Working at CEGIS

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

Position Summary

As a Senior Program Associate (SPA) at The Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS), you will play a vital role in various projects across their entire life cycle. This includes handling concept notes, department-level diagnostics, solution identification, pilot development, pilot implementation, and providing support for scale-up initiatives. Projects typically involve frontline service delivery. Reporting to the respective Project Lead(s), you will significantly contribute to the analytical aspects of the projects, ensuring effective governance and public expenditure reforms.

The role requires meticulous attention to detail and a strong analytical mindset to track and analyze data from various sources. The individual will be responsible for conducting independent research, root cause analysis, and presenting insights for effective problem-solving. Additionally, the role involves supporting project planning and implementation, stakeholder engagement, and documentation of project progress.

Key Result Areas (KRAs):

Data Analysis and Insight Generation:

• Track and analyze data for accuracy and conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis.
• Extract important insights from complex datasets relevant to key stakeholders.
• Prioritize and address data issues promptly to support project progress and decision-making.

Research, Solution Support and Documentation:

• Independently conduct research and root cause analysis, documenting and presenting insights.
• Produce comprehensive presentations and documentation to convey critical project insights.
• Create concept notes, policy briefs, and other documentation for stakeholder communication.
• Co-creates project specific solutions by collaborating with vertical teams
• Suggests enhancements to project approach, frameworks and targeted solutions based on government context

Stakeholder Engagement and Communication:

• Evaluate project contingencies and engage with internal and external stakeholders.
• Anticipate client requirements through policy review
• Coordinate stakeholder meetings and gather feedback for project progress and decision-making
• Conduct regular stakeholder analysis through intelligence and feedback mechanisms
• Foster deep connections with stakeholders including level 2 and level 3 stakeholders and suggest innovative ideas to nurture partnerships.

Project Management:

• Plan and prioritise work plans, ensuring accountability for set timelines.
• Evaluate project contingencies incl delays, roadblocks and assist in strategies to create buy-in
• Ensure transparent and effective communication channels are maintained throughout the project lifecycle.
• Develop high-quality outputs, including reports, notes, and analyses & Ensure these deliverables meet the standards for dissemination at various forums, contributing to the project's success and visibility.
• Support project team members and manage their time effectively.
• Assist in altering project goals and outcomes based on stakeholder feedback and project progress.
• Take increasing responsibility for project management

Qualifications and Skills Needed:

• 3-6 years of experience with minimum 3 years of experience with a Masters degree or equivalent in economics, public policy, social science, or related fields from a reputable institution. High calibre Graduates will be considered
• Fluency in English and basic to intermediate proficiency in Kannada.
• Proficiency in data analysis, including strong analytical skills in tracking and analyzing data, expertise in statistical tools like STATA and Excel, and conducting independent research and root cause analysis.
• Strong problem-solving skills coupled with creative thinking aptitude, risk-taking willingness, and the ability to translate ideas into actionable plans, all complemented by adept project management abilities.
• Exceptional writing and communication abilities to create documentation and presentations to convey complex ideas to diverse audiences.
• Adaptability to excel in independent work environments and small organizational settings, demonstrating both self-motivation and the ability to work effectively with minimal supervision.
• Capacity to foster partnerships and nurture stakeholder relationships.
• Proficiency in prioritizing tasks, planning timelines, and consistently meeting deadlines.
• Knowledge management and organizational skills for maintaining project-related data and information.
• Commitment to CEGISs mission and values.

Location and Compensation

Location: The role will be based out of Bangalore. Travel to other states may be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidates experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview
• A glimpse into life at CEGIS -CEGIS Retreat 2024
• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.
• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.
• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

Position summary

Within CEGIS, the Outcome Measurement (OM) teams role is to support institutionalisation of data driven decision making by setting up the required infrastructure and technical capacity with the Planning department and relevant line departments in the State. High quality data and insights generated through this facility are expected to provide assistance to the State in goal setting, progress monitoring and strategic decision making for personnel and budget/ finance management.

Specifically, this will, among other things, entail:

• Conducting independent household level outcome measurement across various sectors such as school education, health, child nutrition, water & sanitation, jobs & unemployment, public safety and agriculture etc. to assist the government in goal setting and progress monitoring

• Measuring integrity of administrative data gathered and managed by the state machinery and suggest ways of improving its quality

• Conducting high-frequency measurement of outcomes and monitoring (of key programs and schemes) using various tools and techniques

• Generating learning notes to document project milestones and lessons for the future, and share generalizable knowledge with the wider team.

The Senior Program Associate (SPA)- Outcome Measurement will play an important role in contextualising and executing the CEGIS vision in a select state. The role will work closely with the Outcome Measurement technical team and project delivery teams in the respective State team. The Senior Program Associate will be directly reporting to the Program Manager, Outcome Measurement in the state.

Responsibilities:

Data Collection and Organization:

• Collect, organize, and monitor data from various sources ensuring accuracy and completeness.
• Validate data sources and conduct verification checks for data reliability.
• Design and administer questionnaires for data collection.

Data Maintenance and Quality Control:

• Monitor and maintain secure data repositories ensuring data integrity.
• Prioritize and address data issues promptly to support project progress.
• Maintain records of data quality control processes and identify areas for enhancement.
• Evaluate data quality, analyze trends, and interpret findings to generate critical insights.

Alignment with Project Objectives:

• Collaborate with project teams and stakeholders to align data diagnostics and analysis plans with project objectives.
• Support creation of technical notes and analysis protocols.
• Assist in defining metrics and drafting project diagnostics reports.
• Communicate project updates, findings, and recommendations to stakeholders.

Engagement and Relationship Management:

• Support managers in developing and implementing effective engagement strategies with external stakeholders.
• Share learnings and insights with government officials.
• Manage relationships with senior officials in relevant departments.
• Communicate project objectives and requirements to government counterparts.

Project Management and Leadership:

• Perform assigned tasks with minimal supervision.
• Independently create and prioritize work plans, ensuring accountability for set timelines.
• Maintain proactiveness and self-motivation while delivering project requirements.
• Manage a portion of Project Associates' time and support their onboarding and capacity building.
• Focus on self-development and deepening expertise.
• Collaborate with team members to compile and document insights and best practices.
• Create knowledge products and documents by synthesizing information from different perspectives and participate in knowledge sharing.
• Identify potential project opportunities and conduct preliminary feasibility assessments.

Qualifications:

• 3 - 5 years of experience with a Masters degree or equivalent in economics, public policy, social science or related fields from a reputed institution
• Proven experience in project management and analytical contributions.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and leadership skills.
• Experience with data cleaning and analysis of large and complex data sets and econometric analysis
• Knowledge of STATA or R (strongly preferred) or any other data analysis software preferred
• Experience in client servicing/government projects would be preferred
• Commitment to CEGIS's mission and values.

Location and Compensation

Location: The role will be based out of Bhubaneswar. Travel to other states may be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidates experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview

• A glimpse into life at CEGIS - CEGIS Retreat 2024

• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.

• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.

• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.

• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

About Personnel Management Vertical

To enhance the effectiveness of government work in India, CEGIS' Personnel Management team is pioneering a competency-driven approach to Capacity Building. This shift addresses a significant challenge wherein the existing system prioritises strict adherence to rules linked to specific offices rather than attaining the desired outcomes. While this can limit the autonomy of frontline staff and managers, potentially hindering accountability for results, the innovative approach actively seeks to empower individuals and cultivate a results-oriented culture. This approach ensures the establishment of a more impactful and accountable government framework.

Purpose statement of PM Vertical:
We believe that empowered, equipped and future-ready government officials are crucial to achieving citizen-centric service delivery.

We work with central, state, and local governments to actualise their human capital by improving human resource management practices and organisational effectiveness. Supporting governments in undertaking these reforms will result in improved execution capacity and a fulfilling career journey for government officials.

The competency-driven approach focuses on the skills, knowledge, and attitudes required for specific government roles. By prioritising these competencies, CEGIS aims to bring clarity to the work done by officials and empower them to achieve better results. This translates to a shift in accountability from simply following processes to delivering tangible outcomes.

The Personnel Management team achieves this through three key workstreams.

