UNDP's Digital Strategy lays out a bold vision, to help create a world in which digital technology is an empowering force for people and planet. UNDP’s Chief Digital Office (CDO) leads the implementation of the Digital Strategy by enabling, accelerating and promoting inclusive digital development within UNDP and throughout its programmatic work across 171 country offices and UNDP’s six signature solutions in the UNDP Strategic Plan.

Building on UNDP’s Digital Transformation framework, implementing inclusive Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) requires greater collaboration to create the ‘digital commons’ or the Digital Public Goods (DPGs) and accelerate work towards the Sustainable Development Goals. UNDP puts people and human rights at the center of designing these systems so that they are intentionally inclusive and strengthens local digital ecosystems. UNDP’s approach advocates for an equal prominence to the ‘non-tech’ layers of governance, capacities, and community. These bolster DPIs through institutional support, robust governance structures and sustained community engagement to provide citizen-centric services at speed, scale and with appropriate safeguards.

In line with the vision and implementation of UNDP’s digital strategy, UNDP’s governance team  enables accountable and effective governance for an inclusive, whole-of-society digitalization, supported by DPIs and DPGs that maintain rights and support progress towards the SDGs.  UNDP seeks to promote the responsible use of technology and protect rights along a few dimensions: the structure of the overall governance system, governance of data management, including quality assurance of different platforms, ensuring the right oversight and lawful usage of personal data, and finally, mitigating risks related to privacy, exclusion, and safety. Simultaneously, UNDP continues to support in enabling the right legal, regulatory and policy frameworks in countries.

The digitalization of all parts of the state, economy and society mean that existing public goods - such as trusted information and civic space - are also being transformed through digitalisation. UNDP is supporting countries to work through the implications of this for peaceful, just and inclusive societies, including, for example, the digitalised public sphere, including issues of online civic space, and the shape of digital public goods that can establish and maintain safe, gender-responsive and healthy public participation and debate.

UNDP’s Digital Public Goods for Development (DPG4D) global initiative is funded by the Government of Norway (Norad) with aims to support UNDP incubate and identify its scaling role to improve the availability and discoverability of Digital Public Goods (DPGs) for development. The project has five key areas/workstreams that will be implemented between January 2022 and December 2024. The Chief Digital Office (CDO) catalyzes technical assistance to support key priority areas where UNDP works.

[Project: Governance to enhance the impact of digital ID]

As part of the “implement” and “advocacy” workstream, Chief Digital Office (CDO) works with the BPPS Governance team’s legal identity component on the development of a model regulatory framework, grounded in the UN’s human rights- based approach to the delivery of public goods and services to support the governance of digital public goods, with a focused example of digital legal identity.

The model framework will be used by UNDP partner governments to provide guidance on the non-technology layers of implementing digital public goods in general and digital legal identity in particular. The model regulatory framework will also complement efforts to develop a shared Charter or Vision for digital public goods (DPGs) and digital public infrastructure (DPI). Through establishing a model collaborative process it will support UNDP’s efforts to lead and align with the dynamic discussion around multi-stakeholder approaches to digital public goods.

The ‘rights based’ model framework of laws, regulations and institutional arrangements will itself be a digital public good - freely available as an ‘open source’ document and tool hosted on Github, with country specific variations hosted and available as a ‘fork’ of the model framework. The specific framework serves as a model for regulating digital ID while the approach serves as a model for other frameworks to govern other digital public infrastructure.

SCOPE OF WORK, RESPONSIBILITIES AND DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPOSED ANALYTICAL WORK

Under the work of the Project: Governance to enhance the impact of digital ID, the following tasks will be completed by the senior consultant:

Scope of Work

• Provide quality assurance on the work of researchers (who will be recruited separately) on the mapping of existing frameworks that govern digital legal identity as well as the development to of typology of governance system around digital legal identity
• Lead the strategic discussion with the advisory board of this project, which consisted with representatives from digital legal identity community such as World Bank’s ID4D, ID4Africa or Women in ID, academic institutions and CSOs.
• Lead the process of publishing the outcome of this research on collaborative platform and maintaining it by promoting discussions and incorporating the comments.
• Lead the internal UN review workshop and webinar for UNDP CPs on this topic.
• Draft the programmatic strategy (eg capacity analysis, assessment, support) towards the expansion of this initiatives and implementation with the real use cases.
• Lead piloting and refining of framework through in-person or virtual workshops with a number of country offices and national government counterparts
• Mature the interest in open-source or DPG-based digital legal ID among government counterparts interacting with the project.

Additionally, under the objective ii) to support the conceptualization and development (including resource mobilization) of a UNDP workstream on the governance arrangements for inclusive digital ecosystems, additionally supporting the Governance Team and the Chief Digital Office on tasks which include but may not be limited to:

• Identify new areas of governance support, including reviewing and evolving existing UNDP advise in key areas;
• Develop actionable advice that can be scaled across country offices through the governance portfolio
• Advise on ensuring governance perspectives in related CDO offerings including but not excluded to the Digital Readiness Assessment (DRA), Digital Guides for Practitioners, Digital Fitness Programme (DFP), UNDPs Joint Facility on Capacity Building with partners for governments.

