UNDP Jobs - 56427- International Consultant- Designing Case Managemen

International Consultant- Designing Case Management Systems for Judicial Sector in Lao PDR

Location :

Vientiane, LAO PDR

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

08-Jun-2015

Application Deadline :

29-May-15 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

80 Working Days Over 8 Months

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

80 Working Days Over 8 Months

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

In September 2009, the Legal Sector Master Plan was officially adopted by the Government of Lao PDR. The Master Plan lays out a framework for the country’s first broad-ranging legal reform in order to achieve its ultimate goal of establishing a rule of law state by 2020. It is a comprehensive and candid statement of the current needs of the legal system as well as a series of guiding principles for developing a rule of law state and action plan to achieve this goal. The Plan represents an effort at coordinated legal system development consistent with the guidance of the political report of the 9th Party Congress.

In order to support the implementation of the Master Plan, UNDP, together with other donors, launched a new project (“Support Project for Implementation of the Legal Sector Master Plan”) in January 2014.

As the first attempt towards a programme-based approach in the legal sector of Lao PDR, the SPLSMP is expected to deliver the following 6 key outputs:

Enhanced capacity, procedures, and standards for legislative development and implementation in Lao PDR;
Improved capacity, structure, and arrangements further improved at legal and judicial institutions for more effective and responsive judicial process;
More systematic development of legal and judicial professionals enabled through the establishment of a unified judicial training institute;
Increased public understanding of legal rights and information, and increased participation in the legal system towards full realisation of their rights;
Lao PDR’s further integration into regional and international communities enabled through adoption, implementation, enforcement, monitoring, and reporting of international legal instruments;
Enhanced capacity of the Secretariat for more effective coordination in the legal sector and implementation of the LSMP.

This consultancy is related specifically to Output 2 of the SPLSMP. The project is seeking a consultant / firm to undertake this assignment.

Brief Background

The formal justice system is still at its infant stage in Lao PDR and with the first Constitution promulgated in 1991. Prior to which the society was largely regulated by party policies/resolutions as well as customary practices. In order to firm up the idea of establishing a society based on rule of law by 2020, the National Assembly adopted an ambitious 5-year plan in 2011 to promulgate and amendment 90 laws.

Lao PDR has a civil law system which is closely modelled on the Soviet/Chinese and French legal systems. The criminal justice system is inquisitorial with a legal profession of less than 200 lawyers in the whole country. Challenges existing within the justice system in Lao include, weak expertise on laws, legal concepts, judicial processes, limited legal drafting skills, lack of human resources and the lack of a robust case management system. The latter in particular has led to creating other complex legal issues such as the absence of systematic compilation of case laws.

Duties and Responsibilities

The consultant / firm will be based at the LSMP secretariat and the primary inputs of the consultant/firm will be produced in close cooperation with all the concerned ministries and agencies (Supreme People’s Prosecutor, Supreme Court,.), LSMP Pillar 2 and the LSMP Secretariat closely working with the CTA and the LPS.

The project intends hiring a local IT firm to develop the data base, identify IT requirements and complete networking. The firm/ consultant will be expected to work with the IT firm and provide expert technical guidance to the IT firm in designing an improved system for case management.

The consultant/firm is also expected to work closely with other development partners (such as UN agencies, EU, France, etc.) and apply participatory methods to this work. It will be important for the consultant to obtain appropriate feedback and involvement, and general agreement from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the National Assembly, members of the judiciary, offices of the Public Prosecutor, and other identified stakeholders.

The Consultant / firm will report to the Head of UNDP Governance Unit for all related matters.

Assignment Objectives

This consultancy serves the purpose of designing case management systems for the Peoples Supreme Court and the Office of Supreme People’s Prosecutors.

The system will be designed based on the findings of baseline assessments and gap analysis conducted on the existing systems by the consultant /firm. Thus the baseline assessment will be an important first step to identify gaps in the existing system and formulate next steps to improve/modify and develop a comprehensive case management system to be operated by Peoples Supreme Court and the Office of Supreme People’s Prosecutors, as independent systems with possibilities of links and modalities for information exchange. The consultant/firm is encouraged to use innovative means to carry out the baseline assessment and gap analysis.

The firm/ consultant will also study the existing data base of the Judgement enforcement Department and make recommendations for improvements and links to case management systems of the Peoples Supreme Court and the Office of Supreme People’s Prosecutors.