1. Competency-Based Recruitment: Ensures that the right people are selected for the job, bringing the necessary skills on board from the outset.
2. Competency-Based Capacity Building (Learning & Development): Equipping government officials with the ongoing training and development they need to excel in their roles.
3. Revamped Performance Management System: Evaluating and improving individual and team performance based on achieving defined goals, rather than just adherence to procedures.
   

Engagement in Odisha: The PM vertical is supporting the Gopabandhu Academy of Administration (GAA) and key state departments, including Health, Women & Child Development, Livelihoods, and Urban Development, to strengthen workforce capabilities and service delivery. A key initiative is the establishment of a Human Resource Unit (HRU), which will advise and guide Institutional Capacity Building Units (iCBUs) within line departments, standardising HR systems, driving competency-based learning, and integrating performance management reforms with platforms like iGOT Karmayogi. The initial focus will include end-to-end demonstration in the Department of Women & Child Development, targeting key positions such as Aanganwadi Workers, Aanganwadi Helpers, ICDS Supervisors, and CDPOs, to enhance service delivery in the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program.

This engagement exemplifies CEGISs approach to building a future-ready, accountable, and high-performing state workforce that contributes to the strategic goals of Viksit Odisha 2036 and Viksit Bharat 2047.

Position Summary
We are seeking a dynamic Senior Program Associate (SPA) - Project Delivery (Personnel Management), Odisha, to provide the analytical and operational horsepower to drive this ambitious reform. You will conduct diagnostics, analyse data, facilitate workshops, co-create solutions such as competency frameworks, and maintain strong engagement with state government stakeholders. Reporting to the Program Manager, you will play a crucial role in translating ideas into implementable reforms that strengthen Odishas public service delivery and contribute to the vision of Viksit Odisha 2036 and Viksit Bharat 2047.

Roles and Responsibilities

Data Management and Analytics

• Track and validate datasets from multiple sources for accuracy and reliability.
• Analyse complex qualitative and quantitative data to generate actionable insights.
• Prepare reports, dashboards, policy briefs, and presentations to support decision-making.

Research & Solutioning

• Conduct independent research, literature reviews, and root-cause analyses.
• Collaborate in the co-creation of project-specific solutions (e.g., Competency Profiles, Competency Assessment Frameworks).
• Support the Program Manager in diagnosing gaps in existing HRM systems and recommending reforms.

Project Management

• Develop and prioritise work plans, ensuring accountability for timelines with minimal supervision.
• Conduct baseline assessments, facilitate workshops, and track implementation progress.
• Identify risks, flag challenges, and adapt delivery plans to stakeholder feedback.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Map and engage relevant stakeholders across departments (e.g., WCD, Health).
• Organise meetings, consultations, and workshops to align on project milestones.
• Build and maintain strong working relationships with mid-level officials and partner organisations.

Education & Experience

1. Bachelors degree in economics, public policy, social sciences, or a related discipline from a reputable institution.
2. 3–6 years of relevant professional experience, particularly in government projects, HRM, capacity building, or project delivery.

Prior exposure to government ecosystems or multi-stakeholder initiatives is strongly preferred.

Functional Competencies

Learning and Development Design: Applies user-centric insights to design, test, and improve competency-based learning pathways and builds end-to-end L&D ecosystems

Research and Analytical Acumen: Synthesises qualitative and quantitative insights to inform decisions

Project Management: Skilled in planning, resource allocation, risk management, documentation and delivering results aligned with organisational objectives

Writing and Documentation: Creates high-quality reports, frameworks, and learning materials with clarity and structure.

Professional and Leadership Competencies

Ownership: Exhibits self-motivation and proactivity in managing multiple tasks, timelines, and responsibilities, ensuring accountability for high-quality results.

Learning Orientation: Seeks feedback, reflects on gaps, and continuously works to improve effectiveness.

Relationship Building: Builds trust with stakeholders and fosters collaboration and alignment through clear, consistent engagement.

Cultural Fitment

• Embrace an open, diverse, and positive work environment.
• Proactive, self-motivated, and able to manage multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment.
• Work collaboratively with multiple teams at horizontal and vertical levels in a result-oriented manner.
• Proactively seek and give feedback on the tasks handled by the team, and proactively initiate action when they see a problem.
• Practices proactive reflection and continuous improvement of behaviours and actions.

Notes

1. The role will be based out of Bhubaneswar
2. Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales, depending on the candidates experience levels.
   

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview
• A glimpse into life at CEGIS - CEGIS Retreat 2024
• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.
• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.
• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

Position Summary

Within CEGIS, the Outcome Measurement (OM) teams role is to support institutionalisation of data driven decision making by setting up the required infrastructure and technical capacity with the Planning department and relevant line departments in the State. High quality data and insights generated through this facility are expected to provide assistance to the State in goal setting, progress monitoring and strategic decision making for personnel and budget/ finance management.

Specifically, this will, among other things, entail:

• Conducting independent household level outcome measurement across various sectors such as school education, health, child nutrition, water & sanitation, jobs & unemployment, public safety and agriculture etc. to assist the government in goal setting and progress monitoring

• Measuring integrity of administrative data gathered and managed by the state machinery and suggest ways of improving its quality

• Conducting high-frequency measurement of outcomes and monitoring (of key programs and schemes) using various tools and techniques

• Generating learning notes to document project milestones and lessons for the future, and share generalizable knowledge with the wider team.

The Senior Program Associate (SPA)- Outcome Measurement will play an important role in contextualising and executing the CEGIS vision in a select state. The role will work closely with the Outcome Measurement technical team and project delivery teams in the respective State team. The Senior Program Associate will be directly reporting to the Program Manager, Outcome Measurement in the state.

Responsibilities:

Data Collection and Organization:

• Collect, organize, and monitor data from various sources ensuring accuracy and completeness.
• Validate data sources and conduct verification checks for data reliability.
• Design and administer questionnaires for data collection.

Data Maintenance and Quality Control:

• Monitor and maintain secure data repositories ensuring data integrity.
• Prioritize and address data issues promptly to support project progress.
• Maintain records of data quality control processes and identify areas for enhancement.
• Evaluate data quality, analyze trends, and interpret findings to generate critical insights.

Alignment with Project Objectives:

• Collaborate with project teams and stakeholders to align data diagnostics and analysis plans with project objectives.
• Support creation of technical notes and analysis protocols.
• Assist in defining metrics and drafting project diagnostics reports.
• Communicate project updates, findings, and recommendations to stakeholders.

Engagement and Relationship Management:

• Support managers in developing and implementing effective engagement strategies with external stakeholders.
• Share learnings and insights with government officials.
• Manage relationships with senior officials in relevant departments.
• Communicate project objectives and requirements to government counterparts.

Project Management and Leadership:

• Perform assigned tasks with minimal supervision.
• Independently create and prioritize work plans, ensuring accountability for set timelines.
• Maintain proactiveness and self-motivation while delivering project requirements.
• Manage a portion of Project Associates' time and support their onboarding and capacity building.
• Focus on self-development and deepening expertise.
• Collaborate with team members to compile and document insights and best practices.
• Create knowledge products and documents by synthesizing information from different perspectives and participate in knowledge sharing.
• Identify potential project opportunities and conduct preliminary feasibility assessments.

Qualifications:

• 3 - 5 years of experience with a Masters degree or equivalent in economics, public policy, social science or related fields from a reputed institution
• Proven experience in project management and analytical contributions.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and leadership skills.
• Experience with data cleaning and analysis of large and complex data sets and econometric analysis
• Knowledge of STATA or R (strongly preferred) or any other data analysis software preferred
• Experience in client servicing/government projects would be preferred
• Commitment to CEGIS's mission and values.

Location and Compensation

Location: The role will be based out of Delhi/Karnataka/Chennai/Hyderabad. Travel to other states may be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidates experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview

• A glimpse into life at CEGIS - CEGIS Retreat 2024

• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.

• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.

• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.

• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

Overview:

Within CEGIS, the Public Revenue/Taxation/Public Finance teams role is to support institutionalisation of data driven decision making by setting up the required infrastructure and technical capacity with the relevant line departments. High quality data and insights generated are expected to aid the State in goal setting, progress monitoring and strategic decision making. In addition, as a sectoral workstream, specific objectives are furthered by testing and institutionalising interventions in the form of Micro RCTs with the larger goal of improving tax compliance and augmenting revenues.

