Applications Invited for Regional support Contractors to Develop Community of Practice in Asia

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About the Organization:

GBIF—the Global Biodiversity Information Facility—is an international network and research infrastructure funded by the world’s governments and aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, open access to data about all types of life on Earth. The GBIF network draws all these sources together through the use of data standards, such as Darwin Core, which forms the basis for the bulk of GBIF.org's index of hundreds of millions of species occurrence records.

Call for Applications: Regional support Contractors to Develop Community of Practice in Asia

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Secretariat is seeking contractors to support the team developing a community of practice in Asia through the SYNTHESYS+ project and the Biodiversity Information Fund for Asia (BIFA programme). Individuals located in eligible countries and areas in South-East Asia, South Asia and North-East Asia will support these efforts by:

• Providing technical help-desk assistance, training and mentoring to support institutional engagement in the mobilization and use of biodiversity data
• Facilitating exchange of guidance, best practices and expertise between regional institutions, SYNTHESYS+ partners, BIFA biodiversity data mobilization project teams, the GBIF Participant nodes, GBIF elected Regional Representatives for Asia and other volunteer experts from the broader GBIF community
• Encouraging long-term engagement of individuals and institutions from the region in the GBIF network

This activity aims to support cooperative activities between SYNTHESYS+ partners with collections and stakeholders in regions that are disproportionately under-represented in current activities. The focus is on further developing access and data linkage to scientific collections and ecological datasets, with the objective of making available information resources required to address key policy needs around biodiversity.

The role of the regional support contractors:

While the Asia region remains relatively underrepresented in GBIF's formal participation, many SYNTHESYS+ partners have bilateral relations with relevant institutions in the region, and there is a growing community of practice of individuals and data publishing institutions actively engaged in data mobilization and use. In supporting this community in Asia, the regional support contracts will contribute to:

• Increased regional biodiversity data availability to support science and decision making
• Strengthened regional capacity and development of skills in biodiversity data mobilization and use
• Increased institutional collaboration and regional engagement in the SYNTHESYS+ and GBIF network

The contracted roles will complement volunteer mentors, including those from the greater SYNTHESYS partnership, who also remain an essential component of GBIF's capacity enhancement activities.

Scope of work:

The contracted individuals will have responsibility for delivering:

• Regular group meetings to develop the community of practice by engaging current and past BIFA project teams, relevant SYNTHESYS+ partners, the Participant nodes and their teams, the data publishing community and interested observers
• Help desk assistance as the primary technical point of contact assisting with regional data mobilization and data quality issues, in coordination with the relevant GBIF Participant nodes and the GBIF Secretariat Data Products team
• Technical administration of a regional cloud-hosted IPT for Asia and the BIFA project teams
• Mentoring focused on technical support for implementing data mobilization plans at the institutional level or within funded projects
• Support for regional capacity enhancement workshops and development of GBIF training materials

Required skills and experience

The ideal contractor would already have substantial experience in data mobilization and publishing through GBIF, particularly from biological collections, and a solid working knowledge of:

• The content, structure and components of the GBIF data infrastructure
• The GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT)
• Relevant standards for data exchange (Darwin Core Archive and EML)

Other required skills:

• Fluency in English is required as it is the working language in SYNTHESYS+ and of the Secretariat. Additional language skills will be considered an advantage.
• Familiarity with the GBIF network
• Strong communication skills and the ability to provide clear guidance, for example, on technical issues related to data publishing
• The ability to work independently and as part of a team

In addition, the following skills will be considered beneficial in carrying out the work defined effectively:

• Basic project management skills, for example having successfully delivered funded projects
• Experience in training or mentoring
• Experience in setting up and/or updating an IPT
• Relational databases and SQL
• Experience with data processing, working with large data bases
• Basic understanding of JSON web services and their use
• Knowledge of R or Python and APIs
• Mobilization of data derived from DNA, for example metabarcoding and eDNA projects

Funding: The FTE rate for a 12-month contractor period based on 40 hours a week is EUR 45,000 for the contract period.

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