Background

In 2007, Malawi was one of the countries that volunteered to “Deliver as One” (DaO) ultimately, it was not one of the eight selected “pilots”, but instead was an early “self-starter.” The DaO reform agenda in Malawi has been built on the tenets of the five ones: One Leader, One Programme, One Budgetary Framework, Operating as One and One Voice. Pursuing the UN reform agenda, Malawi is one of the countries globally to develop and utilize the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) planning methodology under the DaO Approach. The UNDAF represents the One Programme component of DaO.  It replaces the joint UN programmes and the multiple UN-supported initiatives with a single, coherent business plan for all UN funds, programmes and agencies in Malawi, in which each agency is responsible for delivery on a set of key actions that jointly contribute to shared results.

Since 2008, there has been two successive UNDAFs that have been developed since the reform agenda was adopted; with one cycle for 2008-11 and the current cycle for 2012-2016. The UNDAF 2012–2016 is the common plan of 21 resident and non-resident UN agencies, funds and programmes in Malawi. It is in response to the needs and priorities of Malawi and based on the objectives of the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy MGDS II. It sets out specific outcomes that the UN and the Government of Malawi together aim to achieve by 2016. This ‘One plan’ for Malawi supports the achievement of the international development goals, the Millennium Declaration and related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), national development priorities which are consistent with the MDGs, and the realization of international human rights in the country, including the right to humanitarian assistance for refugees.

Guided by the UN comparative advantage, and the goals and targets of the MGDS II, the UNDAF had four inter-linked and mutually reinforcing priority areas:

• Sustainable and Equitable Economic Growth and Food Security;
• Basic Social and Protection Services;
• HIV and AIDS;
• Governance and Human Rights;

The UNDAF is fully aligned with the MGDS II. These priority areas are bound together by key overarching issues including a focus on adolescent girls as a means to accelerate development; building resilience among communities and institutions; advancing human rights and gender equality, and advocating for changing attitudes and behaviors. A focus on results backed by solid monitoring and programme oversight are key principles for how we implement our programmes.

In the implementation of the UNDAF, the UN in Malawi focuses on four Key Priority Areas:

• National policies, local and national instituions effectively support equitable and sustainable econmic growt and food security by 2016;
• National instituions effectively deliver equittable and quality basic social and protection services by 2016;
• National response to HIV and AIDS scaled up to achieve Universal Access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by 2016;
• National instituons effcetively support transparency, accountability, partipatory demonracy and human rights by 2016;

The UNDAF enhances the UN’s focus on results by bringing together agency specific planning requirements in a consistent manner, ensuring a “necessary and sufficient” programme logic in the results chain and resource requirements. The Plan comprises of a Programme Results Matrix, a framework of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound Outcomes and Outputs which includes indicators, baselines, targets and means of verification;

The UNDAF is organized in four Clusters with 14 Outcome Groups that allow UN agencies working in development sectors (food security, economic growth, health, governance, etc) to coordinate their implementation under the sector/ cluster. The Outcome Groups have a UN lead agency to facilitate decision-making, coordination and coherence.

To operationalise the UNDAF, an UNDAF Action Plan (AP) was developed which provided Annualised Key Results (AKRs) for each Outcome for each of the five years of the programme. However, more recently, the UNCT, with guidance from the UN Development Group (UNDG), has made the decision to move away from the rigid five year AP and instead focus on more flexible, rolling Annual Work Plans (AWPs). AWPs follow a normal year planning cycle, January to December. The AWPs are developed at the activity level using a common process and template, with the Outcomes and Outputs remaining fixed. This approach provides greater flexibility for revising programme activities based on national priorities and/or developments.

The Joint Strategy Meeting (JSM) is an annual high level forum between the Government of Malawi and the United Nations Country Team which seeks to provide an oversight to the implementation and monitoring of the UNDAF. The JSM comprises the Heads of UN Agencies and Senior Government officials from key line Ministries and is chaired by the Chief Secretary, with the UN Resident Coordinator as co-chair.