Position Summary

​​As a Senior Program Associate (SPA) at The Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS), you will play a vital role in various projects across their entire life cycle. This includes handling concept notes, department-level diagnostics, solution identification, pilot development, pilot implementation, and providing support for scale-up initiatives, all while significantly contributing to the analytical aspects of the projects. Typically, these projects shall be anchored with the Departments of Finance and Planning and may involve engagements with frontline service delivery departments (e.g., local governance, nutrition, education etc.). You'll ensure effective governance and public expenditure reforms by meticulously tracking and analyzing data from various sources, conducting independent research and root cause analysis, and presenting insights for effective problem-solving. Additionally, you'll support project planning and implementation, stakeholder engagement, and documentation of project progress and knowledge management under the supervision of respective Project Leads.

Key Result Areas (KRAs):

• Data Analysis and Insight Generation:
• Engage with departments to collect relevant data, develop quantitative and qualitative tools/templates, administer these tools, and support in cleaning and organizing the data.
• Track and analyze data for accuracy and conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis.
• Extract important insights from complex datasets relevant to key stakeholders.
• Prioritize and address data issues promptly to support project progress and decision-making.
• Ensure compliance with internal data management and sec
  
• Research and Documentation:
• Independently conduct research and root cause analysis, documenting and presenting insights.
• Produce comprehensive presentations and documentation to convey critical project insights.
• Collaborate with other teams to jointly develop and implement technical solutions tailored to specific project requirements as is suitable for the states context.
• Create concept notes, policy briefs, and other documentation for stakeholder communication.
  
• Stakeholder Engagement and Communication:
• Evaluate project contingencies and engage with internal and external stakeholders.
• Assist the project team in collecting critical information and departmental updates by maintaining regular communication with government counterparts, partner organisations, and other relevant stakeholders.
• Coordinate stakeholder meetings and gather feedback for project progress and decision-making.
• Foster deep connections with stakeholders and suggest innovative ideas to nurture partnerships.
  
• Project Management & Delivery:
• Understand project requirements, coordinate with internal teams and external partners for delivery excellence.
• Support comparison and assessment of different strategies, frameworks, and solutions for effective decision-making.
• Plan and prioritise work plans, ensuring accountability for set timelines.
• Assist in altering project goals and outcomes based on stakeholder feedback and project progress, flag project risks.
• Support knowledge management processes to help achieve project and organisational objectives (for example, assisting in maintaining a project-based knowledge repository).

Qualifications:

• A Masters degree or equivalent preferred in economics, public policy, social science or related fields from a reputed institution, bright graduate applicants may be considered.
• 3-6 years of experience. Minimum 3 years of work experience in India with organisations working in related fields of work i.e., research agencies, policy think-tanks, government or private sector organisations working on government advisory or consulting
• Proven experience in project management and analytical contributions.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and leadership skills.
• Experience with data cleaning and analysis of large and complex data sets and econometric analysis
• Knowledge of STATA or R (strongly preferred) or any other data analysis software preferred
• Experience in client servicing/government projects would be preferred
• Report writing and presentations with proficiency in MS Office and other tools

Personal Characteristics and Desired Qualities

• Fluency in English and proficiency in XXX.
• Excellent problem-solving skills, with an aptitude for research to formulate solutions
• Excellent writing and communication skills (ability to communicate complex ideas in a meaningful way and across different audiences)
• Ability to set priorities, plan timelines and meet deadlines
• Ability to think creatively, willing to take risks, to experiment with new ideas and to turn ideas into action
• High ability to collaborate and actively listen to others, understanding and valuing others views
• Operating style suited to working independently and in a small organization setting, where teamwork and resourcefulness are highly valued

Location and Compensation

Location: The role will be based out of Chennai. Travel to other states may be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidates experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview
• A glimpse into life at CEGIS - CEGIS Retreat 2024
• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.
• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.
• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

About the projects in Uttar Pradesh:
CEGIS has partnered with the Government of Uttar Pradesh to strengthen governance systems and enable data-driven decision-making in the states Finance and Planning departments. The partnership supports Uttar Pradesh's strategic vision through initiatives to establish a Financial Analytics Unit, strengthen data systems for improved planning and service delivery, and build institutional and personnel capacity aligned with Mission Karmayogi principles. This collaboration aims to embed evidence-based reforms and enhance outcomes across the states core development priorities.

Position Summary

The Senior Program Associate (SPA) will play an important role in contextualising and executing the CEGIS vision in Government of Uttar Pradesh. The role will collaborate with other CEGIS teams (Outcome Measurement, Public Finance; Personnel Management; Sectoral teams). The Senior Program Associate will be directly reporting to the respective Program Manager in the State.

Roles and Responsibilities

Data Collection and Organization:

• Collect, organize, and monitor data from various sources ensuring accuracy and completeness.
• Validate data sources and conduct verification checks for data reliability.
• Design and administer questionnaires for data collection.

Data Maintenance and Quality Control:

• Monitor and maintain secure data repositories ensuring data integrity.
• Prioritize and address data issues promptly to support project progress.
• Maintain records of data quality control processes and identify areas for enhancement.
• Evaluate data quality, analyze trends, and interpret findings to generate critical insights.

Alignment with Project Objectives:

• Collaborate with project teams and stakeholders to align data diagnostics and analysis plans with project objectives.
• Support creation of technical notes and analysis protocols.
• Assist in defining metrics and drafting project diagnostics reports.
• Communicate project updates, findings, and recommendations to stakeholders.

Engagement and Relationship Management:

• Support managers in developing and implementing effective engagement strategies with external stakeholders.
• Share learnings and insights with government officials.
• Manage relationships with senior officials in relevant departments.
• Communicate project objectives and requirements to government counterparts.

Project Management and Leadership:

• Perform assigned tasks with minimal supervision.
• Independently create and prioritize work plans, ensuring accountability for set timelines.
• Maintain proactiveness and self-motivation while delivering project requirements.
• Manage a portion of Project Associates' time and support their onboarding and capacity building.
• Focus on self-development and deepening expertise.
• Collaborate with team members to compile and document insights and best practices.
• Create knowledge products and documents by synthesizing information from different perspectives and participate in knowledge sharing.
• Identify potential project opportunities and conduct preliminary feasibility assessments.

Required Qualifications, Skills, and Abilities:

• 3 - 6 years of experience with a Masters degree or equivalent in economics, public policy, social science or related fields from a reputed institution
• Proven experience in project management and analytical contributions.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and leadership skills.
• Experience with data cleaning and analysis of large and complex data sets and econometric analysis
• Knowledge of STATA or R (strongly preferred) or any other data analysis software preferred
• Experience in client servicing/government projects would be preferred
• Commitment to CEGIS's mission and values.

Location and Compensation

Location: The role will be based out of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Travel to other states may be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidate's experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview
• A glimpse into life at CEGIS -CEGIS Retreat 2024
• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.
• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.
• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

Overview:

CEGIS work under the theme of State and Market (SAM) focuses on improving state capacity for better management of State interfaces with the larger market, especially in service delivery functions. The focus of the SAM team is to identify points of interaction between the Government and the Private Sector and to support States in reducing the frictions in such transactions. We work with State Governments in three capacities:

• Procurement: Improving procurement policies, processes, and decisions to improve value for money in public procurement
• Policy: Development of sectoral policy to incentivize cost effective service delivery, through the most appropriate models
• Regulation: Assessment of market failures and design and execution of proportionate regulatory interventions to address these

​Of the above, currently the Procurement area dominates the portfolio of the SAM team with strong traction from multiple States. While the above work will be focused on CEGIS core sectors (education, health, nutrition, local governance), some streams like procurement have a broader sectoral coverage. Our projects will involve elements of research and analytics, market efficiency assessment, regulatory capacity assessment, and active support to Finance and line departments in reforms adoption. This will involve both quantitative and qualitative skills. This will, among other things, entail:

• Conducting market assessments including identification of market failures (information asymmetry, market power, externalities, deadweight losses)
• Conducting assessment of State capacity on policy, provision and regulation, through benchmarking, assessment of rules, systems and procedures, and primary interactions with key stakeholders
• Quantitative assessments of cost effectiveness across different models of service delivery, including use of methods such as Value for Money assessments (VfM) and Public Sector Comparator (PSC) analysis
• Interactions with non-state actors (for Profits and Civil Society Organisations) to assess their offerings, constraints and operating ecosystem.
• Developing deep understanding of the Procurement Systems and practices across the States in which CEGIS has presence, as well as global/local best practices.

