a draft Monitoring Plan at the beginning of the employment. Additionally, he/she will be in charge for data collection, processing data related to the implementation of the SEE-ERA.NET Pilot Joint Call (PJC) coordinated by the Greek partner (Athens, Greek) and supported by the CAB. Both tasks shall be performed in the time period April- June 2007.

Further monitoring activities might be foreseen in 2007 depending on:
· the draft Monitoring plan of the successful candidate
· a SEE-ERA.NET Steering Board decision on the details of the above mention plan
· the availability of additional monitoring budget (for the activities and the additional time needed of the monitoring expert)
In this case, additional months have to be calculated as well as the contract for the monitoring expert has to be updated.

As a second report the successful candidate shall deliver a short analysis of the implementation of the first phase November 2006-June 2007 including Public Relations analysis for the Call, facts about the applications and applicants as well as composition of the consortia.

The third compulsory deliverable is an evaluation report assessing the overall performance of the SEE-ERA.NET Pilot Joint Call as well as expectations and perception of applicants and the SEE-ERA.NET partners included to this call. Recommendations for the development of the next SEE-ERA.NET Joint Call shall also be drafted. This report shall be prepared in the period of July – October 2008.

Performance of other related duties to the SEE-ERA.NET project as required

Credentials and Experience

· At least a Master degree with a Social Sciences background
· Ideally experience with administration of research programmes, monitoring and implementation of quality assurance instruments
· At least two years related experience or equivalent combination of education and experience.
· Fluency in written and spoken English required
· Computer literacy (MS Office)
· Part-time contract(s) for different periods in 2007 and 2008