Manager, IT Portfolio Governance and Performance Job #: req34081 Organization: World Bank Sector: Information Technology Grade: GH Term Duration: 4 years 0 months Recruitment Type: Local Recruitment Location: Washington, DC,United States Required Language(s): English Preferred Language(s): Closing Date: 9/2/2025 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC
Description
Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity to help client countries 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 poverty on a livable planet.
With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, the World Bank Group works with public and private partners, invests in groundbreaking projects and uses data, research, and technology to develop solutions to pressing global, regional and local challenges. For more information, please visit http: http://www.worldbank.org
The organization has undertaken an ambitious exercise to revise its mandate, products and structure to adjust to the multiple, intertwined crises affecting the world today (see Evolution Roadmap), in the move to becoming a better Bank.
Business Unit Overview
The mission of the Information and Technology Solutions (ITS) Vice Presidential Unit (VPU) is to leverage information and technology as a force multiplier to accelerate, deepen, and sustain development impact. Their vision is to harness information and technology for a world free of poverty on a livable planet. For more information on ITS, check this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=VTFGffa1Y7w.
ITS Business Administration Department Overview (ITSBA)
ITSBA is responsible for managing the business of ITS by ensuring strategic alignment of ITS priorities with WBG priorities. The department serves as a catalyst organization, focused on end-to-end accountability for IT governance, performance management, and technology financial management; developing a future-ready ITS workforce and dynamic people model; leading the transformation of ITS to an adaptive organization, and developing and executing a multi-year strategy and roadmap in alignment with the broader WBG strategic priorities.
The department is comprised of several horizontal activities that span all ITS departments, namely IT Governance and Performance Management, Technology Financial Management, People Engagement & Talent Management, Transformation and Change Management, IT Policy & Compliance, ITS Strategy and Advisory functions. The department is an extension of the office of the CIO, ensuring the effective strategy and operations of ITS result in an improved IT Operating Model focused on the role of technology in value creation.
ITS Portfolio Governance and Performance Unit
The IT Portfolio Governance and Performance unit (ITSGO) is accountable for overseeing the entire ITS work program, from EPIC investment planning and prioritization, delivery performance, and most importantly, value realization. It also ensures IT Policy & Compliance in support of WBG controls. ITSGO aims to optimize the business value of IT investments by ensuring strong alignment between business priorities and IT work.
Duties and Accountabilities:
IT Portfolio Governance
- Maintain end-to-end accountability and ownership for technology governance, performance management, and IT Policies & Compliance while effectively managing and mitigating risks and ensuring compliance with policies, standards, procedures, and security requirements.
- Define and manage the WBG technology governance framework including terms of reference, decision authority, governance forums, operating model, accountability methods, reporting, and alignment with WBG enterprise governance.
- Act as an enterprise value management office, aligning project management office standards, competencies, communication, collaboration and center of excellence for ITS, ensuring cross team learning and rotation opportunities for PMO staff.
- Oversee tracking, analysis, and reporting of the integrated ITS portfolio of programs, solutions, and initiatives ensuring visibility and transparency for business partners and stakeholders.
- Oversee ITS portfolio value case tracking and benefits realization activities.
- Design and manage ITS performance management and reporting processes, dashboards, and metrics providing insight into ITS VPU performance and value delivered to WBG.
- Track and report ITS portfolio delivery metrics, analyze trends and resolve variances to plan.
- Continually evolve and improve Lean Portfolio Governance process and competencies across the VPU, also allowing for shift left principles for early inclusion of enterprise architecture and security reviews as priorities flow through the planning processes.
- Ensure consistent and transparent prioritization and reallocation based on business needs.
Annual and Quarterly Investment Planning
Management of the Annual Investment Planning process for WB in compliance with the WB budgeting process and with a One WBG mindset, including the following activities:
- Partner with delivery teams across ITS to develop and manage investment roadmaps for each WB business area, proactively influencing senior management and board planning discussions while balancing needs of agile delivery teams to do their best work.
- Manage robust demand review and prioritization processes to ensure balance of investments for corporate mandates, resiliency, risk management, and business enablement through extensive engagement with business stakeholders.
- Instill effective decision-making framework in partnership with the business, architecture review board and ITS leadership.
- Actively support successful delivery of IT products and services for WBG through sound, efficient IT governance, ensuring that IT investments are directed to the agreed initiatives and that execution is planned holistically with appropriate business engagement through the following:
- Manage the IT Governance frameworks for the World Bank and IFC to ensure effective governance bodies and processes are in place.
- Manage ITS internal due diligence process for projects (Pre-PRM, PRM) to ensure compliance with AIP financial plans and business outcomes and evidence of business engagement.
- Converge annual investment planning with Agile processes to ensure flexibility and a robust process for pivot/persevere discussing, reprioritizing and redeploying capital as needed.
- Manage and enforce IT governance processes for the WBG, including annual investment plan approval, project authorization to proceed with and release of funds, and program monitoring.
- Provision secretariat services for IT governance bodies for WBG, including: managing pipeline of topics, ensuring compliance with approval processes and documentation in accordance with governance frameworks and committee TORs, documenting meetings and decisions, managing communications, working with committee chairs to ensure appropriate committee membership and effective engagements.
