Background

For many years, court administration and case management were given low priority in the Cambodian justice system despite the fact that they play an important role in the administration of justice. In most courts, all information about cases is registered in paper only, manually entered in registry books which are not searchable. In order to determine the status of a particular case, court users, including lawyers, has to identify which prosecutor or judge is in charge of the case, then identify which clerk works for that particular judge or prosecutor and contact this person for information. Case files regularly get lost when a judge and/or a clerk transfers to another court, resigns, retires or dies. There is no efficient centralized case management system in each court of first instance. Court presidents are often unable to provide statistics on the number of cases registered, pending, decided, etc, or the number of final judgments issued and shared with the prisons.

The result is a clear of efficiency and transparency in the court system, which leads to a lack of accountability. The right to be tried promptly is regularly violated, with many prisoners languishing in excessive pre-trial detention. Some prisoners are not released upon serving their sentence because of a lack of required court papers, including a final judgment.

The only court of first instance to have established a case database is Phnom Penh Municipal Court. The database was developed with support from the East-West Management Institute (EWMI) funded by USAID. It initially focused on case of trafficking and was later expanded to cover all criminal cases. 20,000 cases have now been entered into this database. The database is searchable by case number, name of the accused, name of the victim, name of the judge, name of the prosecutor, name of the clerk, etc. Court users can go to the chief clerk and request information on their case. The case database also allows for scanning of documents, such as court orders, into the system. EWMI has agreed to let OHCHR use the case database software it had developed. The objective of the current project is to replicate this case database to up to five other courts of first instance in the provinces.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of Work:

The Consultant will assist the Rule of Law Unit in installing the case database developed for Phnom Penh Municipal Court in up to five other courts of first instance. In particular, the Consultant will organize the following activities:

  • Conduct a brief review of the use of the case database in Phnom Penh Municipal Court in order to draw lessons for the other courts and in particular identify challenges in the efficient use of the database (5 days’ work). A brief report will drafted and submitted by 20 February 2015;
  • Help identify three courts of first instance where the case database will be installed and conduct assessment visits in these courts (10 days’ work). The three assessment visits will be conducted by 13 March 2015;
  • Install the case database in the three courts, conduct initial trainings for all relevant court officers and provide on-the-job training on entering case data, uploading court orders and judgments, and using the database to search for a case, generate the case log report and generate a list of persons on pre-trial detention (30 days’ work). The database will be installed and initial trainings provided in three courts by 5 May 2015;
  • Help identify two other courts of first instance where the case database will be installed and conduct assessment visits in these courts (10 days’ work). The assessment visits will be conducted by 27 May 2015;
  • Install the case database in the two courts, conduct initial trainings for all relevant court officers and provide on-the-job training (20 days’ work). The database will be installed and initial trainings provided in two other courts by 26 June 2015;
  • Conduct follow-up visits to the five courts and provide maintenance advice to local court officers (25 days‘ work). The follow-up visits will be conducts by 31 July 2015.

Expected Outputs and Deliverables:

  • Report on a brief review of the use of the case database in Phnom Penh Municipal Court;
  • Assessment visits to three courts of first instance;
  • Installation of the case database in the three courts and initial training;
  • Assessment visits to two other courts of first instance;
  • Installation the case database in the two courts and initial training;
  • Follow-up visits to the five courts.

Institutional Arrangement:

The Consultant will be directly supervised by the Coordinator of the OHCHR Rule of Law Unit, under the overall supervision of the OHCHR Representative.

Duration of the Work:

The work will be completed between 16 February and 31 July 2015.  During this period, the Consultant will be paid for 100 days, worked as per agreement with the Coordinator of the Rule of Law Unit.

Duty Station:

The Contractor’s duty station for the contract duration will be Phnom Penh. The Contractor will be required to travel to five courts of first instance in the provinces, three times to each court. Only transport and DSA will be covered by OHCHR.

When in Phnom Penh, the Contactors will be required to be present at the OHCHR office during the work. It is expected that the consultant will spend most of the time in the provinces.

Competencies

Functional Competencies:

  • Knowledge and experience of developing and installing information management systems;
  • Experience in providing training on information management systems;
  • Working knowledge and experience of the Cambodian justice system, especially of the case database in Phnom Penh Municipal Court, is an asset;
  • Knowledge of relevant programming languages and databases such as HTML, XHTML, JavaScript, .NET, CSS, PHP, SQL, MySQL, SQL Server and others.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

  • Masters’s Degree in Computer Science (A Bachelor’s degree in combination with four additional years of qualifying work experience may be accepted in lieu of the Master’s degree)

Experience:

  • 3 years of relevant professional experience at the national level  (7 years if Bachelor’s degree)

Language Requirement:

  • Fluency in oral and written Khmer and English

Important Note:

Interested offeror is strongly advised to read the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice, which can be viewed at http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=20170 for more detail about term of references, instructions to offeror, and documents to be included when submitting offer.

Documents to be included when submitting the application:

Interested offeror/individual must submit the following documents/information:

UNDP reserves right to reject any applications that is incomplete.

Please be informed that we don’t accept application submitted via email.

Interested candidate is required to submit application via UNDP jobsite system, because the application screening and evaluation will be done through UNDP jobsite system. Please note that UNDP jobsite system allows only one uploading of application document, so please make sure that you merge all your documents into a single file. Your on-line applications submission will be acknowledged where an email address has been provided. If you do not receive an e-mail acknowledgement within 24 hours of submission, your application may not have been received. In such cases, please resubmit the application, if necessary.

Any request for clarification/additional information on this procurement notice shall be communicated in writing to UNDP office or send to email vannara.chea@undp.org and/or procurement.kh@undp.org. While the Procurement Unit would endeavor to provide information expeditiously, only requests receiving at least 5 working days prior to the submission deadline will be entertained. Any delay in providing such information will not be considered as a reason for extending the submission deadline. The UNDP's response (including an explanation of the query but without identifying the source of inquiry) will be posted in Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice page as provided above. Therefore, all prospective Offerors are advised to visit the page regularly to make obtain update related to this Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice.

**** Application submission is extended from 29 January 2015 to 08 February 2015