Senior Advisor - Digital Public Services And Digital Transformation

We don’t just talk, we do. Lead the change with us.

At the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, we work with political leaders around the world to drive change. We help governments turn bold ideas into reality so they can deliver for their people. We do it by advising on strategy, policy and delivery, unlocking the power of technology across all three. And by sharing what we learn on the ground, so everyone can benefit. We do it to build more open, inclusive and prosperous countries for people everywhere.

We are a global team of over 800 changemakers, operating in more than 40 countries, across five continents. We are political strategists, policy experts, delivery practitioners, technology specialists and more. We speak more than 45 languages. We are working on over 100 projects, tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges. We’re all here at TBI to make a difference.

In a world of ever more complex challenges, we believe diversity of background and perspective is a strength. We pride ourselves on a culture that values and nurtures difference. We are dedicated to unlocking potential, not only for the countries we work in but also for each of our team members. No matter where you’re from or who you are, if you’re passionate about the transformative power of progressive politics, we invite you to build a better future with us.

Role Summary

One major challenge is the increasing cost to run government, coupled with decreasing quality of public services. It is unsustainable for citizens to pay higher taxes while getting less in return. Technology can help break this cycle – not just improving, but fundamentally redesigning Government to enable a more efficient, data-driven, and agile State. Technology offers the opportunity to rethink the processes within the public sector, and the design and delivery of public services. If leveraged successfully, technology and data can increase governments’ agility and make public services more inclusive, proactive and personalized.

The Senior Advisor, for Digital Government and Public Services will contribute to the evolution of TBI’s tech offer, supporting senior political leaders with the transformational solutions to improve public service delivery and government operations. You will work in close collaboration with TBI country teams and our clients to lead scoping and partnership discussions, identifying areas of catalytic potential aligned with Head of State priorities.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­This is a crucial role for the Institute at the senior level of our advisory expert track and will be held by an exceptional candidate with deep and extensive experience in digital government, public services, and senior political advisory. Travel is significant; expected approximately 30% of the time to work hands-on in support of teams delivering initiatives with senior political leaders and governments.

Key Responsibilities

Offer and solution development

• Offer Strategy: Develop, enhance, and continually evolve our offer strategy and solutions for our support to senior political leaders on topics of digital government, digital transformation, digital public services, working collaboratively with other senior experts to seamlessly integrate various aspects of digital transformation (e.g. Digital Identity, National Digital Infrastructure, Data for decision making, AI, etc.) into a comprehensive offer for Governments.
• Tech Solution Development: Maintain relentless focus on developing practical, implementable solutions, tools, frameworks, and models which enable and enhance our teams’ delivery. Proactively identify and translate insights from upcoming trends to generate new solutions to enhance our support to senior political leaders for digital transformation and digital public services. Contribute to the establishment of partnerships with private vendors for the co-development of tech solutions to address the needs of our clients.
• Best Practices: Galvanise the collection and sharing of lessons and best practices from across the portfolio and draw on and represent evolving global best practice leveraging your network and knowledge and working with Policy & Politics (P&P).
  
  

• Client Service: 70% of time dedicated to advancing client service priorities, ensuring we are bringing the best of TBI in digital government and service design and delivery.
• Work collaboratively with regional and country leadership and their teams. Draw in and foster strong linkages between advisory, partnerships and policy work.
• Scoping and opportunity development: identify opportunities, propose solutions to senior political leader priorities to improve public service and the functioning of government, generate innovative solutions to client problems, and frame them in a compelling way.
• Delivery: Support teams to create viable project designs, delivery plans, as well as identify risks and challenges to implementation including digital readiness assessments, and suitable Government enterprise architectures.
• Government Relations: Support strengthening of client and senior government relationships as a trusted and reliable expert advisor in line with project strategies.
  
  

• Internal Communications: support the Director for Government Innovation and AI to effectively capture and cascade key developments, successes, and learnings from our portfolio of work to inform the development of TBI tech offer in line with clients evolving needs and demands.
• Demand and Offer: Represent aggregate client need and opportunities to wider institute to enable key stakeholders to work towards both client and institute priorities.
• Learning and Development: support the training and enablement of TBI country teams and wider institute to understand our offer and utilise tools and best practices to improve capacity and impact of our work.
• Products development: work closely with the AI Incubator to ensure that products development responds to clients’ demands and leads to products that can be scaled.
  
  

• Thought leadership: Provide senior-level representation as a global subject matter expert, including presentations, for TBI at strategic, high-profile external fora and events.
• Partnerships: contribute to develop and enhance our network with the private sector, leading innovators and implementation partners in the digital government space for wider client impact.
• Business development: Bring subject matter expertise to conversations with key donors, clients, and income opportunities as required to support TBI financial health.
  
  

• Significant experience in government, or government advisory, related to digital transformation and delivery of digital government and innovative public services design and delivery.
• Experience in developing and implementing a digital government strategy, or driving digitalization efforts in the public sector, or establishing a vision and framework to leverage data and technology to innovate service design and delivery (e.g., fostering data interoperability for sharing and reuse, adopting UX service design).
• Familiarity with the policies and regulations needed to foster and enable technology deployment and adoption in the public sector and ability to make recommendations and propose specific solutions to senior political leaders to ensure safeguard in the interest of the public good (e.g., data privacy, data sovereignty).
• Experience in identification of project opportunities and strategy development, preferably in the tech sector, or linked to government advisory.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with a wide range of government and non-government actors, including the private sector and development partners.
• Excellent communicator able to effectively convey complex or technical topics to senior political leaders or nontechnical parties.
• Bold thinker equipped to be a thought partner and peer to cutting-edge technology companies as well as government leaders to think towards the future of innovation.
• Able to work independently whilst drawing on expertise from colleagues globally.
• Outstanding management skills and the proven ability to inspire teams to achieve exceptional objectives and contribute directly to outcomes hands-on
• Experience in developing and emerging economies, and sensitivity to a diverse range of cultural and regional norms.
• Excellent collaboration skills and strong team-player mindset.
• Strong diplomatic skills
• Willingness to travel internationally – 30%
• Proficient in the use of key Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and able to represent complex, technical ideas in easy to understand and compelling ways
• Excellent writing and communication skills in English, proficiency in another language is an asset