Program Associate

The Program Associate will serve as the critical, on-ground position of our state-level technical support unit, embedded directly within the District Social Welfare Office (DSWO). The core mandate of this role is to pilot, refine, and ground-truth our solution stack across three priority pillars: administrative data quality, financial planning/utilization, and workforce capacity optimization. The Program Associate will translate state-level strategy into local execution while feeding ground realities back to the state team to iterate the model for scale. This is an action-oriented role requiring a balance of data fluency, public finance understanding, and exceptional stakeholder management skills within government systems.

You will report to the Nutrition Project Lead based in Bhubaneswar, work closely with the OD-ECD team, and have active interactions with other team members across our states for effective project delivery.
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 India's 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 Team

Within CEGIS, the OD_ECD teams' role is to support the WCD Department to ensure Under 5 Nutrition is a top 3 priority across the state and is diligently executed and monitored to keep it at "below 5%. The team works with the State Department on 3 key verticals of Outcomes Measurement, State and Public Finance and Personnel Management to improve state level outcomes on key indicators of Wasting, Stunting, underweight and EBF.

OD_ECD District Teams will anchor and test implementation of ECD solutions at field level. This will serve as a key feature of our approach to put our theory to practice, benchmark, refine and scale our solutions. Through our District Nutrition Programs we will also be able to directly impact change with District as a unit.
Position Summary

The Program Associate will serve as the critical, on-ground position of our state-level technical support unit, embedded directly within the District Social Welfare Office (DSWO). The core mandate of this role is to pilot, refine, and ground-truth our solution stack across three priority pillars: administrative data quality, financial planning/utilization, and workforce capacity optimization. The Program Associate will translate state-level strategy into local execution while feeding ground realities back to the state team to iterate the model for scale. This is an action-oriented role requiring a balance of data fluency, program management, public finance understanding, and exceptional stakeholder management skills within government systems.

You will report to the Nutrition Project Lead based in Bhubaneswar, work closely with the Odisha team, and have active interactions with other team members across our states for effective project delivery.
Roles & Responsibilities

Data Integrity and Monitoring Systems

• Data Ground-Truthing: Audit and cross-verify digital dashboard entries (e.g., Poshan Tracker data) with physical registers at the sector and Anganwadi Centre (AWC) levels to identify gaps in data quality.
• Analytical Support: Analyze monthly district progress reports to spot low-performing blocks and present actionable data to the DSWO to drive data-backed administrative reviews.
• Feedback Loops: Design and implement simplified, routine data validation protocols for field functionaries (Supervisors and Child Development Project Officers - CDPOs).

Financial Planning & Budget Utilization

• Expenditure Tracking: Work with the district finance/accounts team to map fund flow bottlenecks and trace delays in scheme utilization (e.g., supplementary nutrition, flexi-funds).
• Actionable Planning: Assist the DSWO office in preparing realistic, data-driven annual and quarterly District Action Plans based on historical spending capacity and actual local needs.
• Compliance and Reporting: Help streamline the documentation and tracking of Utilization Certificates (UCs) to ensure smoother financial cycles.

Personnel Management and Capacity Building

• Skill-to-Role Mapping: Conduct diagnostic assessments of district/block personnel (CDPOs, Supervisors) to map existing competencies against their operational mandates.

• Training Delivery: Co-design and facilitate hyper-localized training modules on data driven decision-making, financial tracking, and operational management.

• On-the-Job Mentorship: Provide hands-on troubleshooting support to block/field-level staff to ensure the solution stack tools are adopted in their daily workflows.
  Liaison and Knowledge Management

• State-District Conduit: Synthesize weekly insights, challenges, and operational bottlenecks from the field and relay them to the state team to inform iterative design.

• Operational Documentation: Document process maps, success stories, and structural hurdles discovered during the pilot phase to create a blueprint for statewide scaling.
  Education and Experience

• 1 - 3 years of experience with a Masters degree or equivalent in economics, public policy, social science, computer science, or related fields from a reputed institution.

• Experience of working closely with government systems, public health, or nutrition programs (ICDS/WCD preferred) with demonstrated experience in grass-roots project coordination is highly desirable.

• Experience in field studies, data collection, cleaning and analysis of large and complex data sets.

• Concrete experience in district level client servicing/government projects would be preferred
  Required Competencies

a) Domain Competencies

• Awareness/Understanding of India's nutrition/ECD ecosystem - ICDS/WCD architecture, Poshan Tracker, Anganwadi Centre (AWC) systems, and key indicators (Wasting, Stunting, Underweight, EBF)
• Familiarity with government administrative and public finance systems - budgeting cycles, fund flow mechanics, Utilization Certificates (UCs), and scheme-level expenditure (e.g., supplementary nutrition, flexi-funds)
• Working knowledge of state/district governance structures, including District Social Welfare Office (DSWO), CDPO, and Supervisor-level administrative hierarchies

b) Functional Competencies

• Research & analytical ability to interpret district progress reports and identify low-performing blocks
• Data literacy - cleaning, cross-verifying, and analyzing large/complex datasets (dashboard vs. physical register reconciliation)
• Proficiency in statistical software platforms—specifically Python, R, or STATA—to perform data manipulation, cleaning, and complex statistical analysis is highly preferred. Advanced analytics using Excel/Google Sheets are also welcome
• Problem-solving/solution design - diagnosing fund-flow bottlenecks, designing simplified data validation protocols, and adapting solutions when standard processes stall
• Communication & documentation - synthesizing field insights into clear reports, documenting process maps and success stories for statewide scaling
• Project execution ability - driving District Action Plans, training modules, managing field stakeholders

c) Behavioural Competencies

• Ownership - acting as the "on-ground" anchor for CEGIS's solution stack with minimal direct supervision

• Learning agility - intellectual curiosity and willingness to stay current with data, measurement, and governance practices

• Collaboration - building trust-based working relationships with DSWO officials, CDPOs, Supervisors, and the state-level team

• Stakeholder sensitivity - navigating government systems with tact, actively listening to and valuing officials' perspectives

• Ability to work in ambiguity - a "builder" mindset comfortable finding alternate pathways when formal administrative processes stall (critical given the pilot/reform nature of the role)
  Role Logistics

• This is a field-based role, anchored from District level offices requiring frequent travel (esp within district) and working with key field officers and institutions.

• Must be fluent in Odia (speaking and reading) and English.
  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 Muralidharan's book Accelerating India's 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: India's Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.

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