Senior Land Administration and Geospatial Information Specialist

Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty, increasing shared prosperity and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org

GLOBAL PRACTICES & CROSS-CUTTING SOLUTIONS AREAS

The  GPs are: Agriculture; Education; Energy and Extractives; Environment and Natural Resources; Finance and Markets; Governance; Health, Nutrition and Population; Macroeconomics and Fiscal Management; Poverty; Social Protection and Labor; Social Sustainability and Inclusion; Urban, Resilience and Land; Trade and Competitiveness; Transport and ICT; and Water. The 5 CCSAs are: Climate Change; Fragility, Conflict and Violence; Gender; Jobs; and Public-Private Partnerships.  The new operating model is part of a broader internal reform aimed at delivering the best of the World Bank Group to our clients, so that together we can achieve the twin goals of (1) ending extreme poverty by 2030, and (2) promote shared prosperity for the bottom 40% of the population in every developing country.

THE “URBAN, RESILIENCE AND LAND” (URL) GLOBAL PRACTICE

Urbanization is occurring at an unprecedented pace. Cities generate 80% of global GDP and are key to job creation and the pursuit of shared prosperity. Yet one billion city residents live in slums today, and by 2030 one billion new migrants will arrive in cities.  This concentration of people and assets will exacerbate risk exposure to adverse natural events and climate change, which affects the poor disproportionately.  The absence of secure land tenure underpins deprivation and is a major source of conflict in the urban and rural space.  One and a half billion people live in countries affected by repeated cycles of violence.  In the absence of services, participative planning and responsive institutions, these trends will result in increased poverty, social exclusion, vulnerability and violence.  Finally, avoiding a 4-degree warmer world requires drastically reducing the carbon footprint of cities.

The WBG is in a unique position to support national and sub-national clients to: harness urbanization and enable effective land management in support of both growth and poverty reduction; foster social inclusion of marginalized groups; support the responsiveness and fiscal, financial, and management capacities of local governments – cities, municipalities, and rural districts – to deliver local infrastructure and decentralized services; strengthen resilience and risk management related to natural disasters; reduce conflict and violence; scale-up access to finance for sub-national governments; and reduce the carbon footprint of cities.  The WBG brings a combination of lending ($7-8 billion in annual lending to cities), analytical and advisory services (e.g., social inclusion flagship, urbanization reviews, Sendai dialogue), its growing portfolio of reimbursable advisory services, its convening power (e.g., understanding risk and the land conferences), its leveraging capacity (e.g., guarantees and risk mitigation), and its ability to work with the private sector to tackle the challenges at scale and to effect.

The URL GP covers a wide gamut: (i) developing green, inclusive and resilient cities; (ii) addressing the social inclusion of the poor, vulnerable and excluded groups through accountable institutions, and ensuring compliance with social safeguards; (iii) enhancing urban and rural development through supporting and managing the urban-rural transition, assisting local development through developing land tenure, management and information systems; and (iv) assisting in disaster risk management through issues of risk assessment, risk reduction (including flood management, urban drainage, coastal management, and retrofitting of infrastructure), disaster preparedness (including hydromet services, early warning systems, and civil defense), risk financing (including CAT-DDO), and resilient reconstruction (including post-disaster damage and loss assessment). A key responsibility of the GP is to provide professional expertise and operational support to other GPs to implement the WBG social policies (the WB’s safeguard policies and the IFC’s Performance Standards) to deliver sustainable development results that ensure that any adverse impacts of WBG interventions are limited and mitigated.