Duties and Responsibilities

The UN Development Group (UNDG) requires all UN country offices to undertake an evaluation of their Programme of Cooperation (UNDAF) in the penultimate year of the programming cycle. To this end, the UN Evaluation Group (UNEG) in collaboration with UN Development Operations Coordination Office (DOCO) has issued guidance on the required Management Structure and Terms of Reference to ensure quality standards are maintained. The planned UNDAF evaluation must observe the parameters of the UNEG/DOCO guidance, whilst ensuring an inclusive approach which involves stakeholder representatives in key decision-making processes. This is critical to ensure the Evaluation is nationally owned, encompasses topics of national interest and has application in the wider national sphere.

The purpose of the evaluation is twofold:

• To support greater accountability of the UN to stakeholders – by objectively verify results achieved within the framework of the UNDAF and assessing the effectiveness of the strategies and interventions used, the evaluation will enable the various stakeholders in the UNDAF process, including national counterparts and donors, to hold the UNCT and other parties accountable for fulfilling their roles and commitments;

To support learning – the evaluation must provide clear recommendations for strengthening programming and results at the country level, specifically informing the planning and decision-making for the next UNDAF programme cycle and for improving United Nations coordination at the country level. The UN, the Government of Malawi and UNDAF stakeholders should be able to learn from the process of documenting good practices and lessons learned which can then be shared with UNDOCO and used for the benefit of other countries.

Objectives:

The evaluation has four key objectives:

• To assess the contribution made by the UN through the UNDAF to national development priorities and results, including international and regional commitments on human rights and gender equality, through making judgments using evaluation criteria based on evidence;
• To identify the factors that have affected the UN’s contribution, identifying, understanding and explaining the enabling factors and bottlenecks that influenced the contribution (learning);
• To reach conclusions concerning the UN’s contribution across the scope being examined;

To provide actionable recommendations for improving the UN's contribution, especially for incorporation into the new UNDAF. These recommendations should be logically linked to the conclusions and draw upon lessons learned identified through the evaluation, including a review of the UNDAF management structure and processes to identify good practice going forward

Scope

The UNDAF encompasses both development and humanitarian assistance, with a focus on building the capacity of the Government of Malawi to undertake its responsibilities as the primary duty bearer as well as support to empower rights-holders to claim their rights. In response to national priorities, the UN in Malawi supports the Government in four inter-linked and mutually reinforcing priority areas: Sustainable and Equitable Economic Growth and Food Security, Basic Social and Protection Services, HIV and AIDS, and Governance and Human Rights. The four priority areas include the following 14 programme/outcome areas:

Sustainable and Equitable Economic Growth and Food Security:

• Resilience and Food Security;
• Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change;
• Employment, Labour and Private Sector Development.

Basic Social and Protection Services:

• Health;
• Nutrition;
• Water, Sanitation and Hygiene;
• Education;
• Protection.

HIV and AIDS:

• Prevention and Treatment;
• Enabling Environment;

Governance and Human Rights:

• Democratic Governance;
• Economic Governance;
• Gender Equality;
• Population and Development.

These priority areas are bound together by key overarching issues including a focus on adolescent girls as a means to accelerate development; building resilience among communities and institutions; advancing human rights and gender equality and advocating for changing attitudes and behaviours. A focus on results backed by solid monitoring and programme oversight are key principles of programme implementation. The majority of initiatives are national in coverage and upstream. However, there are components which operate at the sub-national level, usually direct delivery (e.g. refugee assistance in Dzaleka camp) or piloting of projects/activities for extrapolation of lessons learnt and future national roll-out.

The evaluation will review delivery and achievement of results across all 14 programme Outcomes, contributed to by 21 UN Agencies. However, a number of agencies are undertaking programme/Outcome specific evaluations in early 2015. These are as follows:

UNDP:

• Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change;
• Gender Equality.

UNICEF:

• Health;
• Nutrition;
• Water, Sanitation and Hygiene;
• Education;
• Protection.

WFP:

• Humanitarian Food Security Response.