Position Summary:

The Senior Program Associate - SAM is required to play a vital role in executing the CEGIS vision across States. The role will involve working closely with the other team members and the relevant State teams, and collaborating with the other CEGIS teams.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Supporting the State Governments in Implementing/Strengthening Digital Tools in Project Planning, Procurement systems, & Contract Management.
• Work on Projects in improving the Capital Expenditure process of the State Governments
• Develop understanding of Procurement Acts & Policies in the country
• Develop understanding on Policy & Regulatory aspects of CEGIS Core Sectors
• Coordinate with the relevant Government officials for smooth implementation of interventions on which CEGIS is supporting the State Government.

Project Management and Delivery:

• Understand project requirements, coordinate with internal teams and external partners for delivery excellence.
• Plan and prioritise work plans, ensuring accountability for set timelines.
• Assist in altering project goals and outcomes based on stakeholder feedback and project progress, flag project risks.

Data Analysis and Insight Generation:

• Engage with departments to collect relevant data, develop quantitative and qualitative tools/templates, administer these tools, and support in cleaning and organizing the data.
• Track and analyze data for accuracy and conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis.
• Extract important insights from complex datasets relevant to key stakeholders.
• Prioritize and address data issues promptly to support project progress and decision-making.
• Ensure compliance with internal data management and security protocols

Research & Documentation:

• Research on problem statements identified by the State Governments. Independently conduct research and root cause analysis, documenting and presenting insights.
• Produce comprehensive presentations and documentation to convey critical project insights.
• Support in development of Knowledge Outputs for SAM and the Company.
• Support in developing concept notes, policy briefs, and other documentation for stakeholder communication.
• Create Internal reports/documents for projects under execution for training and reporting purposes as well as to create institutional memory on projects.

Stakeholder Engagement and Communication:

• Prepare detailed presentations and documents for stakeholders.
• Assist the project team in collecting critical information and departmental updates by maintaining regular communication with government counterparts, partner organisations, and other relevant stakeholders.
• Coordinate stakeholder meetings and gather feedback for project progress and decision-making.
• Foster deep connections with stakeholders and suggest innovative ideas to nurture partnerships.

Collaboration and Partnerships:

• Build and maintain relationships internally and externally.
• Collaborate with academics and stakeholders for research adaptation.
• Work closely with senior academics and government stakeholders to tailor procurement/regulatory/policy design and implementation protocols to local contexts.

Education and Experience:

• Masters degree or equivalent in economics, statistics, public policy, management, engineering, social science, or related fields from a reputed institution
• Minimum 3 years of relevant work experience in Government Advisory, Social Impact Sector, including research, basic quantitative analysis, experience of working with Government stakeholders is preferable
• Experience in at least one of the areas of public procurement or service regulation is highly desirable
• Knowledge of STATA or R (strongly preferred) or any other data analysis software preferred.
• Sectoral exposure to one or more of the following - education and skills, healthcare, infrastructure, and local government is desirable.

Required Skills, Characteristics and Qualities:

• Knowledge of Procurement processes and experience in use of/ advising Public Sector entities in the use of e-procurement platform(s).
• Fluency in English and basic to intermediate proficiency in one of the South Indian regional languages is an added benefit.
• Excellent problem-solving and strategic thinking skills, strong research aptitude ability to analyse complex quantitative and qualitative data and formulate solutions.
• Excellent writing and communication skills (ability to communicate complex ideas in a meaningful way and across different audiences) within and outside the organisation
• Strong planning and organisational skills, and an ability to be able to set priorities, plan timelines and meet deadlines.
• Operating style suited to working independently and in a small-organisation setting, where teamwork and resourcefulness are highly valued.
• High ability to collaborate and actively listen to others, understanding and valuing others views.
• Versatility to be comfortable taking on different projects and quickly dive into new sectors.

Location and Compensation

Location: The role will be based out of Chennai. Travel to other states may be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidates experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview
• A glimpse into life at CEGIS - CEGIS Retreat 2024
• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.
• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.
• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

Position Overview

As a Senior Program Associate (SPA) at The Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS), you will play a vital role in various projects across their entire life cycle. This includes handling concept notes, department-level diagnostics, solution identification, pilot development, pilot implementation, and providing support for scale-up initiatives. Projects typically involve frontline service delivery. Reporting to the respective Project Lead(s), you will significantly contribute to the analytical aspects of the projects, ensuring effective governance and public expenditure reforms.

The role requires meticulous attention to detail and a strong analytical mindset to track and analyze data from various sources. The individual will be responsible for conducting independent research, root cause analysis, and presenting insights for effective problem-solving. Additionally, the role involves supporting project planning and implementation, stakeholder engagement, and documentation of project progress.

Key Result Areas (KRAs):

Data Analysis and Insight Generation:

• Track and analyze data for accuracy and conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis.

• Extract important insights from complex datasets relevant to key stakeholders.

• Prioritize and address data issues promptly to support project progress and decision-making.

Research and Documentation:

• Independently conduct research and root cause analysis, documenting and presenting insights.

• Produce comprehensive presentations and documentation to convey critical project insights.

• Create concept notes, policy briefs, and other documentation for stakeholder communication.

• Co-creates project specific solutions by collaborating with vertical teams

• Suggests enhancements to project approach, frameworks and targeted solutions based on government context

Stakeholder Engagement and Communication:

• Evaluate project contingencies and engage with internal and external stakeholders.

• Anticipate client requirements through policy review

• Coordinate stakeholder meetings and gather feedback for project progress and decision-making.

• Foster deep connections with stakeholders including level 2 and level 3 stakeholders and suggest innovative ideas to nurture partnerships.

Project Management:

• Plan and prioritize work plans, ensuring accountability for set timelines.

• Evaluate project contingencies incl delays, roadblocks and assist in strategies to create buy-in

• Ensure transparent and effective communication channels are maintained throughout the project lifecycle.

• Develop high-quality outputs, including reports, notes, and analyses & Ensure these deliverables meet the standards for dissemination at various forums, contributing to the project's success and visibility.

• Support project team members and manage their time effectively.

• Assist in altering project goals and outcomes based on stakeholder feedback and project progress.

• Take increasing responsibility for project management
  
  

Documentation and Knowledge Creation & Facilitation:`

• Document and disseminate domain specific information that enables project success.

• Create original knowledge pieces like blogs, concept notes, work flows etc.

• Maintain Project based knowledge repository and contribute to other Knowledge management processes.

Qualifications and Skills Needed:

• 3-6 years of experience with minimum 3 years of experience with a Masters degree or equivalent in economics, public policy, social science, or related fields from a reputable institution. High calibre Graduates will be considered.
• Fluency in English and basic to intermediate proficiency in Telugu.
• Proficiency in data analysis, including strong analytical skills in tracking and analyzing data, expertise in statistical tools like STATA and Excel, and conducting independent research and root cause analysis.
• Strong problem-solving skills coupled with creative thinking aptitude, risk-taking willingness, and the ability to translate ideas into actionable plans, all complemented by adept project management abilities.
• Exceptional writing and communication abilities to create documentation and presentations to convey complex ideas to diverse audiences.
• Adaptability to excel in independent work environments and small organizational settings, demonstrating both self-motivation and the ability to work effectively with minimal supervision.
• Capacity to foster partnerships and nurture stakeholder relationships.
• Proficiency in prioritizing tasks, planning timelines, and consistently meeting deadlines.
• Knowledge management and organizational skills for maintaining project-related data and information.
• Commitment to CEGISs mission and values.

