Background

Introduction

This terms of reference (TOR) sets out the expectations for an independent consultancy mission to conduct public expenditure management bottleneck analysis and business process mapping of the Climate Resilient Grants of the District Development Fund (DDF-CRG), implemented under the project on Effective Governance for Small-scale Rural Infrastructure and Disaster Preparedness in a Changing Climate in Lao PDR 2013-2017 (hereafter called as the project). This independent consultancy mission is commissioned by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) in close coordination with and complementary to the project terminal evaluation mission to be conducted by October 2017.

 About the project

The project started in 2013 and closes end of December 2017. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) - Department of Disaster Management and Climate Change (DDMCC) is the Implementing Partner (IP) and has overall responsibility for the management of the project. A national Project Support Unit was set-up at the MoNRE led by the Project Manager and housing a staff of ten. The Project Board oversees the implementation of the project. The project is implemented in 12 districts of 2 provinces of Sekong and Saravane in southern Lao PDR. It is a project supported by the UNDP and the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) 2 of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the UNCDF. The objective of the project is “Local administrative systems affecting the provision and maintenance of small scale rural infrastructure will be improved through participatory decision making that reflects the genuine needs of communities and natural systems vulnerable to climate risk”. In order to achieve this, the project applies a ‘three-pronged’ approach: (i) strengthening of the national, provincial and district capacities for planning for rural infrastructure that incorporates climate considerations; (ii) direct financing for infrastructure projects to vulnerable districts through an existing District Development Fund (DDF) mechanism; (iii) implementing ecosystem-based adaptation measures that provide additional climate resilience at the watershed level of project infrastructure intervention. Out of this three interrelated outcomes/components to achieve the project objective, UNCDF is the Responsible Partner to support achieving the outcome 2: “Incentives in place for small-scale rural infrastructure to be protected and diversified against climate change induced risks (droughts, floods, erosion and landslides) benefitting at least 50,000 people in 12 districts of Sekong and Saravane provinces”.

 About the public expenditure management of the DDF-CRG

To achieve the outcome 2, UNCDF has provided the necessary technical assistance in terms of monitoring and oversight to ensure effective fiduciary management, ranging between financial transfer of climate funds from the central to the local level, local climate related expenditure and reporting, and local planning process on budgeting and financial management and alignment of the DDF-CRG with the existing DDF. The DDF-CRG is designed as a mechanism to channel, monitor and report on the GEF-LDCF grant based climate finance through the inter-governmental fiscal transfer system, built on the existing District Development Fund (DDF) and following the model of local climate finacing under the UNCDF Global Programme on Local Climate and Adpative Living Facility (LoCAL). The DDF is a formula and performance based, incentive driven and discretionary block grants transferred to the district administrations for better service delivery and public expenditure management (PEM) strengthening at the local level. It supports the government’s move towards public administrative and fiscal decentralization and its implementation is led by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) under the National Governance and Public Administration Reform (GPAR) Programme, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI). By integrating climate resilient factors into the DDF, the DDF-CRG has acted as a vehicle to channel additional financing to enable climate resilient local development planning and budgeting and climate adaptation and risk reduction investments in small scale infrastructure. A total of the DDF-CRG at USD 2,000,000 over the project period has been transferred to the targeted district administrations (12 districts in Sekong and Saravane provinces), through the established dedicated district account, on the basis of district annual investment plans (DAIPs) and three year district development plans with climate resilient factors integrated. The DDF-CRG has been used to ensure that baseline DDF Basic Block Grants (BBG) for capital investment and development expenditure are climate proofed in the future and/or address the climate resilient needs of the target communities. The specialist climate related technical inputs are provided by MoNRE under component 1 and 3. The process involved a multiple layers of authorities both vertically and horizontally at the central and local level, including MoNRE, MoHA, MoF, the Bank of Lao PDR (BoL), provincial departments and district offices of home affairs, finance, planning and investment, natural resources and environment, public works amongst others.

Duties and Responsibilities

The main objectives and scope of this independent consultancy mission is to conduct public expenditure management bottleneck analysis and business process mapping of the DDF-CRG, with a view to the required institutional capacity needs for direct access to global climate financing facilities such as GEF and Green Climate Fund (GCF) in the future. The findings of this consultancy mission will contribute to codifying lessons learnt and policy briefs on institutional capacity and public expenditure management of the climate resilient grants, involving fiscal transfer and local planning, budgeting, financial management, procurement and reporting process. The consultancy mission will be conducted in linkage with and complementing to the project terminal evaluation in accordance with the UNDP and GEF M&E policies and procedures. The terminal evaluation will use the evaluation matrix of specific questions and indicators following the criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability of the project. It will also review how the ten recommendations provided by the Mid-term Review Final Report (15 September 2016) is followed up. As parts of the recommendations, the project Results Framework was revised to reflect the adjusted target small-scale infrastructure projects reduced from 48 to 28, which was based on a more realistic assessment of how many of this climate-proofed infrastructure projects can be implemented within the timeframe of the project and approved by the Project Board in December 2015. It was recommended to conduct a capacity assessment of the local administrative institutions to meet the required competence level to integrate climate risks into participatory planning and financing of small scale rural water infrastructure provision, and possibly to identify some remaining capacity needs and institutional bottlenecks.

