Background
UNDP’s parliamentary development portfolio comprises activities rooted at the global, regional and national levels. Strategic support to national parliaments, promoting inclusive and participative political institutions and engaging parliaments on key MDG’s and crisis prevention issues are at the core of UNDP’s activities, with a dedicated focus on women and youth. At the regional level, UNDP supports parliamentary working groups to develop new avenues for dialogue on sensitive topics and agree on regional benchmarks. Globally, web-based social networks invite the exchange of information and ideas.
The AGORA Portal for Parliamentary Development (www.agora-parl.org) was created to take up the crucial task of facilitating cooperation, increasing access to knowledge and providing a platform for the exchange of practices and experiences in parliamentary development. The AGORA Portal aims to centralize knowledge and unite parliamentary development actors and stakeholders in an interactive community of practice allows for more efficient planning, reduces the risk of duplication, and reinforces the sharing of expertise and experience. First launched in 2010, AGORA has established a strong presence and continues to experience a steady growth in knowledge management and creation, visitor numbers and interactions.
AGORA is looking to recruit an IT consultant to support the technical management and maintenance of this platform. In addition to providing security and back-up checks, the recruitment will be engaged for the following two deliverables:
Extractive Industries Portal: The oil, gas and mining sectors contribute significantly to government revenues, GDP and export in resource-rich countries. Parliaments can play an important role in improving governance of the extractive industries sector. Its three core functions – representing constituent interests, legislating, and overseeing the executive branch – are crucial to improving the governance and management of resources. In order to facilitate this, AGORA has launched an “Extractive Industries” Portal (EI Portal), mainly for MPs, but also for the public e.g. citizens, students, researchers, parliamentary development practitioners, and civil society representatives. The Portal is currently online in English, French and Arabic. AGORA is looking to launch a Portuguese version of this Portal, in light of the increasing importance of the extractive industries sector in the Portuguese-speaking countries of PALOP and Timor-Leste, and to add to its current functionalities.
Portuguese Corner: In 2015 AGORA launched a Portuguese Corner at www.agora-parl.org/palop. This platform gives MPs and parliamentary staff access to key materials and tools on parliamentary development. Most of the Corner's content focus on the PALOP countries of Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe as well as Timor-Leste. This PALOP Portal facilitates the exchange of news, information, electronic resources, including public parliamentary documents, reports and more. The primary audiences (and users) include parliamentary administrations´ staff, Members of Parliament, and the public e.g. citizens, students, researchers, parliamentary development practitioners, and civil society representatives. AGORA plans to build on this existing Portal, among others through the addition of some knowledge pages (‘areas of expertise’) and the implementation of interactive maps.
Duties and Responsibilities
The IT Consultant will be responsible for smooth functioning of the Portal and its sub-portals, and for implementation of additional features and functionalities as requested by the AGORA team.
Objectives
The IT Consultant will assist the AGORA team in providing swift and easy access to the Portal. He/she will:
- Ensure 100% up-time of the Portal and instate back-ups in case of glitches or server/hosting problems
- Maintain a secure, bug-free Portal for optimal user experience
- Implement, test and launch new features and functionalities at the request of the AGORA team
Key Functions
Under the supervision of the AGORA Project Manager, the Consultant will:
Deliverables
1. Ensure full functionality of the AGORA Portal for the June – August period
- Liaise with hosting company as necessary, aiming for 100% up-time
- Manage a full-proof back-up system and fix bugs where necessary
2. Build & Launch of the EI Portal as follows:
- Build the Portuguese version of the Extractive Industries Portal, duplicating all functionalities that currently exist for the EN/FR/AR versions
- Create new pages as requested, and assist the AGORA team in uploading and managing content
- Other tasks pertaining to development and maintenance of the EI Portal’s functions, as necessary.
3. Maintenance of AGORA’s Portuguese Corner:
- Maintenance of Portuguese corner PALOP Portal (www.agora-parl.org/palop)
- Build interactive mapping feature, in line with the design and functionalities of AGORA’s Public Financial Management e-learning course
- Develop further pages and spaces, as necessary
Expected Outputs:
- Fully functional AGORA Portal in English, French, Arabic and Portuguese
- Extractive Industries Portal launched in Portuguese
- Fully functional Portuguese Corner, with a flexible and interactive mapping feature
The expected outputs should be delivered by the foreseen end date of this contract: August 31st 2016.