Following on this, the UN Women as Chair of the Gender technical working group and OHCHR as chair of the Human Rights technical working group will undertake a desk review of the integration of the cross cutting issues across the UNDAF 2012-2016

Therefore, rather than re-evaluating these areas, the evaluation will focus on those areas not already evaluated and build on the thematic evaluations, bringing all areas together under a common evaluation framework. In addition to this, the evaluation will build on the national review process which is likely to take place from January to March. As the UNDAF is the primary document for supporting the Government national development plan, the consultant will be expected to work closely with the consultant(s) conducting the national review and as much as possible, collaborate and work jointly to reduce duplication of efforts (for example, share consultation meetings with stakeholders).

The evaluation should also include analysis of the mainstreaming of the five UN programming principles (human rights-based approach, gender equality, environmental sustainability, results-based management, capacity development) and examine DaO as an overall strategy

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Promotes the vision, mission and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Demonstrate integrity by modelling the UN's values and ethical standards;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Functional Competence:

• A strong record in designing and leading evaluations, using a wide range of evaluation approaches;
• Strong understanding of the United Nations system and UNDAF programming processes and procedures;
• Ability to assess the application of the five UN Programming Principles: human rights (the human rights based approach to programming, human rights analysis and related mandates within the UN system), gender equality (especially gender analysis), environmental sustainability, results-based management, and capacity development;
• Understanding of DaO principles and processes;
• Familiarity of national planning processes;
• Strong management, communication, interview and writing skills;
• Excellent communication and interview skills;
• Demonstrated ability to deliver quality results within strict deadlines.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s degree in International Development, Public Administration, Evaluation, Social Research or related field.

Experience:

• Minimum 10 years’ experience of conducting complex evaluations, including at least one UNDAF evaluation and one Gender Equality and Human Rights responsive evaluation;
• Experience of the Malawian context is desirable.

Language:

• Proficiency in English.

Skills:

• Process management and facilitation skills, including ability to negotiate with a wide range of stakeholders
• Excellent analytical skills;
• Excellent interviewing, facilitation and presentation skills; and
• Recruitment Qualifications;
• Ability to operate in a multicultural environment with political sensitivity and an ability to meet deadlines.

Documents to be included when submitting the proposals:

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications by 25 January 2015 online

• Technical Proposal - explaining why they are the most suitable for the work, providing a brief methodology on how they will approach and conduct the work, and highlighting their relevant work experience and skills for the assignment;
• Financial Proposal;
• Personal CV (P11 Form) including past experience in similar projects and at least 3 references.

Proposals must include all three documents. Proposals not meeting this requirement will be rejected.

Financial Proposal

Contracts based on daily fee:

• The financial proposal will specify the daily fee, travel expenses and per diems quoted in separate line items, and payments are made to the Individual Contractor based on the number of days worked.

Travel:

• All envisaged travel costs must be included in the financial proposal. This includes all travel to join duty station in Lilongwe /repatriation travel.

Evaluation:

The contractor will be evaluated against a combination of technical and financial criteria. The maximum score is 100% out of a total score for the technical criteria that equals 70% and 30% for the financial criterion. When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract should be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

• Responsive/compliant/acceptable, and
• Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation;
• Technical Criteria weight; [70];
• Financial Criteria weight; [30].

Technical weighted score of 70 points and maximum points of 100 points:

• Criteria A: Educational background (max 15 points);
• Criteria B: Practical previous experience conducting complex evaluations (max 30 points);
• Criteria C: Substantial professional knowledge and understanding of the United Nations system and UNDAF programming processes and procedures (max 20 points);
• Criteria D: Substantial professional knowledge of human rights, gender equality, environmental sustainability, results-based management, and capacity development (max 20 points);
• Criteria E: Management, communication, interview and writing skills (max 15 max points).

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70 points in the Technical Evaluation would be considered for the Financial Evaluation

The financial score for the financial proposal will be calculated in the following manner:

Sf = 100 x Fm/F, in which Sf is the financial score, Fm is the lowest price and F the price of the proposal under consideration.

(Total Financial Maximum points = 100 points);

Total Score.

The technical score attained at by each proposal will be used in determining the Total score as follows:

The weights given to the technical and financial proposals are: T= 0.7, F=0.3

The Total score will be calculated by formula: TS = T x 0.7 + F x 0.3

TS - Is the total score of the proposal under consideration?

T - Is technical score of the proposal under consideration;

F - Is financial score of the proposal under consideration.