Antecedentes

Improving the quality of service delivery is a challenge in many countries. Citizens often find it difficult to hold service providers accountable, precisely because they are not aware of the procedures and expectations that govern the service providers’ conduct in public service delivery. This lack of transparency hampers governmental effectiveness and creates multiple opportunities for corrupt practices. Thus, it is important to develop ways and means to provide citizens with the information they need to hold government accountable for delivering results.

The Citizen’s Charter (CC) initiative is a public agreement between citizens and service delivery providers that clearly codifies expectations and standards in service delivery. CCs are now being used widely – including countries as the United Kingdom, United States, India, Kenya, Jamaica, and Mexico – to improve the quality of service delivery and enhance public sector management.

In 2000, the Public Administration Reform Commission (PARC) recommended the introduction of Citizen’s Charters in a number of public agencies. However, it was not until 2007, when the caretaker government asked all Ministries to formulate CCs. All public service providers produced their own CCs according to the Government directives and the guidelines of central management of each Department. Thus, first generation CCs were formulated centrally, without taking into account the capacity of the local field Administration to deliver the services; or the specific needs of local citizens, as there was no active participation of citizens in their formulation. Although this task triggered a change in the mind-set of civil service and service providers to become more people oriented, responsive, transparent and accountable in delivering public services to the citizens, the concept and nature of these early CCs were often – and still are, to this day – poorly understood.

The Citizen’s Charter idea was revisited in 2008, when it was stipulated by the Government that Citizen’s Charters should be introduced in every Department as a measure against corruption. Thus, the 2nd Generation Citizen’s Charter Initiative was launched in early 2012 on a pilot basis, encompassing a number of Public Service Providers in several Districts. In fact, fifty six public service providers in 16 Districts participate in the pilot phase of the 2nd generation CC implementation launched in the earlier part of 2012. A total of 14 Ministries and Divisions are thus involved in the process.

The Service Providers formed working groups (the CCFWG ), which formulated the new Charters. A Manual was prepared for this purpose, however, experience has shown that this manual was rather theoretical and did not provide practical information on how to operationalise a Citizen’s Charter. Nevertheless, the participating Public Service Providers completed a first formulation and they printed their local Citizen’s Charters for distribution to service recipients.

The goal of the second generation CC initiative is to strengthen good governance by providing a tool with a potential to improve performance across the civil service. It aspires to affect both the supply side of public services, i.e. more citizen focused service delivery with clearly outlined performance standards, as well as the demand side, i.e. increase citizens’ awareness about their rights, and provide citizens with adequate and necessary information to hold service providers accountable on how they dispense their services.

Deberes y responsabilidades

Objective:

Preliminary results from the monitoring and evaluation process of the Citizen’s Charter Initiative piloting indicate that there are considerable flaws and shortcomings in the implementation of the Charter, which need to be remedied before the Citizen’s Charter initiative is rolled out at the country-wide level.

In fact, many of the criteria prescribed for the successful implementation of the Citizen’s Charter in the original concept note have not entirely been fulfilled according to expectations. The Charters, in general, did not fulfill the expected requirements as information included is incomplete, unclear, and inconsistent with reality.

Specifically, the Charters, in most cases, do not contain vital information, so citizens are clearly informed how public services may be availed, what prerequisites are needed, and how long delivery takes. For example, the number of days required to obtain a service is missing or is incorrect; the list of required documents is incomplete and inaccurate; and the required fees are also missing or they do not adhere to reality on the ground.

Additionally, appropriate public service provider contact information is more often than not missing; and no mention of an explicit complaint and grievance redress mechanism exists, in case a citizen needs to address problems encountered in obtaining a desired public service.

In sum, the objective of the assignment is to produce an easily read, comprehensible manual, written in plain and simple language aiming to provide an easy-to-use “how-to” guide to public service providers in formulating a Charter successfully.

Almost two years later, the pilot phase is nearing completion, and a monitoring and evaluation process of its implementation is also about to be concluded. In this context, a “How-to-Do” manual is needed to comprehensively outline the process of implementation at country-wide level taking into consideration the lessons learned during the pilot phase.

Scope of the work, expected outputs/deliverables:

The Consultant will work closely with the UNDP Civil Service Management Programme team to produce a Manual to provide an easy-to-read and comprehend step-by-step “How-To” guide to public service providers in formulating, publishing, and disseminating their Citizen’s Charters.

In particular the Consultant will:

• Prepare the content and layout of the manual; 
• Suggest graphics which will allow for easier comprehension of the manual’s content; 
• Provide diagrams and other graphic-related tools in order to depict the process schematically;
• Describe schematically complaints and grievance redress mechanisms to facilitate citizens in lodging their complaints and grievances in case they do not receive services according to the Charter provisions;
• Provide a “wire frame” diagram for a manual specific website. This website will be available equally to civil servants, social and community organisations and citizens to clearly understand the process.

In sum, the consultant will provide a complete manual at the end of this assignment in a format to be easily used for its publication, electronically and in hard copy.

Supervision and Performance Evaluation:

The Consultant will be supervised by the CSCMP Programme Office, responsible for the Citizen’s Charter activity and the CSCMP Project Manager interchangeably. However, the Project Manager will ultimately be responsible for reviewing and evaluating the performance of the consultant as well as the quality and adequacy of the deliverables of the assignment.

Timeframe and Deadlines:

The duration of the assignment will be for 20 working days spread over a period of two 2 months, i.e., November and December 2013. The Consultant may conduct this work from home, as long as he/she can ensure uninterrupted communication with the CSCMP personnel through other means.

Competencias

• Solid understanding of contemporary thinking of development practices and public administration reform programmes, notably in the region;
• Familiarity with the region, and/or the country’s overall governance features, development needs, and directions;
• Analytical skills, excellent communications abilities;
• Excellent writing, and communication skills;
• Ability to work swiftly and commitment to deliver the expected results in a short period of time.
  

Habilidades y experiencia requeridas

Academic Qualifications:

• A University degree in communications, public policy, political science, public administration, international relations, or similar field.

Experience:

• Previous experience in the application of Citizen’s Charters in a developing and/or developed country is required;
• Experience in implementing customer satisfaction initiatives;
• Previous experience in the area of public administration reform in the region is desirable.

Language:

• Fluency in written and spoken English.

Documents to be included when submitting application:

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents / information to demonstrate their qualifications (individuals are requested to add the following information with CV):

Technical Proposal:

• Explaining why they are the most suitable for the work (maximum 550 words );
• Provide a brief methodology on how they will approach and conduct the work (maximum 600 words);
• A brief CV highlighting the relevant areas to this project in terms of qualifications, experience and competencies;
• At least 3 references

Evaluation of the Candidates: Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

Cumulative analysis: The candidates will be evaluated through Cumulative Analysis method. When using the weighted scoring method, the award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

a) responsive/compliant/acceptable, and
b) Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation.

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points in the technical evaluation would be considered for Financial Evaluation.

Technical Evaluation Criteria (Total 70 marks):

• Specific experience in Citizen’s Charters implementation (50 marks);
• Adequacy of proposed methodology (10 marks);
• Brief of why most suitable for the assignment (5 marks);
• Overall experience in PAR (particularly in the region) (5 marks).

Financial Evaluation (Total 30 marks):

All technical yqualified proposals will be scored out 30 based on the formula provided below. The maximum points (30) will be assigned to the lowest financial proposal. All other proposals received points according to the following formula:
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