Expected outputs and deliverables:

III. Competencies:

Professional Skills:

• Demonstrates strong ability to manage, facilitate, and engage in discussions with multiple stakeholders in a formal setting, seeking to encourage participation in an open and collegial environment.
• Proactive in problem-solving and recommendation for conflict prevention and resolution.
• Strong ability in managing confidential and politically sensitive issues, in a responsible way, and in accordance with protocols.

Interpersonal and communication skills:

• Strong communication skills and proven ability to collaborate between different actors and high level of internal and external relationship management.
• Uses tact and sensitivity when delivering sensitive information or resolving delicate issues.
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities.
• Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure.

Academic qualifications:

• A minimum of a master’s degree or equivalent in political science, development studies or other relevant social science is required

Experience:

• Minimum 10 years of Experience in public sector reform and digital transformation including program design is required
• Demonstrated strategic thinking and strong understanding of global developments in the field of democratic governance, digital and legal identity, new technologies and recent policy developments and programming at country level are required.
• Knowledge of  the UN system and of UNDP’s mandate and role in all country contexts including crisis contexts, and in relation to the field of democratic governance (in particular digital and legal identity sector), new technologies and discussion around digital public goods are strong assets.
• In-depth understanding of the latest result-based management methodologies, especially in the field of democratic governance and new technologies is a strong asset.

Language:

• Fluency in written and spoken English is required;
• Working knowledge of another UN language would be an asset

Application Procedure

The application package containing the following (to be uploaded as one file):

• A cover letter with a brief description of why the Offer considers her/himself the most suitable for the assignment;
• Personal CV or P11, indicating all past experience from similar projects and specifying the relevant assignment period (from/to), as well as the email and telephone contacts of at least three (3) professional references;

Note: The above documents need to be scanned in one file and uploaded to the online application as one document.

Shortlisted candidates (ONLY) will be requested to submit a Financial Proposal.

• The financial proposal shall specify a total lump sum amount, and payment terms around the specific and measurable deliverables of the TOR. Payments are based upon output, i.e. upon delivery of the services specified in the TOR, and deliverables accepted and certified by the technical manager. 
• The financial proposal must be all-inclusive and take into account various expenses that will be incurred during the contract, including: the daily professional fee; (excluding mission travel); living allowances at the duty station; communications, utilities and consumables; life, health and any other insurance; risks and inconveniences related to work under hardship and hazardous conditions (e.g., personal security needs, etc.), when applicable; and any other relevant expenses related to the performance of services under the contract.
• This consultancy is a home-based assignment, therefore, there is no envisaged travel cost to join duty station/repatriation travel. 

• In the case of unforeseeable travel requested by UNDP, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between UNDP and Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed. In general, UNDP should not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources.
• If the Offeror is employed by an organization/company/institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under a Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate at this point, and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP.

The Financial Proposal is to be emailed as per the instruction in the separate email that will be sent to shortlisted candidates.

Evaluation process

Applicants are reviewed based on Required Skills and Experience stated above and based on the technical evaluation criteria outlined below.  Applicants will be evaluated based on cumulative scoring.  When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

• Being 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 where technical criteria weighs 70% and Financial criteria/ Proposal weighs 30%.

Technical evaluation - Total 70% (70 points):

• Criteria 1. Relevant academic qualification for the specific assignment Weight = 10%; Maximum Points: 10;
• Criteria 2. Relevant professional experience in digital transformation and governance reform Weight = 20 %; Maximum Points: 20;
• Criteria 3. Relevant professional experience in democratic governance and new technologies Weight = 20 %; Maximum Points: 20; and
• Criteria 4. Demonstrated knowledge on the recent global policy discussion around Digital Public Good and digital infrastructure Weight = 20 %; Maximum Points: 20.

Candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% (49 points) of the maximum obtainable points for the technical criteria (70 points) shall be considered for the financial evaluation.

Financial evaluation - Total 30% (30 points)

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

Contract Award

Candidate obtaining the highest combined scores in the combined score of Technical and Financial evaluation will be considered technically qualified and will be offered to enter into contract with UNDP.

Institutional arrangement

The consultant will work under the guidance and direct supervision of the Head of Governance, BPPS and Chief Digital Officer, ExO and will be responsible for the fulfilment of the deliverables as specified above.

The Consultant will be responsible for providing her/his own laptop.

Payment modality

• Payments are based upon output, i.e. upon delivery of the services specified above and deliverables accepted and upon certification of satisfactory completion by the manager. 

Annexes (click on the hyperlink to access the documents):

Annex 1 - UNDP P-11 Form for ICs

Annex 2 - IC Contract Template

Annex 3 – IC General Terms and Conditions

Annex 4 – RLA Template

Any request for clarification must be sent by email to cpu.bids@undp.org 

The UNDP Central Procurement Unit will respond by email and will send written copies of the response, including an explanation of the query without identifying the source of inquiry, to all applicants.