- Facilitate management of ITS performance through disciplined program level monitoring and reporting for ITS management and stakeholders across the WBG through the following:
. Management of extensive regular reporting cycles including annual, quarterly, monthly, and weekly reporting for WB senior management, WB IT governance bodies, WBG CIO, and ITS Management Team.
. Management of reporting processes and automation.
. Design and management of the Value Management framework and related reporting, elevating the ITS value management storytelling, articulating the impact in a meaningful way for non-technical audiences.
IT Policy & Compliance
- Oversee and guide the development and maintenance of WBG information and technology policies, directives, procedures and standards, in alignment with the Bank Group’s IT strategy, business requirements, and enterprise risk management. Provide information and technology policy interpretation and advice and handle policy exception requests.
- Liaise with key stakeholders such as Legal, HR, Risk, GIA, and internal justice units across WBG in the development, implementation and enforcement of information and technology policies and standards that have far reaching implications for ITS and WBG.
- Provide thought leadership and strategic direction for the compliance and policy work programs.
- Champion policy and compliance initiatives within ITS, identify opportunities to improve compliance coverage and optimize resources.
- Effectively communicate complex compliance issues simply and clearly to senior management.
- Manage the IT Internal Controls over Financial Reporting (ICFR) program by partnering with the central ICFR team, IT operations teams and external auditors.
- Manage the IT ICFR program for WBG Institutions with a matrix team of control owners and partner with external auditors to support their review and testing. Provide assurance on the effectiveness of IT general controls to support management assertion through continuous controls.
- Advise and address compliance implications of new laws, regulations, emerging practices & technologies impacting ITS, keeping operating procedures current.
- Review annual audit plans and make recommendations for new auditable areas through risk assessment.
- Collaborate with diverse group of stakeholders across WBG to develop future-focused policies and technical standards to govern the use, management, and security of information and technology services.
- Forecast demand and manage resources to ensure effective delivery of the compliance and policy work program.
- Provide strategic leadership to the IT Compliance function; provide oversight of process and control compliance across systems, applications, infrastructure and emerging areas such as cloud and third-party vendor management; independent and continuous controls monitoring and IT policy enforcement within WBG.
- Lead the development of compliance frameworks and conduct assessments/reviews to ensure compliance with relevant policies, procedures, standards, and internal regulatory expectations.
Proactively manage all aspects of IT compliance, including assessing compliance risks and impact to ITS and Bank Group, developing and monitoring remediation plans and reporting periodically to the management team.
- Lead efforts to collaborate with the WBG internal audit group (GIA) and IT operations teams to participate in risk assessments, audit work program development, understand audit results and support remediation efforts for information technology related issues.
Personnel Management
- Using budget-neutral measures, build out a highly-skilled global, diverse and cost-effective workforce with a balanced mix of staff, contractors, locations, and managed-services.
- Improve psychological safety within the team and model the culture that ITS aspires to achieve through Teamwork, Innovation, Impact, Integrity and Respect.Leadership includes a focus on excellence, focus, and thinking bigger.
Within the first year, this leader will deliver the following:
- Assess the IT Portfolio Governance team and refresh the team charter.
- Improve at least two processes linked to lean portfolio management, value management office and enterprise PMO operations within ITS.
- Act as Product Owner for the project and portfolio management tool replacement, ensuring it is the single source of truth and used widely across ITS and partners.
- Create a dashboard of portfolio health for the leadership team and product/service team consumption, tracking key statistics linked to velocity, quality, risk, value delivered and other macro level rollups that show impact to the WBG mission.
- Enhance business partners' connection to the ITS portfolio and develop their LPM competencies.Elevate their contribution to prioritization, pivot/persevere discussions and redeployment decisions, creating clarity and transparency in the decision-making processes.Link the wider WBG mission to the ITS portfolio of work, encouraging an enterprise view of goals over individual priorities.
- Ensure continued IT Policy & Compliance operations, evolving as necessary in support of the agile operating model, while maintaining top-notch controls, WBG financials, and contribution to the AAA rating.
Selection Criteria
* Master's degree in computer science, engineering, business, or relevant discipline with at least 12 years of experience in a global IT organization, or equivalent combination of education and experience. Relevant experience and measurable results in maturing IT program management and/or governance in an agile operating model.
* Extensive knowledge of IT governance and strategy development best practices.
* Solid understanding of Solution Delivery LifeCycle (SDLC), with hands-on project management experience preferred.
* Deep experience with lean portfolio management and agile governance practices.
* Strong experience and understanding of IT portfolio management processes and tools.
* Excellent communication skills (verbal and written) and excellent facilitation skills; able to delivers information effectively in support of team.
* Proven ability to collaborate with other team members across boundaries and contribute productively to the team's work and output, demonstrating respect for different points of view.
* Strong diplomatic, interpersonal, and teamwork skills to cultivate effective, productive client relationships and partnerships across organizational boundaries.
* Proven ability to lead multiple complex programs at the same time in a fast-paced environment.