The key issues for the consultancy mission to review and deliver are as follows:

1. Business process mapping of the DDF-CRG financing assessed against the DDF-CRG guideline packages, showing a number of decision making steps/approvals and average times pursuant to the fund flows and implementation of small scale projects funded under the DDF-CRG;
2. The business process mapping should also clarify the actual fund flows and approval requirements from initial requests to the payments of contractors, illustrating the process form identification and selection of projects to submission of project profile (with costing, designing etc.) and to approval of project and the reporting timelines;
3. The business process mapping needs to clearly highlight critical bottlenecks that have impacted on the actual process in the context of time delay and the number of approvals required;
4. Based on the findings of the initial mapping and applying standard tools related to the Business Process Reengineering (BPR), a modified streamlined process to build an optimized system for the DDF-CRG needs to be developed with a view to incorporating the process into the new Treasury Information Management System (TIMS) for budget execution being developed by the National Treasury Department of the Ministry of Finance (MoF);
5. To support the new process map, an accompanying narrative (about 4 pages) that comprehensively explains the new process and its integration within the TIMS needs to be provided with, in addition to a short detailed presentation (about 10 Slides) illustrating the actual and streamlined recommendations;
6. The business case for the streamlining and institutionalization of the process needs to be formulated with a view to identifying the existing capacity gaps and institutional building for future direct access by the national and local government to global climate financing (e.g. GEF and GCF), while asking the question on how best the Performance Assessment (PA) of the DDF-CRG to be carried out by the government system in order to build the DDF-CRG inside the national treasury and audit systems (e.g. once the PA done by the responsible ministry and the State Audit Organization (SAO) to audit the PA results)

APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY

 An overall approach and method for conducting a bottleneck analysis applying BPR.

The consultancy mission must provide evidence-based information that is credible, reliable and useful.

The consultant will review all relevant sources of information including but not limited to the project document (results framework), MOU between MoNRE and UNCDF (approved and countersigned by MoHA and UNDP in November 2013), the DDF-CRG guidelines, instructions and manuals (regarding fund flow and reporting requirements, procurement, accounting requirements, and inspection and audit), the Mid-term Review Final Report (15 September 2016), the DDF-CRG assessment report by UNCDF (October 2016), the relevant official and supporting documents including the Summary of the Endorsement of DDF-CRG Investment Projects and the District Annual Investment Plans (DAIPs) on DDF-CRG between 2013-2017, the Summary DDF-CRG Implementation Reports in between 2013-2017 (Summary Report on DDF-CRG Small Scale Investment Projects in 4 districts in FY 2014-2015 (4 districts), in 12 projects in FY 2015-2016 (11 districts) and 12 project in FY 2016-2017), DDF-CRG transfer and transaction, achievements and lessons), and any other materials that the consultant considers useful to design and formulate the DDF and PRF Collaboration Framework. An indicative list of documents that will be provided to the consultant for review is included in Annex of this terms of reference. Standard BPR tools and methodologies (referencing world bank) need to be applied with all process mapping being completed using the industry standard templates.

 The consultancy mission is expected to follow a participatory and consultative approach ensuring working under the overall guidance of the MoNRE – DDMCC as the Implementing Partner and the National Project Director and under the technical supervision of UNCDF Laos and in close collaboration with the project team (especially National Public Financial Management Coordinator). Interviews and consultations will be held with the following organizations and individuals at a minimum:

• MoHA/GPAR (DG of Planning and Cooperation Dept./National Programme Manager of GPAR) and the GPAR-DDF project staff;
• MoF – National Treasury Department, Budget Department and Fiscal Policy Department;

World Bank team in charge of providing technical assistance in the areas of public financial management (PFM) and the TIMS (e.g. business process mapping template of the treasury systems);

• UNDP GEF-LDCF2 project technical coordinators;
• UNDP staff (Head of Environment Unit and Chief Technical Advisor);
• UNCDF staff (Technical Specialist and Programme Management Specialist);
• UNCDF LoCAL Global Programme Manager and the LoCAL Secretariat staff;
• Governor or Vice Governor of the target province and Chief or Deputy Chief of the target district(s) and DDF coordination bodies at the provincial and district level (e.g. Provincial Support Team, District Development Support Committee, District Development Support Team);
• Project contractors

 TIMEFRAME

The total duration of the consultancy will be 22 days according to the following plan:

 DELIVERABLES

 The consultancy mission is expected to deliver the following:

PAYMENT MODALITIES AND SPECIFICATIONS

(this payment schedule is indicative, to be filled in by the UNDP and UNCDF based on their standard procurement procedures)

Competencies

• .Proven records of process mapping and business process reengineering;
• Knowledge on public sector, planning and budgeting;
• Understanding of GEF global climate financing in the South East Asia is preferable;
• Excellent English writing, analytical and reporting skills;
• Openness to change and ability to receive/integrate feedback;
• Ability to plan, organize, implement and report on work with minimum supervision;
• Ability to work under pressure and meet deliverable deadlines;
• Demonstrates integrity and ethical standards;
• Displays multi-cultural, gender sensitivity, adaptability and excellent interpersonal skills

