The Pacific Community has received financing in the amount of USD 4.5 million equivalent from
the World Bank toward the cost of the Statistical Innovation and Capacity Building in the Pacific
Islands Project, and it intends to apply part of the proceeds for consulting services.
The consulting services (“the Services”) include those of a Statistics Advisor for an initial period
of 22-months with an option to extend for a further 22-months. The Consultant will initially be
home-based, with moving to New Caledonia to be subject to negotiation. The Consultant will
be expected to work for 22 days per month for 11 months per year and, as much as possible
while home-based, follow the general working hours of the Pacific Community. The expected
start date is August 2021. As this is a long-term assignment, a detailed Terms of Reference is
provided, including background to the project and the expected outputs over the duration of
the project.

Scope of Work & Description of Tasks
Statistics Advisor
The Statistics Advisor will act as the chief advisor on survey methodology for the region and as the main source of technical advice to country-level Resident Advisors. The selected candidate will bring extensive knowledge of the survey methods literature, which will be
used to inform both the activities of the PSMB (Component 1) and the innovation experiments (Component 3). The focus of this consultant’s work will be on the development, documentation, and dissemination of context-specific best practices, as well as skills transfer to current SPC-SDD and regional NSO staff. In addition, the Statistics Advisor will serve as the focal point for operationalizing the PSMB regional guidelines and will be the first point of contact for the Resident Advisors embedded in the NSO under the country-level projects within this Series of Projects (the first phase of which includes Tonga and Kiribati). Linking the country-level Resident Advisors to a single centralized source of advice will eliminate the heterogeneity in technical assistance that has historically hindered
comparability and promote regional harmonization.

The Statistics Advisor will execute secretariat functions, including: (1) the organization for PSMB meetings to take place twice a year (either live or by videoconference), (2) setting the meeting agenda and inviting appropriate international experts, as needed, (3) coordinating the papers and reports on Pacific data collection to be reviewed at the PSMB meeting, (4) identifying priority topics for further review at subsequent PSMB meetings, and (5) summarizing the meeting discussion into formal minutes and recommendations to be
circulated to regional NSOs.

The Statistics Advisor will play a key role in providing technical expertise to the PSMB. As part of PSMB’s function to promote academic rigor in its recommendations for standardizing data collection methods, it may commission additional research to understand
and tailor recommendations to the Pacific context.

The terms of reference for the Statistics Advisor therefore require knowledge of both current international best practices in the collection of official statistics as well as contact within the wider survey methodology academic community. The Statistics Advisor and/or
Welfare Economist will deploy these skills to either perform requested research on priorities for further review, including conducting literature reviews and compiling information on regional norms, or identifying the appropriate experts in the field to provide
recommendations