Matters of land tenure, land administration and land management touch all areas of the World Bank Group Group’s Practice’s themes. Food production, poverty alleviation and growth, and the sustainable use of natural resources and growth of cities, all relate to how communities, families, public and private sector get access to land and how their rights are administered, managed and altered. URL is responsible for the World Bank’s investment, technical assistance and analytical work in the fields of land tenure and territorial development worldwide. Currently, the unit’s staff are associated with over 50 land interventions and a number of research and analytical activities in 37 countries and 5 continents. Typical projects cover a wide variety of legal (land rights recognition, allocation and registration), technical (land and spatial records and data, territorial planning), fiscal (property valuation and taxation) and social (minority rights, safeguards) topics, collaborating with central and local governments, private sector, civil society and specialists and academics all over the world. URL is currently expanding its geospatial information management expertise and country support to National Spatial Data Infrastructure solutions for advanced location-based applications such as 3D land management and smart cities. URL  also provides land tenure and geospatial information management expertise to projects of related themes (agriculture, forestry, municipal development, community development) and cross cutting areas (gender, climate change, governance). 

The incumbent will join the URL’s land and geospatial team as a Senior Land and Geospatial Specialist and be based in Hanoi, Vietnam. The incumbent will join the team’s projects and initiatives as a technical specials and task manager primarily in Vietnam, and secondarily in other countries in South East Asia.

VIETNAM CONTEXT

In Vietnam The World Bank has approved a credit of US$ 150 million for the Improved Land Governance and Database Project (VILG) to improve the transparency and efficiency of land administration services through the development of the national Multipurpose Land Information System (MPLIS). The project is implemented by the General Department of Land Administration (GDLA) of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE). The government invests the credit funds to key ICT systems and digitizing land/cadastral data for the new MPLIS. MPLIS will incorporate all government land administration information and other land data to a land database in more than 30 provinces. The MPLIS forms a fundamental record and system of the national e-government program together with the national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI), which provides and integrates location-based data to the e-government.  

The incumbent is sought to join the VILG project management team to lead the government liaison and daily implementation support. Apart from VILG, the team provides also technical assistance to the government and MONRE for the development of the NSDI Strategy as well as land policy reforms, especially related to the revision of the Land Law 2013 and/or development of a new land law of 2023. Thematic areas of interest include land related systems and services such as valuation, resettlement and SMART Cities. In addition, the URL’s land, urban and disaster risk management teams in Vietnam implemented a vast variety of urban and resilient infrastructure investment projects in Vietnam, which the incumbent may support as a technical specialist upon fit and need.

Duties and Responsibilities :

The Senior Land Administration and Geospatial Information Specialist will join the Land and Geospatial Team in the World Bank’s Hanoi office and will:

• Support the URL’s land and geospatial work in the Vietnam Office; 

• Support and manage the URL’s lending and knowledge project cycle management and missions primarily in Vietnam and secondarily in client countries in East Asia and Pacific Region as a technical specialist and task team leader; 

• Join the management team of VILG providing implementation support and supervision to project progress monitoring, work planning, budgeting, disbursement, procurement (STEP system) in national and sub-national levels of the government;

• Manage and provide VILG’s and other projects’ project cycle documentation including mission aide memoires, project concept and appraisal documents, implementation support reports, and implementation completion reports.

• Manage and provide technical assistance to the government’s land services, MPLIS and land database development as well as to system interoperability with the e-government platform and other national priority systems in Vietnam;

• Provide land/geospatial technical support to Vietnam Country Office’s projects and programs, including land related policies, and NSDI related activities.  

• Undertake other related responsibilities as assigned by the management of URL and the Vietnam Country Office of the World Bank.

Selection Criteria

• Master's degree (land administration, geospatial sciences, ICT, other) with 8 years of experience or equivalent combination of education and experience;

• Knowledge of land tenure, land administration and geospatial systems and solutions.

• Experience as a technical specialist in digital land administration and/or geospatial information technical assistance or investment operations; 

• Investment/development project experience, strong organizational, research, and oral presentation skills;

• Excellent analytical and communication skills and ability to write clearly and concisely in English, experience with the World Bank project cycle documentation considered as an advantage. 

• Operational experience with the World Bank Projects as a technical or operational specialist or a Team Leader considered as an advantage;

• Working experience from a country outside one’s own, East Asia Pacific working experiences considered as an advantage;

• Excellent oral and written communication skills in Vietnamese and English; 

• Additional language skills desirable.