Location and Compensation

Location: The role will be based out of Hyderabad. Travel to other states may be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidates experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview
• A glimpse into life at CEGIS - CEGIS Retreat 2024
• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.
• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.
• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

About the projects in Uttar Pradesh:
CEGIS has partnered with the Government of Uttar Pradesh to strengthen governance systems and enable data-driven decision-making in the states Finance and Planning departments. The partnership supports Uttar Pradesh's strategic vision through initiatives to establish a Financial Analytics Unit, strengthen data systems for improved planning and service delivery, and build institutional and personnel capacity aligned with Mission Karmayogi principles. This collaboration aims to embed evidence-based reforms and enhance outcomes across the states core development priorities.

Position Summary

The Senior Program Associate (SPA) will play an important role in contextualising and executing the CEGIS vision in the Government of Uttar Pradesh. This includes handling concept notes, department-level diagnostics, solution identification, pilot development, pilot implementation, and providing support for scale-up initiatives. Projects typically involve frontline service delivery. Reporting to the respective Program Manager(s), you will significantly contribute to the analytical aspects of the projects, ensuring effective governance and public expenditure reforms.

Roles and Responsibilities

Data Analysis and Insight Generation:

• Track and analyze data for accuracy and conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis.
• Extract important insights from complex datasets relevant to key stakeholders.
• Prioritize and address data issues promptly to support project progress and decision-making.

Research and Documentation

• Independently conduct research and root cause analysis, documenting and presenting insights.
• Produce comprehensive presentations and documentation to convey critical project insights.
• Create concept notes, policy briefs, and other documentation for stakeholder communication.
• Co-creates project specific solutions by collaborating with vertical teams
• Suggests enhancements to project approach, frameworks and targeted solutions based on government context

Stakeholder Engagement and Communication:

• Evaluate project contingencies and engage with internal and external stakeholders.
• Anticipate client requirements through policy review
• Coordinate stakeholder meetings and gather feedback for project progress and decision-making.
• Foster deep connections with stakeholders including level 2 and level 3 stakeholders and suggest innovative ideas to nurture partnerships.

Project Management:

• Plan and prioritise work plans, ensuring accountability for set timelines.
• Evaluate project contingencies incl delays, roadblocks and assist in strategies to create buy-in
• Ensure transparent and effective communication channels are maintained throughout the project lifecycle.
• Develop high-quality outputs, including reports, notes, and analyses & Ensure these deliverables meet the standards for dissemination at various forums, contributing to the project's success and visibility.
• Support project team members and manage their time effectively.
• Assist in altering project goals and outcomes based on stakeholder feedback and project progress.
• Take increasing responsibility for project management

Documentation and Knowledge Creation & Facilitation:`

• Document and disseminate domain specific information that enables project success.
• Create original knowledge pieces like blogs, concept notes, work flows etc.
• Maintain Project based knowledge repository and contribute to other Knowledge management processes.

Required Qualifications, Skills and Abilities:

• 3-6 years of experience with minimum 3 years of experience with a Masters degree or equivalent in economics, public policy, social science, or related fields from a reputable institution. High calibre Graduates will be considered.
• Fluency in English and basic to intermediate proficiency in Hindi..
• Proficiency in data analysis, including strong analytical skills in tracking and analyzing data, expertise in statistical tools like STATA and Excel, and conducting independent research and root cause analysis.
• Strong problem-solving skills coupled with creative thinking aptitude, risk-taking willingness, and the ability to translate ideas into actionable plans, all complemented by adept project management abilities.
• Exceptional writing and communication abilities to create documentation and presentations to convey complex ideas to diverse audiences.
• Adaptability to excel in independent work environments and small organizational settings, demonstrating both self-motivation and the ability to work effectively with minimal supervision.
• Capacity to foster partnerships and nurture stakeholder relationships.
• Proficiency in prioritizing tasks, planning timelines, and consistently meeting deadlines.
• Knowledge management and organizational skills for maintaining project-related data and information.
• Commitment to CEGISs mission and values.
  

Location and Compensation

Location: The role will be based out of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Travel to other states may be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidate's experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview
• A glimpse into life at CEGIS -CEGIS Retreat 2024
• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.
• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.
• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

About Personnel Management (PM) Vertical

We believe that empowered, equipped and future-ready public officials are crucial to achieving citizen-centric service delivery.

We work with central, state, and local governments to actualise their human capital by improving human resource (HR) management practices and organisational effectiveness using a competency-driven approach. We believe that supporting governments in undertaking these reforms will result in improved execution capacity and a fulfilling career journey for public officials.

The competency-driven approach focuses on the knowledge, skills, and attitude required for specific government roles. By undertaking this approach, CEGIS aims to bring clarity to the work done by officials and empower them to achieve better results. This translates to a shift in accountability – from simply following processes to delivering tangible outcomes.

The Personnel Management team achieves this through three key workstreams.

1. Competency-Based Recruitment: Ensuring the right people are selected for the job and bringing the necessary competencies (knowledge, skills, and attitude) on board from the outset.
2. Competency-Based Learning & Development: Equipping public officials with the ongoing training and development they need to excel in their roles.
3. Performance Management Systems: Evaluating and improving individual and team performance based on achieving defined goals, not just by adherence to procedures.

Through these efforts, the Personnel Management team strives to bring enhanced clarity and effectiveness to government work in India. By empowering officials with the right skills and holding them accountable for achieving desired outcomes, CEGIS is paving the way for a more efficient and impactful government service.

Project and Position Summary

We are seeking a SPA, Solution Delivery, Government of India (GoI) initiative to join our team in driving transformative, competency-based capacity building initiatives for public officials across India. The role involves providing analytical and operational support in piloting and implementing innovative solutions within the state/ MDO that help bridge competency gaps and strengthen HR practices.

The ideal candidate brings a strong understanding of competency frameworks and their applications in learning and development. You will be responsible for conducting diagnostics, analysing data, developing reports and co-creating scalable solutions with government stakeholders.

This role offers a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of policy and practice, collaborating closely with senior public officials, donors, and implementation partners to shape the future of HR and governance reform in India. Its an ideal opportunity for someone who thrives in dynamic environments and seeks to create measurable, lasting impact in public service delivery.

Roles and Responsibilities

Research and Solutioning

• Conducts independent research, literature reviews, and root-cause analyses to identify L&D gaps within an MDO
• Conducts primary research (interviews, FGDs, surveys) with public officials to map roles, responsibilities, activities, associated competencies and relevant learning opportunities
• Collaborates in the co-creation of project-specific solutions to drive the implementation of capacity-building processes (role-competency mapping, Competency Assessment instruments, assessment reports, trainings/ workshops/ courses) by offering technical support
• Supports the Program Manager in diagnosing gaps in broader HRM systems and recommending innovative reforms

Data Management and Analysis

• Tracks and validates datasets from multiple sources for accuracy and reliability
• Analyses complex qualitative and quantitative data (such as data from training needs and competency gap assessments, course engagement and competency growth patterns) to generate actionable insights to inform targeted capacity building efforts
• Prepares reports, dashboards, policy briefs, and presentations to support decision-making
• Maintains and updates the database of competencies, assessments, and courses deployed within an MDO

Project and Knowledge Management

• Develops and prioritises work plans, ensuring accountability for timelines with minimal supervision and tracks project progress
• Supports the design, prototyping, and implementation of competency-based solutions across projects and state engagements
• Develops knowledge tools, training materials, and process guides based on field learnings to facilitate implementation
• Documents and codifies learnings, contributing to continuous improvement and institutional knowledge within the team

Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement

• Supports the team in identifying, engaging, and coordinating with key stakeholders across the MDO to enable effective solution delivery
• Facilitates communication and knowledge exchange by organising meetings, preparing and delivering presentations, briefs, and updates to internal and external stakeholders
• Builds and maintains productive working relationships with stakeholders, partner organisations and the team by ensuring regular interactions, capturing feedback, and identifying opportunities for deeper collaboration

Education and Experience

• Bachelors degree in economics, public policy, social sciences, or a related discipline from a reputable institution
• 3-6 years of relevant professional experience, particularly in HRM, capacity building, or project management
• Prior exposure to government ecosystems or multi-stakeholder initiatives is strongly preferred

Required Competencies

The competencies required to perform the above-mentioned roles and responsibilities are as follows:

Domain Competencies

Public Administration Understanding: Demonstrates basic understanding of India's governance, policy landscape, data sources, and service rules

Competency-based Learning and Development: Understands the components of the learning and development (L&D) cycle and uses competency to support L&D programs

Functional Competencies

Research & Analytical Acumen: Ability to conduct research, interpret patterns, and synthesise information into findings

Data Literacy & Analysis: Accurately interprets data, identifies patterns, and develops reports

Project Management: Supports project delivery by drafting plans, coordinating resources, tracking timely deliverables, and maintaining documentation. Communication and Knowledge Practice: Communicates and documents ideas clearly across formats

Behavioural Competencies

Leading Self: Takes ownership of tasks and ensures timely completion

Learning Orientation: Seeks feedback, applies guidance, and adapts work practices to evolving needs

Collaboration: Keen on building relationships, sharing responsibilities, and contributing effectively to team goals

Note

• The role will be based in New Delhi
• Proficiency in Hindi and English
• Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales, depending on the candidates experience levels
• CEGIS is an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against based on race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, ancestry, or national or ethnic origin.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview
• A glimpse into life at CEGIS - CEGIS Retreat 2024
• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.
• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.
• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

About Personnel Management (PM) Vertical

We believe that empowered, equipped and future-ready public officials are crucial to achieving citizen-centric service delivery.

