United Nations Environment Programme is looking for a Taxonomy specialist consultant

Organization: United Nations Environment Programme

Location: GENEVA

Level: CON - CON

Job Family: IMA

Application Deadline: 19 March 2026 at 03:59 UTC

Job Opening Number: 26-United Nations Environment Programme-273720-Consultant

Apply via: UN Inspira Portal

Result of Service

• 1. Staging server is upgraded, patched and stable (see output 1).
• 2. Production server is configured, and operational (see output 2).
• 3. BRS taxonomy is enhanced (see output 3).
• 4. BRS Tagger app is enhanced (see output 4).

Work Location

Home

Expected duration

4 months

Duties and Responsibilities

PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The Secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions (BRS Secretariat) bring together the three leading multilateral environmental agreements that share the common objective of protecting human health and the environment from hazardous chemicals and wastes.

The services required under this ToR are part of the clearing-house mechanism for information exchange for the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions. The present ToR outlines the tasks that the consultant will undertake to assist the BRS Secretariat in further enhancing and upgrading the BRS Secretariat thesaurus system called PoolParty to facilitate information classification and indexing on the BRS Secretariat websites and other information systems.

DUTIES AND RESPONSABILITIES

Under the supervision of the Programme Officer, the consultant will perform the following tasks:

Output 1: Based on lessons learned from previous upgrades, upgrade the PoolParty staging server to its latest available version to apply necessary security patches and bug fixes (estimated duration: one month).

• Create a sandbox environment, in collaboration with BRS IT Team, to clone the staging server, including by setting up proper DNS to ensure that the current PoolParty instance remains operational.
• Install the latest PoolParty version on the sandbox environment.
• Apply the required upgrade scripts.
• Test the upgraded server on the sandbox environment to ensure that it is stable and functioning properly. Specific attention shall be given to public interface and resolution of resources; configuration of the authentication service (KeyCloack) in the most secured way, configuration of the Elastic Search service.
• Additionally, test that all projects, their structure and alignments remain accessible. In collaboration with BRS team, InforMEA team and IPBES team, test that the upgraded staging server is backward compatible with dependent applications such as BRS Tagger App, InforMEA portal and auto-tagging service, as well as with IPBES graphs application.
• In collaboration with InforMEA team and partner MEAs including BRS, CITES, Minamata, Ramsar and IPBES, define a freeze day to apply the upgrade on the staging server. Service downtime should be 24h max.
• Take the staging server offline, replicate the upgrade process on the staging server, put it back online and delete the sandbox environment.

Output 2: Set-up, configure and migrate relevant thesauri to a new PoolParty server to be used in a production environment (estimated duration: one month).

• In collaboration with InforMEA team, partner MEAs including BRS, CITES, Minamata, Ramsar and IPBES; and InforMEA Semantic Group, identify which thesaurus (projects) shall be made available on the production server. This shall include the need for specific URI resolution patterns for each project.
• Setup necessary DNS for the production server.
• In collaboration with BRS IT team and the InforMEA team ensure that the upgraded staging server is cloned into a production server with adequate resources and DNS configuration, so the staging server remains operational. The production server shall be hosted in the InforMEA hosts servers environment.
• Ensure that user rights are properly defined as per InforMEA Semantic Group agreed policies. If deemed necessary, assist the InforMEA team to conduct a meeting of the Semantic Group to review the access-rights policies for the production server.
• Develop and apply the necessary data cleansing scripts to ensure that alignments between projects and URI in each project are functioning properly; and that only necessary projects are retained.
• In collaboration with BRS team, InforMEA team and IPBES team, test that the production server is compatible with dependent applications such as BRS Tagger App, InforMEA portal and auto-tagging service, as well as with IPBES graphs application.

Output 3: Further enhance the BRS taxonomy (estimated duration: one month).

• Further enhance the BRS taxonomy quality by removing the “BRS” concept scheme; merging the “topics” and “subject areas” concept schemes; expanding the taxonomy and hierarchy depth; cleaning up ambiguous concepts; converting relevant concepts from adjectives to nouns; using singular forms; expanding the BRS corpus and align more corpus terms to concepts.
• In addition, missing definitions and notes should be completed to give an understanding and context to the concept.
• Furthermore, alternative labels should be reviewed and adjusted were necessary. More specifically, similar alternative labels should not be used for different concepts.
• Finally, BRS taxonomy should have a provision to use SDG indicators and goals, as well as Global Framework on Chemicals targets.

Output 4: Further enhance the BRS Tagger App so it can provide more accurate results (estimated duration: one month).

• Update and expand BRS corpus with selected and more recent Conventions Texts, COPs documents and other reports, such as the SC effectiveness evaluation report, the biodiversity report and others. Refresh the extraction model accordingly.
• Identify and define a list of stop-words to provide more accurate results during pre-processing. Attention will be given to free keywords used in the website HTML pages, such as download or numbered items suggested from the corpus.
• Connect to the GEO Index API to ensure proper resolution of locations.

Qualifications/special skills

An advanced university degree (Master's degree or equivalent) in information management, computer science or related field is required. A first level university degree in combination with two additional years of relevant professional experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree. A minimum of 5 years of proven experience in computer programming, data analysis, knowledge management, content governance, search, taxonomy and metadata management projects is required. Demonstrable experience in indexing content using existing taxonomies is also required. Proven experience in system's analysis and design, computer programming, including advanced programming skills in MS VB or C# for .NET platform, using MS SQL Server databases, and OData restful web services is required. Experience with Pool Party Thesaurus Management System, supported by certificates from the PoolParty academy is desired. Experience in working with environment related intergovernmental organisations on knowledge management is desirable.

Languages

English and French are the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat. For this position, fluency in English is required. Fluency in another UN official language is desirable.

Additional Information

Not available.

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