Background

The increased use of technology over the past decades has driven new means of transformation in many economical products and services to be influenced, partially or fully, by digital inputs and outputs. This has created a digital economy that is interconnected to many sectors and activities within the Saudi economy. To fully understand the extent of this economy and measure its contribution to the GDP of the Kingdom, GASTAT has established a digital economy department that is leading this measurement along with other surveys that focus on the access and usage of ICT. The main focus of this project is providing GASTAT with the required expertise in ICT statistics, with a special focus on the measurement of the Kingdom’s digital economy. This project aims to build the whole statistical cycle of a digital economy survey and data pipeline, from the scope to the management of the statistical methodology and cover all the technical aspects required to measure the digital economy contribution to the Saudi gross domestic product (GDP).

Duties and Responsibilities

The expert shall Lead a team of experts in Digital Economy, in addition to performing tasks in the area of (ICT Business surveys and Digital economy surveys). Also, he/she will provide technical expertise and assistance in the fields of information and communication technology statistics and indicators of businesses that lie under the digital economy definition (currently based on the OECD definition of the digital economy). He/She will work in the digital economy department under the supervision of the department director.  The consultant will also implement capacity-strengthening activities, including training and mentoring, for the digital economy statistics team. The technical support and capacity strengthening expected from the expert under this assignment include the following:

Technical support

1. Review the status quo of ICT data in the Kingdom through the study of the available and required indicators to measure the digital economy via the use of business surveys (use and supply of ICT) and Digital Economy Surveys.
2. Review the latest updates globally on the methodology for measuring the digital economy via the use of Business surveys (use and supply of ICT) and Digital Economy Surveys.
3. Provide the ICT data owned by different entities in the Kingdom and could be of use to produce ICT indicators via the use of Business surveys (use and supply of ICT) and Digital Economy Surveys.
4. Provide indicators related to the digital economy that cannot be provided through admin data: Indicators via the Business surveys (use and supply of ICT) and Digital economy survey.
5. Develop a methodology for producing such data either through existing surveys, such as structural business survey or ICT business survey and/or through the independent digital economy survey.
6. Supervise and review questionnaires on the Digital Economy that will be produced by the team, including e-commerce, businesses access, narrow and broad levels of the digital economy as defined by the OECD and usage to/of ICT Survey.
7. Develop a mechanism for integrating data related to the digital economy, which is likely to be gathered through ICT business surveys, a mechanism to calculate the contribution of the digital economy to the GDP.
8. Develop a mechanism for integrating data related to the digital economy, which is likely to be gathered through a Digital economy survey, a mechanism to calculate the contribution of the digital economy to the GDP.
9. Develop the current businesses’ access and usage ICT survey and assist with their yearly statistical cycle.
10. Create a digital supply and use a table for measuring the digital economy.
11. Verify and lead the important indicators related to the digital economy that need to be disseminated linked to this assignment.

Capacity building

1. Lead the development of a part of the digital economy framework relating to data provided via the Business surveys (use and supply of ICT) and Digital economy survey.
2. Provide expertise on principle and best practices methodologies and frameworks concerning the use of business samples.
3. Provide statistical and ICT Business data and indicators training to the digital economy statistics teams.
4. Provide coaching and on-the-job training on “ICT Business data and indicators” for the team as needed.
5. Provide statistical training on data quality to the digital economy statistics teams.

Technical coordination

1. Lead and coordinate the work, during the period of the project, of all the digital economy experts involved, under this project to provide all the technical expertise and assistance in the fields of information and communication technology statistics and indicators that lies under the OECD digital economy definition.
2. Liaise with the concerned staff from the General Authority for Statistics, including the digital economy department, in particular the director of the department, during the period of implementation of the different tasks of this project.

Expected Outputs and Deliverables

B.       Institutional Arrangement

• The Director of the Digital Economy Statistics Department within the Economic Statistics General Department at GASTAT who will directly supervise the Contractor and to whom he/she will be directly responsible to, reporting and seeking approval/acceptance of output from.
• Reporting and follow-up Mechanism: The Expert will report on a monthly basis to his/her supervisor and to the Chief Technical Advisor. The Specialist will submit monthly reports to his/her supervisor, including activities, outputs, performance indicators, challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations.

C.        Duration of the Work

• The expected duration of work is 12 Months, with the possibility of an extension.
• The anticipated starting date of the assignment is 15th of January, 2023. And the expected date of full completion of all tasks under this assignment is 31st of December of 2023.

A.       Duty Station

• The assignment will be hybrid (in-country and home-based). The duty station for the work in country will be in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He/ She will be embedded within the Digital Economy Statistics Department within the Economic Statistics General Department at GASTAT.
• If unforeseen travel outside the consultant’s home-based city is requested by UNDP and not required by the Terms of References (ToR), such travel shall be covered by UNDP in line with applicable rules and regulations and upon prior written agreement. In such cases, the consultant shall receive living allowances not exceeding the United Nations (UN) Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA) rate for such other location(s).

• Note: A written approval from UNDP and relevant authorities will be required to facilitate the consultant's travel to any locations than stated on this TOR on official missions where necessary.

Working Arrangements:

• All mission travels must be approved in advance and in writing by the Supervisor.
• United Nations Development of Safe and Security – BSAFE course must be successfully completed prior to the commencement of travel.
• The Consultant is responsible for ensuring they have vaccinations/inoculations when traveling to certain countries, as designated by the UN Medical Director.
• The consultant is also required to comply with the UN security directives.
• The consultant is responsible for obtaining any visas needed in connection with travel with the necessary support from UNDP.
• The consultant will be responsible for submitting his/her own mission travel arrangements in line with UNDP travel policies.
• The consultant is responsible for required health and life insurance related to work or travel.
• The consultant is expected to have his/her own Laptop/Computer.