We work with central, state, and local governments to actualise their human capital by improving human resource management (HRM) practices and organisational effectiveness using a competency-driven approach. We believe that supporting governments in undertaking these reforms will result in improved execution capacity and a fulfilling career journey for public officials.

The competency-driven approach focuses on the knowledge, skills, and attitude required for specific government roles. By undertaking this approach, CEGIS aims to bring clarity to the work done by officials and empower them to achieve better results. This translates to a shift in accountability from simply following processes to delivering tangible outcomes.

The Personnel Management team achieves this through three key workstreams.

1. Competency-Based Recruitment: Ensuring the right people are selected for the job and bringing the necessary competencies (knowledge, skills, and attitude) on board from the outset.
2. Competency-Based Learning & Development: Equipping public officials with the ongoing training and development they need to excel in their roles.
3. Performance Management Systems: Evaluating and improving individual and team performance based on achieving defined goals, not just by adherence to procedures.

Through these efforts, the Personnel Management team strives to bring enhanced clarity and effectiveness to government work in India. By empowering officials with the right skills and holding them accountable for achieving desired outcomes, CEGIS is paving the way for a more efficient and impactful government service.

Project and Position Summary

We are seeking a Senior Program Associate, Solution Development, to join our team in designing initiatives towards strengthening competency-based human resource practices for public officials. The role involves providing analytical and operational support in solution design, contextualisation, implementation and codification, by building frameworks, tools, and knowledge products that enable systemic reform in public sector recruitment, L&D and performance management systems.

The ideal candidate brings a strong ability to synthesise research and analyse datasets by reviewing policies and global best practices to translate evidence and insights into actionable models that can be piloted, refined, and institutionalised with MDOs.

This role offers a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of policy and design thinking, collaborating closely with domain experts, public officials and partner institutions, to convert concepts into usable, scalable, and contextually relevant solutions that drive systemic improvement in public service delivery and strengthen institutional capacity over time. It is ideal for individuals who thrive on intellectual rigour, creative problem-solving, and the pursuit of long-term institutional reform.

Roles and Responsibilities

Research and Solutioning (Competency-based HRM)

• Conducts literature reviews, policy analysis, benchmarking exercises, and diagnostic studies, drawing on national frameworks (such as Mission Karmayogi), policies and global standards to formulate problem statements in the existing human resource practices (recruitment, learning and development and PMS)
• Synthesises findings from research, data, and field insights to create evidence-based recommendations and concept notes.
• Assists in the development of recruitment-related tools, competency framework, training needs assessments, and the design of targeted learning and development interventions, and their implications on MDOs performance
• Supports the conceptualisation and prototyping of frameworks, workflows, tools, and models to facilitate the pilots, iterations and large-scale implementation of HR practices within an MDO
• Monitors policy updates, regulatory changes, and trends in HR, to ensure solutions are scalable, contextually appropriate, and aligned with evolving government priorities

Data Management and Analysis

• Tracks and validates datasets from multiple sources for accuracy and reliability
• Analyses complex qualitative and quantitative data to generate actionable insights
• Prepares reports, dashboards, policy briefs, and presentations to support decision-making
• Maintains and updates the database of competencies, assessments, and courses, and assists with the onboarding of partners as needed

Project and Knowledge Management

• Develops work plans, ensuring accountability for timelines with minimal supervision and tracks completion of project milestones
• Develops knowledge tools, templates, training materials, and process guides to facilitate effective dissemination and implementation of the solution
• Supports the state delivery teams in the planning, implementation and monitoring of competency-based solutions across projects and state engagements
• Documents and codifies learnings from pilot initiatives and internal reviews, contributing to solution testing, refinement and institutional knowledge creation

Collaboration and Team Engagement

• Supports the team in coordinating with internal verticals, delivery teams and partner organisations to align solution design objectives with implementation needs
• Facilitates communication and knowledge exchange by organising meetings, workshops, and presentations to share progress, feedback, and insights on solution development and maturity
• Builds and maintains productive working relationships with internal and external subject matter experts, assessment and content providers, by ensuring regular interactions, capturing inputs, and identifying opportunities for co-creation and refinement of solutions

Education and Experience

• Bachelors degree in economics, public policy, social sciences, or a related discipline from a reputable institution
• 3-6 years of relevant professional experience, particularly in HRM, capacity building, or project management
• Prior exposure to government ecosystems or multi-stakeholder initiatives is strongly preferred

Required Competencies

The competencies required to perform the above-mentioned roles and responsibilities are as follows:

Domain Competencies

Public Administration Understanding: Understands Indias governance and policy landscape to ensure solutions are contextually relevant and aligned with governmental priorities

Competency-based Learning and Development: Understands the components of the learning and development (L&D) cycle, adult learning frameworks and methodologies to support L&D programs

Functional Competencies

Research & Analytical Acumen: Ability to conduct research, interpret patterns, and synthesise information into findings

Data Analysis & Insights: Accurately interprets data, identifies patterns, and develops reports

Solution Design and Innovation: Understands design thinking principles to support the development of solution prototypes

Communication & Knowledge Practices: Communicates and documents ideas clearly across formats

Behavioural Competencies

Leading Self: Takes ownership of tasks and ensures timely completion

Learning Orientation: Seeks feedback, applies guidance, and adapts work practices to evolving needs

Collaboration: Keen on building relationships, sharing responsibilities, and contributing effectively to team goals

Note

• The role will be based in New Delhi
• Proficiency in Hindi and English
• Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales, depending on the candidates experience levels.

CEGIS is an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against based on race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, ancestry, or national or ethnic origin.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview
• A glimpse into life at CEGIS - CEGIS Retreat 2024
• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.
• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.
• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

About the projects in Uttar Pradesh:
CEGIS has partnered with the Government of Uttar Pradesh to strengthen governance systems and enable data-driven decision-making in the states Finance and Planning departments. The partnership supports Uttar Pradesh's strategic vision through initiatives to establish a Financial Analytics Unit, strengthen data systems for improved planning and service delivery, and build institutional and personnel capacity aligned with Mission Karmayogi principles. This collaboration aims to embed evidence-based reforms and enhance outcomes across the states core development priorities.

Position Summary
The Senior Program Associate (SPA) will play an important role in contextualising and executing the CEGIS vision in Government of Uttar Pradesh. The role will collaborate with other CEGIS teams (Outcome Measurement, Public Finance; Personnel Management; Sectoral teams). The Senior Program Associate will be directly reporting to the respective Program Manager in the State.

Role and Responsibilities:

Data Analysis and Insight Generation:

• Engage with departments to collect relevant data, develop quantitative and qualitative tools/templates, administer these tools, and support in cleaning and organizing the data.
• Track and analyze data for accuracy and conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis.
• Extract important insights from complex datasets relevant to key stakeholders.
• Prioritize and address data issues promptly to support project progress and decision-making.
• Ensure compliance with internal data management and security protocols
  

Research and Documentation

• Independently conduct research and root cause analysis, documenting and presenting insights.
• Produce comprehensive presentations and documentation to convey critical project insights.
• Collaborate with other teams to jointly develop and implement technical solutions tailored to specific project requirements as is suitable for the states context.
• Create concept notes, policy briefs, and other documentation for stakeholder communication.

