Background

The UN Secretary-General established the UN SDG Action Campaign to inspire people and organizations from all backgrounds and every part of the world to take actions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, while holding decision-makers to account for progress society-wide. The UN SDG Action Campaign is hosted and supported by UNDP and is based in Bonn (Germany) with a lean team that marshals rapid support for new initiatives as opportunities arise and provides partners with on-demand strategic creative services that inspire SDG action.

The UN SDG Action Campaign is working closely with cities and local governments to showcase how they are actively contributing to implement Agenda 2030, accelerating transformative action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals for all, and everywhere. The UN SDG Action Campaign is looking for a consultant to support the establishment of the impact evaluation framework for the Global Mayors Challenge.

The purpose of consultancy is to elaborate the impact evaluation framework for the Global Mayors Challenge. UNDP is supporting the Global Mayors Challenge, a global competition designed to identify innovative, impactful and replicable ideas led by municipalities across the world. This project will enhance the impact of the Global Mayors Challenge by directly supporting project implementation for eight winning cities to innovate public service and promote inclusiveness to implement Agenda 2030 at local level. The project also establishes the creation of learning networks to share knowledge in innovative city management generated by UNDP action worldwide. Finally, through advocacy and the generation of communication tools, the project will showcase how SDGs are a framework to innovate and promote replicability by other cities.

The initiative is led by the UN SDG Action Campaign, working closely with UNDP Country Offices.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of Work, Responsibilities, and Description of the Proposed Analytical Work

The Consultant will conduct the following activities:

1. Detailed analysis of the initiatives presented by the 8 winner cities of the Global Mayors Challenge that will be supported by UNDP, especially of the SDG goals and targets addressed by each of them: Amman (Jordan), Bogota (Colombia), Butuan (Philippines), Freetown (Sierra Leone), Hermosillo (Mexico), Kigali (Rwanda), Kumasi (Ghana) and Rourkela (India).
2. Liaising with the city governments and project supervisors to identify and select suitable local level indicators (social, economic, environmental and/or institutional), that reflect local governments´ needs and can measure impact of these projects at city level. These indicators must be in line with the official UN SDG indicators framework (https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/indicators-list/ ) but should be also inspired by the more recent developments in SDG local indicators;  
3. Support the project teams to elaborate a plan and a methodology to monitor and evaluate the projects (that include establishing a baseline, collecting data through quantitative and qualitative methods, analyzing data and extracting findings and conclusions, etc.) that is a) Pragmatic and feasible b) Useful for the city governments and c) Able to be communicated to the general public in a powerful and compelling fashion.
4. Elaboration of a logical framework for the overall project impact evaluation, linked to the UNDP Strategic Plan 2022 – 2025.
5. Elaboration of recommendations and key actions (proposed plan and methodology) to measure the impact of the project during its 3 years implementation period.

Timeline and Deliverables

The following timeline is proposed for activities and deliverables.

Competencies

Cross-functional competencies

• Ability to develop effective strategies and prioritized plans in line with UNDPs objectives, based on the systemic analysis of challenges, potential risks and opportunities; linking the vision to reality on the ground, and creating tangible solutions.
• Ability to communicate in a clear, concise and unambiguous manner both through written and verbal communication; to tailor messages and choose communication methods depending on the audience.
• Ability to make an independent judgement based on set criteria and benchmarks - Ability to anticipate client's upcoming needs and concerns.

Technical Competencies

• Data storytelling and communications: Skilled in building a narrative around a set of data and its accompanying visualizations to help convey the meaning of that data in a powerful and compelling fashion.
• Development evaluation: Learning and adaptation focused: ability to promote and facilitate ongoing reflection and adaptation; aimed at informing learning and portfolio related decision making. Being comfortable with unknown unknowns, uncertainty and understand the traits and value of working with emergence. Being able to give direction rather than destination: monitor and learn about how we understand the present and our direction towards something better (general intent) – not measuring progress and milestones towards a specific pre- defined goal. Being able to carry out evaluation thinking in complex systems and adapting evaluation strategies to changing realities. Being inclusive, collaborative and co-creative: being able to design and implement evaluation frameworks with the variety of stakeholders and beneficiaries involved. Being flexible and able to use of a mix of methods, having a high tolerance for ambiguity and can draw on a variety of qualitative and quantitative evidence, is open to unorthodox types of evidence.
  Ability to set up the structures, conditions, rituals to create a culture for curiosity, reflection and learning and promote evaluation results and insights from a learning perspective. Understand key principles of systems and complexity theory.
• SDG Integration: Role of science, technology, innovation for SDGs.

Required Skills and Experience

Academic qualifications:

• Master’s degree on development studies, political, social or economic sciences or urban planning.
• In lieu of a Masters Degree, more than 10 years-experience in working with the public sector at international level could also be considered.

Experience:

• A minimum of 10 years of relevant experience working with cities and local governments is required.
• A minimum of 5 years´ work experience on the local implementation of global development agendas is required.
• A minimum of 5 years working on Results-based Management processes (including formulation of theories of change, logic frameworks, identification of indicators, etc.) is required.
• Demonstrated experience in monitoring and evaluation and strategies for measuring impact in projects led by local and regional governments will be an asset.
• Prior experience working in UN/UNDP will be an asset.

Language:

• Fluency in written and spoken English is required. Additional UN working languages (especially Spanish, since two winning cities are in Latin America) will be considered 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 Offeror 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; and

- Technical proposal (no more than 3 pages) with the Offeror´s approach, methodology and timeline proposed for this assignment.  

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 (70 points)

Criteria A – Desk Review of candidates´ qualifications and experience (50 Points)

• 10 years of relevant experience working with cities and local governments. Weight = 15 points;
• 5 years’ work experience on the local implementation of global development agendas. Weight = 10 points;
• 5 years working on Results-based Management processes (including formulation of theories of change, logic frameworks, identification of indicators, etc.). Weight = 10 points;
• Demonstrated experience in monitoring and evaluation and strategies for measuring impact in projects led by local and regional governments. Weight = 5 points;
• Prior experience working in UN/UNDP. Weight = 5 points;
• Fluency in written and spoken Spanish. Weight = 5 points;

Criteria B – Technical proposal (20 Points)

Only the technical proposals of candidates obtaining a minimum of 35 points in Phase 1 (Criteria A) will be assessed.

The top 3 to 5 candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% (49 points from Criteria A plus B) of the maximum obtainable points for the technical criteria (70 points) shall be considered for the financial evaluation.

Financial evaluation (30 points)

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

• The financial proposal should specify an all-inclusive fee per deliverable.
• 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; cost of travel from the home base to the duty station and vice versa, where required; 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.
• 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.

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 Project Manager, Global Mayors Challenge based in UNDP Headquarters in New York (USA) and will be responsible for the fulfilment of the deliverables as specified above.