Intellectual Property:
All information pertaining to this project as well as outputs produced under this contract shall remain the property of the UNDP who shall have exclusive rights over their use. Except for purposes of this assignment, the products shall not be disclosed to the public nor used in whatever format without written permission of UNDP in line with the national and International Copyright Laws applicable.
Competencies
Corporate competencies
- Commitment to UNDP’s mission, vision and values;
- Sensitivity to cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age differences.
- 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.
Functional Competencies:
- Extensive experience in drupal user management platforms, preferably multi-lingual ones
- Excellent working knowledge of HTML, PHP, Javascript coder
- Experience on similar projects highly desirable
- Flexibility in responding to changing priorities in a fast-paced environment;
Excellent written and spoken communication skills in English. Working knowledge of French, Arabic or Portuguese an advantage.
Required Skills and Experience
Recruitment Qualifications:
Education: A Master's degree or higher in computer science or related discipline
Experience:
- At least 10 years of experience developing and managing user management systems;
- Experience on similar multi-lingual projects;
- Experience with drupal development;
- Experience with HTML, php, javascript coder;
- Experience with graphic design software;
- Experience/familiarity with the UN system is an asset.
Application Submission Process:
The application submission is a two-step process. Failing to comply with the submission process may result in disqualifying the applications:
Step 1: Interested individual consultants must include the following documents when submitting the applications in UNDP job shop (Please note that only 1 (one) file can be uploaded therefore please include all docs in one file):
· Personal History Form (P11), indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references (the template can be downloaded from this link: http://sas.undp.org/Documents/P11_Personal_history_form.doc.
· A direct link to, or detailed description of, previous user management portals/websites managed by the candidate.
Step 2: Submission of Financial Proposal
Applicants are instructed to submit their financial proposals in US Dollars for this consultancy to procurement.be@undp.org using the financial proposal template available here: http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_file.cfm?doc_id=45780. The proposals should be sent via email with the following subject heading: “Financial Proposal for IT Consultant, home-based, latest by May 10th, 2016. Proposals to be received after the deadline will be rejected. In order to assist the requesting unit in the comparison of financial proposals, the financial proposal should be all-inclusive and include a breakdown. The term ‘all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, travel related expenses, communications, utilities, consumables, insurance, etc.) that could possibly be incurred by the Contractor are already factored into the financial proposal.
Application Evaluation Process
Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the cumulative analysis methodology (weighted scoring method), where the award of the contract will 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 technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation.
Technical Criteria weight: [70%]
Financial Criteria weight: [30%]
Only Individual Consultants obtaining a minimum of 70% on the Technical evaluation would be considered for the Financial Evaluation.
Technical Criteria - 70% of total evaluation – max. 100 points:
Candidate holds a Master’s degree or higher in computer science or a related discipline: Weight (%): 10
Candidate has a minimum of 10 years of relevant professional experience in managing similar multi-language platforms, preferably Drupal-based. Weight (%): 25
Candidate has experience liaising with hosting providers and has a solid track record in ensuring 100% up-time of his/her portals. Weight (%): 15
Candidate has full working knowledge of HMTL, PHP, Javascript coder. Weights (%): 15
Candidate is familiar with graphic design and graphic design implementation. Weight (%): 5
Interview, including detailed review of the candidate’s previous work. Weight (%): 25
English language proficiency. Weight (%): 5
Total: 100
Financial Criteria - 30% of total evaluation
The following formula will be used to evaluate financial proposal:
p = y (µ/z), where
p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated
y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal
µ = price of the lowest priced proposal
z = price of the proposal being evaluated
UNDP is applying fair and transparent selection process that would take into account both the technical qualification of Individual Consultants as well as their price proposals. The contract will be awarded to the candidate obtaining the highest combined technical and financial scores. Please go the following link for the General Conditions of Individual Contracts: http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/documents/procurement/documents/IC%20-%20General%20Conditions.pdf
UNDP retains the right to contact references directly.
Payments will be made only upon confirmation of UNDP on delivering on the contract obligations in a satisfactory manner.
Individual Consultants are responsible for ensuring they have vaccinations/inoculations when travelling to certain countries, as designated by the UN Medical Director. Consultants are also required to comply with the UN security directives set forth under dss.un.org
Due to large number of applications we receive, we are able to inform only the successful candidates about the outcome or status of the selection process.