Stakeholder Engagement and Communication:

• Evaluate project contingencies and engage with internal and external stakeholders.
• Assist the project team in collecting critical information and departmental updates by maintaining regular communication with government counterparts, partner organisations, and other relevant stakeholders.
• Coordinate stakeholder meetings and gather feedback for project progress and decision-making.
• Foster deep connections with stakeholders and suggest innovative ideas to nurture partnerships.

Project Management & Delivery:

• Understand project requirements, coordinate with internal teams and external partners for delivery excellence.
• Support comparison and assessment of different strategies, frameworks, and solutions for effective decision-making.
• Plan and prioritise work plans, ensuring accountability for set timelines.
• Assist in altering project goals and outcomes based on stakeholder feedback and project progress, flag project risks.
• Support knowledge management processes to help achieve project and organisational objectives (for example, assisting in maintaining a project-based knowledge repository).

Required Qualifications, Skills and Abilities:

• A Masters degree or equivalent preferred in economics, public policy, social science or related fields from a reputed institution, bright graduate applicants may be considered.
• 3-6 years of experience. Minimum 3 years of work experience in India with organisations working in related fields of work i.e., research agencies, policy think-tanks, government or private sector organisations working on government advisory or consulting
• Proven experience in project management and analytical contributions.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and leadership skills.
• Experience with data cleaning and analysis of large and complex data sets and econometric analysis
• Knowledge of STATA or R (strongly preferred) or any other data analysis software is preferred
• Experience in client servicing/government projects would be preferred
• Report writing and presentations with proficiency in MS Office and other tools

Personal Characteristics and Desired Qualities

• Fluency in English and Hindi proficiency
• Excellent problem-solving skills, with an aptitude for research to formulate solutions
• Excellent writing and communication skills (ability to communicate complex ideas in a meaningful way and across different audiences)
• Ability to set priorities, plan timelines and meet deadlines
• Ability to think creatively, willing to take risks, to experiment with new ideas and to turn ideas into action
• High ability to collaborate and actively listen to others, understanding and valuing others views
• Operating style suited to working independently and in a small organization setting, where teamwork and resourcefulness are highly valued
  

Location and Compensation

Location: The role will be based out of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Travel to other states may be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidate's experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview
• A glimpse into life at CEGIS -CEGIS Retreat 2024
• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.
• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.
• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

Overview

Within CEGIS, the Outcome Measurement (OM) teams role is to support the institutionalisation of data-driven decision-making by setting up the required infrastructure and technical capacity with the Planning department and relevant line departments in the state. The Program Managers (OM) will play a crucial role in executing this vision in the state, working closely with both the OM technical team and the State team.

Position Summary:

As a Senior Program Manager (SPM) in OM, you will lead and manage complex digital data collection operations, collaborating closely with senior academics and government stakeholders to customize research design and protocols to local contexts. Your role will encompass ensuring adherence to stringent data quality protocols and overseeing the development of high-quality outputs summarizing project progress, data analyses, and research findings for dissemination at various forums.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Data Analysis Oversight:

• Evaluate and review pre-analysis plans to ensure comprehensive and precise data analysis procedures.
• Regularly check progress on data analysis and provide necessary inputs for improvement.

Research and Data Management:

• Oversee accuracy and validity of data collected to inform decision making
• Enhance accuracy, validity, and completeness of collected research and data.
• Develop protocols and guidelines for managing data quality, access, verification, and validation.

Solution Design and Technical Expertise:

• Contribute technical and operational insights to solution design.
• Ensure adherence to best practices and established protocols.
• Provide expertise for new or pilot projects during the diagnosis and solution design process.
• Guides interpretation and meaning making

Project Management:

• Align project activities with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).
• Oversees comprehensive project management, spanning from conceptualization and resource allocation to briefing and execution.
• Manage project outputs and ensure successful completion.
• Support budgeting process for interventions.
• Ensure quality and technical integrity of project outputs.
• Oversee technical evaluations and quality control processes to align to ToC
• Prepare and pitch proposals to donors and stakeholders.

Communication and Stakeholder Engagement:

• Identify and cultivate strategic partnerships with external stakeholders.
• Synthesize stakeholders' feedback to develop strategic communication strategies.
• Shapes stakeholder perceptions through engagement and relationship building
• Fosters internal alignment to meet project priorities and Organisational goals

Knowledge Product Development:

• Collaborates with team members to develop impactful knowledge products, such as policy notes, analysis reports, and frameworks and contributes to knowledge sharing.
• Transform insights and findings into actionable knowledge products.
• Facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration

Qualifications and Attributes:

• 8 to 12 years of progressive work experience, including field research, managing evaluations, and quantitative analysis and team.
• Masters or advanced degree in economics, statistics, public policy, engineering, or related fields from a prestigious institution.
• Proficiency in quantitative data management and analysis using STATA, R, or Python programming.
• Strong research aptitude to analyze complex data and formulate innovative solutions.
• Strong planning and organizational skills, adept at setting priorities and meeting deadlines.
• Deep passion for enhancing the effectiveness of Indian States, with an operating style conducive to autonomy and adaptability.
• Proven ability to manage competing priorities and deliver high-quality outputs consistently.
• A creative mindset and willingness to experiment with new ideas.
• Exceptional collaboration and active listening skills, fostering an inclusive environment.
• Adaptability to transition between projects and sectors, demonstrating versatility and agility.
• Superior problem-solving, strategic thinking, and research acumen for analyzing complex data.
• Excellent proficiency in English, with exceptional writing and communication skills tailored to diverse audiences.
• Advanced planning and organizational skills, including effective team management and collaboration with stakeholders.
• Unwavering dedication to improving Indian states, in line with organizational goals.
• Operating style characterized by autonomy, adaptability, and resourcefulness under pressure.
• Proven ability to consistently deliver high-quality results and innovate new initiatives.
• Adaptability to embrace diverse projects and rapidly integrate into new sectors.

Location and Compensation

Location: The role can be based out Hyderabad. Travel to other states may be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidates experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview

• A glimpse into life at CEGIS - CEGIS Retreat 2024

• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.

• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.

• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.

• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

Overview:

Within CEGIS, the Outcome Measurement (OM) teams role is to support the institutionalisation of data-driven decision-making by setting up the required infrastructure and technical capacity with the Planning department and relevant line departments in the state. The Program Managers (OM) will play a crucial role in executing this vision in the state, working closely with both the OM technical team and the State team.

Position Summary:

As a Senior Program Manager (SPM) in OM, you will lead and manage complex digital data collection operations, collaborating closely with senior academics and government stakeholders to customize research design and protocols to local contexts. Your role will encompass ensuring adherence to stringent data quality protocols and overseeing the development of high-quality outputs summarizing project progress, data analyses, and research findings for dissemination at various forums.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Data Analysis Oversight:

• Evaluate and review pre-analysis plans to ensure comprehensive and precise data analysis procedures.
• Regularly check progress on data analysis and provide necessary inputs for improvement.

Research and Data Management:

• Oversee accuracy and validity of data collected to inform decision making
• Enhance accuracy, validity, and completeness of collected research and data.
• Develop protocols and guidelines for managing data quality, access, verification, and validation.

Solution Design and Technical Expertise:

• Contribute technical and operational insights to solution design.
• Ensure adherence to best practices and established protocols.
• Provide expertise for new or pilot projects during the diagnosis and solution design process.
• Guides interpretation and meaning making

Project Management:

• Align project activities with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).
• Oversees comprehensive project management, spanning from conceptualization and resource allocation to briefing and execution.
• Manage project outputs and ensure successful completion.
• Support budgeting process for interventions.
• Ensure quality and technical integrity of project outputs.
• Oversee technical evaluations and quality control processes to align to ToC
• Prepare and pitch proposals to donors and stakeholders.