Competencies

Skills and competencies

• Required skills and competencies:

• Ability to provide statistical technical advice on different sectors/themes.
• Ability to work on own initiative as well as a member of a team and to work under pressure.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, including the ability to establish strong cooperative relationships with senior government officials.
• Ability to work on any of the statistical packages to analyze data.
• Good understanding and practice of capacity development.

• Desired skills and competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity and fairness by modelling UN values and ethical standards.
• Demonstrates professional competence and is conscientious and efficient in meeting commitments, observing deadlines, and achieving results.
• Display cultural, gender, religion and age sensitivity and adaptability.

• Management and leadership

• Excellent communication, organizational and management skills
• Focuses on the impact and results of the client
• Demonstrate conflict resolution skills
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive-constructive attitude.
• Builds strong relationships with clients and external actors
• Effectively manages teams and creates an enabling work environment
• Effective coacher and mediator

Required Language(s) (at working level)

• Excellent command of Arabic and English.

Required Skills and Experience

Qualifications of the Successful Individual Contractor

Academic Qualifications

• Master’s degree (or equivalent degree/experience) in statistics, development economics or a relevant discipline is mandatory.

1. Years of experience

• At least 12 years of relevant professional experience, preferably with national statistics or economic offices, international organization, or governments in applying statistical and economic theories and techniques.
• Significant international experience in ICT statistics.

Scope of Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments:

All proposals must be expressed in a lump sum amount. This amount must be “all-inclusive”. Please note that the terms “all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, living allowances, communications, consumables, etc.) that could possibly be incurred are already factored into the final amounts submitted in the proposal.

Payments shall be made to the individual contractor upon successful completion and certification by UNDP that services have been satisfactorily performed, based upon the actual number of working days and accomplishments of each deliverable.

Payment shall be made as a deliverables-based lump upon the receipt of the deliverables and certification of satisfactory performance by UNDP.

The Expert will share a Certificate of Payment (CoP) where he/he needs to indicate achieved outputs. Then the certificate of payment must be verified by the UNDP Team and certified by UNDP top management. The Expert is advised to keep a detailed timesheet of the days worked and tasks performed throughout the consultancy assignment. A bi-weekly update of the timesheet will be requested, and such documentation will support the payment process as deemed needful.

   Recommended Presentation of Offer

For purposes of generating Offers whose contents are uniformly presented and to facilitate their comparative analysis, it is best to recommend the preferred contents and presentation of the offer to be submitted, as well as the format/sequencing of their presentation.  The following documents may be requested:

1. Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP;
2. Personal CV or 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.
3. Financial Proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per the template provided.  If an 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. 

 Criteria for Selection of the Best Offer

Applicants are shortlisted based on the Required Skills and Experience stated in the TOR.

The selection of the best offer from the shortlisted candidates will be based on a Combined Scoring method – where the qualifications and methodology will be weighted a max. of 70% and combined with the price offer, which will be weighted a max of 30%.

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

Step I: Screening and Desk Review

Technical Criteria (CV review and Desk Review/Interview optional) – maximum 70 points. Only candidates who obtained at least 70% of points from the CV desk review (who will score at least 49 points) will be considered for the next evaluation stage, i.e., financial evaluation.

Applications will be first screened, and only candidates meeting the following minimum criteria will progress to the pool for shortlisting:

Technical Evaluation (70 Points, 70% weight)

Financial evaluation - Total 30% (30 points)

The following formula will be used to evaluate the 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

Instructions for online submissions

Step 1:  Please prepare all required documents electronically.

Step 2: Combine all documents in ONE SINGLE FILE (preferably in PDF; however, Word format can also be accepted) and upload to the UNDP Jobs links

Step 3: After that, you will receive an auto-reply from the UNDP jobs if your offer is received successfully.

Interested applicants are advised to carefully review this advertisement and ensure that they meet the requirements and qualifications described. 

Given the volume of applications that UNDP receives, only shortlisted offerors will be notified.

UNDP reserves the right to reject any incomplete applications.

Please be informed that we don’t accept applications submitted via email.

Interested Offerors are required to submit an application via UNDP Jobsite system as the application screening and evaluation will be done through UNDP Jobsite system. Please note that UNDP Jobsite system allows only one uploading of application documents, so please make sure that you merge all your documents into a single file. Your online application submission will be acknowledged where an email address has been provided. If you do not receive an email acknowledgement within 24 hours of submission, your application may not have been received. In such cases, please resubmit the application if necessary. Please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows you to upload a maximum of one document.

Any request for clarification/additional information on this procurement notice shall be communicated in writing to UNDP office or send to email mohammed.abbas@undp.org  with a copy to huda.alsaud@undp.org the Procurement Unit would endeavor to provide information expeditiously, only requests receiving at least 3 working days prior to the submission deadline will be entertained. Any delay in providing such information will not be considered as a reason for extending the submission deadline. The UNDP's response (including an explanation of the query but without identifying the source of inquiry) will be posted on the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice page as provided above. Therefore, all prospective Offerors are advised to visit the page regularly to make obtain updates related to this Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice.

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.

Interested applicants are advised to carefully review this advertisement and ensure that they meet the requirements and qualifications described. 

The interested Offeror must read the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice, which can be viewed at https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=97319  for more detailed information about terms of references, instructions for the Offeror, and to download the documents to be submitted in the offer online.

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.