Closing Date: Open Until Filled

This position is a Term position through June 30, 2026. Continued employment in this position is contingent upon renewal of the TERM.

In FY23, Montgomery County launched a newly created Office of Food Systems Resilience (OFSR), to streamline and coordinate the County’s efforts to address local food system challenges. The OFSR was created based on the recommendation of the Montgomery County COVID-19 Food Security Task Force and established by the County Council in July 2022 under Bill 20-22.

The Office of Food Resilience is charged with developing and maintaining a strategy for improving the efficiency, equity, sustainability, and resilience of the food systems in Montgomery County. Ensuring greater County government focus on food systems data collection, monitoring, and reporting (including food access and security data) is a priority of the OFSR.

Through fostering public-private partnerships with the community toward systems change, the OFSR will expand upon the County Government's investments in ensuring equitable and dignified access to nutritious, culturally diverse foods for all residents and harness the unique strengths of business, nonprofit and government partners to enhance the health of our people, our economy, and our natural resources.

Rising food costs and persistent rates of hunger across our county, a reduction in federal and private funding for food assistance programs, and deep systemic inequities and supply chain fragility that existed well before the pandemic, all require interagency strategies that maximize local dollars and leverage additional external funding to be better prepared for future crises.

Core goals for this position include:

• Engage public and private sector partners to identify, collect, and analyze available data, and establish long term data sharing and collection strategies;
• Develop an extensive knowledge of food system resilience data in Montgomery County and connect this expertise to inform county government budgetary, policy, and operational practices and decisions;
• Conduct in-depth research and analyses on local food system issues, and challenges and opportunities related to these issues, identifying best practices and models from other jurisdictions, and recommending data driven solutions;
• Collaborate with a wide range of food system partners including food assistance providers, farms and food businesses, government agencies, community advocacy and philanthropic organizations, and more to equitably and effectively implement and maintain new strategies, as well as enhance existing structures; and

The Performance Management and Data Analyst II (PMDA) position will be responsible for 

• Conduct landscape assessments and gap analyses of:
• Currently available food systems data collected both internally and externally, and current mechanisms for communication and analysis of data.
• County food system financial investments and assets, including procurement, vendor contracts, grants, public land, staffing, and infrastructure;
• County food systems policy, including County legislation and regulations (such as land-use and licensing) as well as strategic plans and operational policies; and
• Establish baseline metrics for key food systems data points and create a dashboard mechanism for tracking longitudinal data. Enhance and refine community service provider partner data collection, reporting, and analysis processes.
• Establish survey mechanisms and feedback loops to ensure policy development and implementation is directly informed by the insight and expertise of the community.
• Lead OFSR efforts in its first year to establish baseline goals and metrics for its performance, including the number of private and public partners engaged, strategic investment of County funds and assets, external resources leveraged, and policy and regulatory changes established and implemented to build resilience in the local food system.
• Support data collection and analysis needs of OFSR Strategic Planning and Policymaking initiatives, including:
• Government planning process to establish long term priorities and strategies for building food system resilience, including increased local food production, greater processing and distribution infrastructure, and enhanced food-based economic opportunity.
• Creation of a long-term county government framework for financial sustainability and strategic investment in food security programs and partnerships.
• Developing a case management system for residents experiencing food insecurity.
• Address the racial inequities and disparities present in all aspects of the food system.
• Engagement in support of other agencies’ initiatives that intersect with the food system such as food waste reduction, climate adaptation and mitigation, and housing and health equity.
• Successful implementation of existing county food-system initiatives, including the Food Security Plan, Strategic Plan to End Childhood Hunger, Strategic Plan to Expand Organics Composting and Compost Use, and the High Road Economic Development Plan.
• Establish a local best practices framework for food system community disaster response.
• Represent the County in engagement and coordination with statewide, regional, and national partners to share best practices, maximize external resources, and implement collaborative strategies for policymaking that strengthens equity and food system resilience both in our County and beyond our borders.

This position requires the ability to attend meetings or perform work at locations outside the office, if necessary.

Experience: Three (3) years of professional experience performing data analysis and interpretation, program evaluation, and or process improvement in food systems, food systems security, food science, agriculture, economics, or a related field.

Education: Graduation from an accredited college or university with a bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Information Technology, Computer Science, Operations Research, Business Administration, Economics, Public Administration, Public Policy, Management, Finance, Statistics, Engineering or related field.

Equivalency: (1) An equivalent combination of education and experience may be substituted.

       (2) Possession of a graduate degree in one of the above fields may be substituted for one year of the required experience.

No Preferred Criteria:

All applicants will be reviewed by OHR for minimum qualifications. Applicants who meet minimum qualifications will be rated "Qualified," placed on the Eligible List, and may be considered for interview.

Selection for interviews will be given to applicants with experience in the areas of:

• Quantitative and qualitative collection, analysis, and interpretation in community health, public policy, social sciences, and/or food systems
• Policy analysis and interpretation
• Program evaluation
• Process improvement and data-driven decision-making
• Development of presentations for a variety of audiences
• Collaboration with Regional, State, and local business partners including nonprofits
• Experience working across the data lifecycle, generating, collecting, processing, storing, managing, analyzing, visualizing, and interpreting data and statistics to understand issues and provide concrete insights regarding the effectiveness and impact of systems, government, or comparable services
• Expertise with data analysis and visualization tools like Tableau, Power BI, ArcGIS, Observable, and experience using these or similar tools to create performance dashboards and mapping/geo graphic data visualization
• Knowledge of and experience using tools like Javascript, C#, SQL, R, and/or Python for data extraction, analysis, and manipulation.
• Familiarity with AirTable, Excel and/or other basic data analytic platform