Communication and Stakeholder Engagement:

• Identify and cultivate strategic partnerships with external stakeholders.
• Synthesize stakeholders' feedback to develop strategic communication strategies.
• Shapes stakeholder perceptions through engagement and relationship building
• Fosters internal alignment to meet project priorities and Organisational goals

Knowledge Product Development:

• Collaborates with team members to develop impactful knowledge products, such as policy notes, analysis reports, and frameworks and contributes to knowledge sharing.
• Transform insights and findings into actionable knowledge products.
• Facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration

Qualifications and Attributes:

• 8 to 12 years of progressive work experience, including field research, managing evaluations, and quantitative analysis and team.
• Masters or advanced degree in economics, statistics, public policy, engineering, or related fields from a prestigious institution.
• Proficiency in quantitative data management and analysis using STATA, R, or Python programming.
• Strong research aptitude to analyze complex data and formulate innovative solutions.
• Strong planning and organizational skills, adept at setting priorities and meeting deadlines.
• Deep passion for enhancing the effectiveness of Indian States, with an operating style conducive to autonomy and adaptability.
• Proven ability to manage competing priorities and deliver high-quality outputs consistently.
• A creative mindset and willingness to experiment with new ideas.
• Exceptional collaboration and active listening skills, fostering an inclusive environment.
• Adaptability to transition between projects and sectors, demonstrating versatility and agility.
• Superior problem-solving, strategic thinking, and research acumen for analyzing complex data.
• Excellent proficiency in English, with exceptional writing and communication skills tailored to diverse audiences.
• Advanced planning and organizational skills, including effective team management and collaboration with stakeholders.
• Unwavering dedication to improving Indian states, in line with organizational goals.
• Operating style characterized by autonomy, adaptability, and resourcefulness under pressure.
• Proven ability to consistently deliver high-quality results and innovate new initiatives.
• Adaptability to embrace diverse projects and rapidly integrate into new sectors.

Location and Compensation

Location: The role can be based out of Delhi/ Hyderabad/ Bangalore/ Chennai. Travel to other states may be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidates experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview

• A glimpse into life at CEGIS - CEGIS Retreat 2024

• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.

• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.

• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.

• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

About Personnel Management (PM) Vertical

We believe that empowered, equipped and future-ready public officials are crucial to achieving citizen-centric service delivery.

We work with central, state, and local governments to actualise their human capital by improving human resource (HR) management practices and organisational effectiveness using a competency-driven approach. We believe that supporting governments in undertaking these reforms will result in improved execution capacity and a fulfilling career journey for public officials.

The competency-driven approach focuses on the knowledge, skills, and attitude required for specific government roles. By undertaking this approach, CEGIS aims to bring clarity to the work done by officials and empower them to achieve better results. This translates to a shift in accountability – from simply following processes to delivering tangible outcomes.

The Personnel Management team achieves this through three key workstreams.

1. Competency-Based Recruitment: Ensuring the right people are selected for the job and bringing the necessary competencies (knowledge, skills, and attitude) on board from the outset.
2. Competency-Based Learning & Development: Equipping public officials with the ongoing training and development they need to excel in their roles.
3. Performance Management Systems: Evaluating and improving individual and team performance based on achieving defined goals, not just by adherence to procedures.

Through these efforts, the Personnel Management team strives to bring enhanced clarity and effectiveness to government work in India. By empowering officials with the right skills and holding them accountable for achieving desired outcomes, CEGIS is paving the way for a more efficient and impactful government service.

Project and Position Summary

We are seeking an SPM, Solution Delivery, Government of India (GoI) initiative to join our team in driving transformative, competency-based capacity-building initiatives for public officials across India. The role involves providing strategic direction, spearheading solution design and delivery, and ensuring alignment of interventions with broader governance and capacity-building goals of the state/MDO.

The ideal candidate brings a deep understanding of competency-based HR systems, coupled with strong experience in project management, stakeholder engagement, and institutional reform.

This role offers a unique opportunity to influence systemic change at scale, working closely with senior public officials, donors, and implementation partners to shape the future of HR and governance reform in India. Its an ideal opportunity for someone passionate about combining strategic foresight with hands-on leadership and seeking to create measurable, lasting impact in public service delivery.

Roles and Responsibilities

Research and Solutioning

• Leads diagnostic research, analyses datasets and generates insights to identify system-level gaps in HRM within an MDO and inform contextualised design and delivery of existing solutions
• Contextualises frameworks and tools for enabling competency-based human resource reforms and the rollout of learning and development solutions (such as competency mapping, training needs assessments, curated learning programs) within the MDO
• Stays abreast of emerging trends in HR practices such as recruitment, capacity building and performance management in the public sector to inform solution refinement
• Informs iterative improvement of solutions by relaying field insights to the solution design teams

Project and Knowledge Management

• Leads end-to-end program design and delivery by formulating precise problem statements, goals, and project plans
• Oversees and leads the team towards execution of assigned projects, ensuring adherence to quality standards, timelines, and interdependencies
• Monitors project progress, risks, and dependencies, and implements timely course corrections
• Strengthens project delivery and institutional capability by embedding competency-based frameworks (ensuring quality in competency mapping, assessments and learning programs), standard operating procedures, and scalable processes
• Maintains a system of knowledge capture and documentation to build institutional memory and scalable delivery of solutions across states/ MDO

Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement

• Manages relationships with key government partners, training institutions, and internal teams to ensure alignment on program scope, design and implementation
• Maintains a regular communication cadence with external stakeholders, ensuring timely sharing of project updates, reports, and deliverables
• Ensures cross-functional collaboration with internal teams to gather inputs, share learnings, avoid duplication, and maintain consistency across tools and communication artefacts
• Leads advocacy efforts with senior bureaucratic and political leadership to build consensus and institutionalise customised HR reforms within the state/MDO

Team and Organisational Development

• Leads and mentors a team, guiding work planning, quality control, and developmental support to ensure timely, high-quality delivery
• Supports team performance reviews and identifies opportunities for skill enhancement and role progression
• Contributes to end-to-end talent hiring and management within the organisation, ensuring alignment with organisational culture
• Strengthens organisational culture and visibility by championing internal learning initiatives, fostering a culture of collaboration, and representing the organisation in external forums, partnerships, and knowledge-sharing platforms

Education and Experience

• Bachelors or Masters degree in Economics, Public Policy, Social Sciences, or a related discipline from a reputed institution
• 8-12 years of relevant professional experience in HR management, capacity building, or project management/consulting, including at least 1–2 years of experience working within the Indian government ecosystem
• Prior experience in leading teams or managing cross-functional collaborations

Required Competencies

The competencies required to perform the above-mentioned roles and responsibilities are as follows:

Domain Competencies

Public Administration Understanding: Understands Indias governance and policy landscape to ensure solutions are contextually relevant and aligned with governmental priorities

Competency-based Learning and Development: Applies competency-based tools and processes to design learning and development programs and frameworks

Organisational Capacity and Systems: Analyses organisational performance to drive sustainable improvements in capacity and efficiency

Functional Competencies

Project Management: Skilled in planning, resource allocation, risk management, documentation and delivering results aligned with organisational objectives

Analytical Acumen: Ability to assess patterns, synthesise insights to inform decisions

Communication and Knowledge Practices: Communicates ideas clearly across formats and captures knowledge for dissemination

Behavioural Competencies

Developing People: Guides and mentors the team to support professional development

Learning Orientation: Seeks feedback, reflects on gaps, and fosters a culture of adaptability and continuous improvement within the team

Collaboration: Builds trust with stakeholders and fosters collaboration and alignment through clear, consistent engagement

Note

• The role will be based in New Delhi
• Proficiency in Hindi and English
• Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales, depending on the candidates experience levels.
• CEGIS is an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against based on race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, ancestry, or national or ethnic origin.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

• CEGIS Overview
• A glimpse into life at CEGIS - CEGIS Retreat 2024
• State Capacity, Governance, and Public Systems — Prof. Karthik Muralidharan on Seen & Unseen with Amit Varma – on education, healthcare, federalism and state capacity, and bureaucracy in India.
• You are also strongly encouraged to read Prof. Karthik Muralidharans book Accelerating Indias Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance (especially Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11), which informs much of CEGIS's work and theory of change.

Recommended listening:

• Karthik Muralidharan Episodes on SparX by Mukesh Bansal: Podcast Episode 1, Podcast Episode 2, Podcast Episode 3.
• Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
• Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.