Independent Consultancy - Technical Planning and Coordination

Terms of Reference: Independent Consultancy - Technical Planning and Coordination for the Open Energy Research and Analytics Consortium (ORA) Background:The Open Energy Research and Analytics Consortium (ORA) is an open energy data partnership between the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), Ember, Global Energy Monitor (GEM), Open Energy Transition (OET), and TransitionZero. Terms of Reference: Independent Consultancy - Technical Planning and Coordination for the Open Energy Research and Analytics Consortium (ORA) Background:The Open Energy Research and Analytics Consortium (ORA) is an open energy data partnership between the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), Ember, Global Energy Monitor (GEM), Open Energy Transition (OET), and TransitionZero. Through a shared governance structure and a Secretariat currently housed at GEM, the consortium is working to build an open energy intelligence system based on trusted data, open-source tools, and collaborative analysis. ORA’s members have already developed the expertise to build every component needed for a shared open data infrastructure as well as reproducible modeling, data pipelines, versioned and citable data, quality metadata, exploration tools, and aggregate data for validation. These components have not yet been coordinated in a cohesive system, and many of the ORA organizations have built similar supporting infrastructure separately. This leaves users and partners to repeatedly reconcile definitions, identifiers, formats, and methodologies, which limits interoperability, auditability, and reuse. The growing use of AI systems for energy questions adds urgency: the standardization, versioning, and source documentation needed to integrate data across ORA are also needed to make open, verified, citable data legible to AI systems. ORA is entering a 12-month foundational phase to turn the consortium’s vision into an agreed technical and governance blueprint for an open energy data platform and orchestration system, including its audiences, governance, shared standards, and technical architecture for integrating member datasets, open models, and analyses. ORA is committed to ensuring that its core datasets, shared infrastructure, and collaborative tools remain open-source and publicly available. Objective: ORA seeks an independent consultant, serving as Technical Coordinator, to facilitate and project manage the technical planning of building a shared data infrastructure across the five member organizations. The consultancy includes the interviews and research needed to develop concrete, detailed proposals for how members’ data can be integrated and supports members in agreeing on shared standards, a recommended architecture, and a roadmap for the next phase of the platform and the flagship product, the Open Energy Outlook. The result will be a consortium plan co-authored with the members. Scope of Work: The Consultant will provide facilitation, project management, and technical analysis for ORA’s defined 12-month foundational planning phase. The Consultant will carry out the following work: Facilitation and Consortium Engagement: Facilitate the planning process with all five ORA members, preparing agendas and materials, guiding discussions, building consensus among members with different practices and priorities, and documenting decisions and next steps. Interview the data leads at each member organization to assess data assets, systems, workflows, and priority user needs. Facilitate a shared definition of the platform’s priority users (for example, energy modelers, policy analysts, journalists, civil-society researchers, planners in developing geographies, and AI systems) and the access patterns, tools, and guarantees each needs. Lead members through review of, and decisions on, the proposed shared protocols, architecture options, and data hub scope, ensuring all members have meaningful input. Project Management: Develop and manage an integrated wo