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• Advanced Degree (Masters or equivalent) in public expenditure and financial management, international affairs and development, computer sciences or related fields

Experience

• Minimum 10 years of relevant professional experience in undertaking Business Process Reingen preferably in the context of financial systems and processes
• Technical knowledge and proven track record in Business Process Reengineering (BPR) in the field of treasury systems and process and or public financial management
• Knowledge of optimization of treasury systems via public financial management reform and financial management information systems in developing countries and Asia is an advantage

• Experience working in multi-culture and diverse environmental settings

Languages

• Full command of English is required

APPLICATION PROCESS

 Application Procedure

The application should contain:

• Cover letter explaining why you are the most suitable candidate for the advertised position and a brief methodology on how you will approach and conduct the work (if applicable). Please paste the letter into the "Resume and Motivation" section of the electronic application.
• Completed and signed UN Personal History Form (P11) for Individual Contracts (IC) – Blank form Download here.
• Letter to UNCDF Confirming Interest and Availability - please amend and complete the attached form...
• Financial Proposal - specifying a total lump sum amount (working days, travel, per diems, and any other possible costs) for the tasks specified in this announcement. Please note that the financial proposal is all-inclusive and shall take into account various expenses incurred by the consultant/contractor during the contract period (e.g. fee, health insurance, vaccination and any other relevant expenses related to the performance of service, etc.). All envisaged international travel costs should be included in the financial proposal. This includes all travel to join duty station/repatriation travel http://www.un.org.al/editor-files/file/Financial%20Offer%20template.doc.
• Verified sample of process mapping and associated BPR analysis narrative / report

* Kindly note that Letter to UNCDF Confirming Interest and Availability and Financial Proposal are two separate documents and should both be part of your application. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

 How to Submit the Application:

To submit your application online, please follow the steps below:

• Download and complete the UN Personal History Form (P11) for Service Contracts (SCs) and Individual Contracts (ICs);
• Merge your UN Personal History Form (P11) for Service Contracts (SCs) and Individual Contracts (ICs), Financial Proposal Letter to UNCDF Confirming Interest and Availability and cover letter into a single file. The system does not allow for more than one attachment to be uploaded;
• Click on the Job Title (job vacancy announcement);
• Click “Apply Now” button, fill in necessary information on the first page, and then click “Submit Application;”
• Upload your application/single file as indicated above with the merged documents (underlined above);
• You will receive an automatic response to your email confirming receipt of your application by the system.

 EVALUATION

 Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the combined scoring method.

The formula for the rating of the Proposals will be as follows:

Rating the Technical Proposal (TP): 70%

TP Rating = (Total Score Obtained by the Offer / Max. Obtainable Score for TP) x 100

Rating the Financial Proposal (FP): 30%

FP Rating = (Lowest Priced Offer / Price of the Offer Being Reviewed) x 100

Total Combined Score:

(TP Rating) x (Weight of TP, e.g. 70%)+ (FP Rating) x (Weight of FP, e.g., 30%)

Total Combined and Final Rating of the Proposal

Technical Criteria weight 70% includes:

•              35% Professional experience;

•              35% Competencies, past work related to the assignment;

•              20% Academic qualification;

•              10% Geographical working experience (proven).

Total maximum obtainable score for Technical proposal = 100 points. Only candidates obtaining a minimum score of 70 points under Technical evaluation will be considered for the financial evaluation.

UNCDF 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.

Annex: Indicative list of documents to be reviewed (to be guided further)

• Project document (results framework)
• MOU between MoNRE and UNCDF (approved and countersigned by MoHA and UNDP in November 2013)
• Mid-term Review Final Report (15 September 2016)
• DDF-CRG assessment report (October 2016)
• DDF-CRG guideline packages:

Guidelines on the Allocation and Usages of DDF-Basic Block Grants (BBG) and Climate Resilient Grants (CRG) (CRG system requirements included);

District Investment Planning Guidelines for the Usage of DDF-BBG (CRG system requirements included);

Manual for the Assessment of Districts’ Performance under NGPAR/SCSD-DDF (CRG system requirements included);

DDF-BBG Implementation Guidelines (no change from existing DDF guideline); and

DDF Financial Management and Budget Execution Procedures (no change from existing DDF guideline)

• Relevant official and supporting documents including the Summary of the Endorsement of DDF-CRG Investment Projects and the District Annual Investment Plans (DAIPs) on DDF-CRG between 2013-2017, the Summary DDF-CRG Implementation Reports in between 2013-2017 (Summary Report on DDF-CRG Small Scale Investment Projects in 4 districts in FY 2014-2015 (4 districts), in 12 projects in FY 2015-2016 (11 districts) and 12 project in FY 2016-2017), DDF-CRG transfer and transaction, achievements and lessons
• Manual for Public Investment Programme (PIP) Project Management (MPI, August 2010)
• Guidelines on District Socio-Economic Development Planning (MPI, 2013)
• Participatory Planning Manual (MPI and Inter-ministerial Taskforce on Harmonizing the Participatory Planning Manual, UNDP, 2012)