Expected Deliverables and Timeframe

During this phase of the SPLSMP it is envisages that the case management system will encompass the capital city Vientiane and one province.

The timeframe for this assignment is proposed to take place in four stages encompassing 3 in-country missions and one home based mission. And the working days allocated for each mission is as mentioned below:

Stage 1 to be carried out during the 1st mission consisting of 30 working days;
Stage 2 to be carried out during the 2nd mission consisting of 30 working days;
Stage 3 to be carried out home-based consisting of 6 working days;
Stage 4 to be carried out during the 3rd mission consisting of 14 working days.

The total number of working days for this consultancy will be 80 working days spread over a period of 8 months.

Competencies

Functional Competencies:

Shares knowledge and experience;
Plan and prioritizes work activities to meet organizational goals;
Builds and sustains relationships with key constituents (international/external/bilateral/ multilateral/public/private/civil society);
Conceptualizes and analyzes problems to identify key issues, underlying problems, and how they relate;
Demonstrates excellent and effective written and oral communication skills;
Demonstrate respect to knowledge and culture and religion in a multidisciplinary working environment;
Applies the required depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise to meet job demands;
Uses information technology effectively as a tools and resource;
Demonstrated flexibility and adaptability in taking on this type of consultancy.

Corporate Competencies:

Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
Treats all people fairly without favoritism;
Fulfills all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment;

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Advanced university degree in social science or related relevant fields.

Experience:

Minimum of 10 years of work experience in design thinking, case management or system development;

Languages:

Fluency in spoken and written English including excelling drafting skills, particularly in being able to write documents (such as reports) concisely and in simple-to-understand English that is easy to translate into another language.

Requirements for submission of proposals

All interested and qualified candidates should apply on-line using the following links:

UNDP Lao PDR Country Office website at http://www.la.undp.org/content/lao_pdr/en/home/operations/jobs/

Or UNDP Jobs at http://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_jobs.cfm

In order to make submission please read the attached relevant documents which are also available on our website:

TOR (Annex I);
Individual Contract & General Terms and Conditions (Annex II);
Offeror's Letter to UNDP confirming interest and availabity (Annex III).

Documents to be included when submitting the proposals

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

Technical and Financial Proposal as per Annex III “ Offeror's Letter to UNDP confirming interst and availability”
Explaining why you are the most suitable for the work;
Providing a brief methodology on how you will approach and conduct the work including the work schedule for the delivery of outputs/deliverables;
CV including past experience in similar projects and contact reference of at least 3 references for whom you have rendered preferably the similar services.

Note:

The financial proposal shall specify a total lump sum amount, and payment terms around specific and measurable (qualitative and quantitative) deliverables (i.e. whether payments fall in installments or upon completion of the entire contract). Payments are based upon output, i.e. upon delivery of the services specified in the TOR. In order to assist the requesting unit in the comparison of financial proposals, the financial proposal will include a breakdown of this lump sum amount (including travel, per diems, and number of anticipated working days). All envisaged travel costs must be included in the financial proposal. UNDP accept travel costs not exceeding of an economy class air ticket.

Please kindly refer to the Terms of Reference Annex I for detailed information on:

Project’s background;

Scope of work and Responsibilities;

Deliverables.

Requirements for Experience and Qualifications

Evaluation of Proposals:

Cumulative analysis: The award of the contract will be made to a consultant who 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:

Technical Criteria weight; [0.7];
Financial Criteria weight; [0.3].

Only a consultant obtaining a minimum of 70% (49 points) in the technical rating would be considered for the financial evaluation.

Note: Any request for clarification must be sent in writing to the following e-mail: kazuo.fukuda@undp.org with CC to phadthakone.sophavilay@undp.org.

UNDP Lao PDR will respond in writing by standard electronic mail and will send written copies of the response, including an explanation of the query without identifying the source of inquiry, to all consultants.

The copies of the response will be also placed on our web-site at: http://www.la.undp.org/content/lao_pdr/en/home/operations/jobs/ and linked to the current Procurement Notice.

All interested candidates are encouraged to visit the above web-site for updates.

Please note that only short-listed candidates will be notified.

Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

For more detailed information about UNDP Lao PDR please visit our website at http://www.la.undp.org/lao_pdr/en/home.html