Background

National Context:

Saudi Arabia has made considerable progress in improving the health status of its population in the last 30 years. The economic boom of the seventies and early eighties was used to establish necessary socio–economic development infrastructures, including the distribution and availability of basic services such as education, health facilities, safe drinking water, environmental sanitation facilities and electric utilities throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In addition to enhancing the overall standards of living, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia provides wide networks of free or subsidized social services to their citizens. Moreover, the Kingdom has in the past 20 years has adopted a group of polices that supported the development of the agriculture, and food processing and manufacturing sectors. This resulted in making the Kingdom a leading country in the region in regards of agriculture production, dairy produce, and food manufacturing.  This has contributed to the excellent social indicators relating to survival, development and protection of human-beings. 

In this context, on March 10, 2003, the Saudi Arabian Government decided to set up a Supreme Authority for Food and Medicine Control. The Authority, which will undertake all procedural, executive and control functions of current food and drug governmental organizations, will report directly to the Council of Ministers. It will be responsible for the following: the safety, security, validity and effectiveness of food and medicine provision for humans and animals; the safety of  

biological and chemical products, cosmetics and pesticides; safeguarding the impact of electronic products on public health, and scrutinizing standards of medical and diagnostic devices. The Authority will also set explicit plans for provision of food and drugs, conduct relevant studies, monitor the implementation of procedures relating to the issue of licenses for food, medicine and medical equipment to factories, exchange and publish information in cooperation with relevant local and international bodies, and build databases for food and drugs in the Kingdom.

Saudi Food & Drugs Authority (SFDA) completed the implementation of its first strategic plan (2007-2011). Taking strategic planning as the planning approach to achieve its vision and mission, SFDA completed its forward looking planning by developing its second strategic plan (2012-2016). SFDA has approached the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to seek technical assistance and to jointly collaborate in achieving its strategic goals set out in SFDA second strategic plan, based upon UNDP’s comparative and competitive advantages in providing the required technical support.

The Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) was established under the Council of Ministers resolution no (1) dated 07/01/1424 H, as an independent body corporate that directly reports to the Premier. The Authority objective is to ensure safety of food and drug for man and animal, and safety of biological and chemical substance as well as electronic products. 

SFDA  – Phase I (2005 - 2011):

The UNDP SFDA Support Project SAU10/38929 - phase one was officially launched in 2005. The project mainly focused in providing substantive support to SFDA, through enabling the newly established organization to formulate its strategy and business plan; as well as develop the required institutional capacity to discharge its mandate and ultimately meet the national development plan’s aspiration for a safe food and drugs management.  Phase I ended in December 2011.  Achievements during Phase I include;

• Organizational structure and Job Descriptions developed
• The consultancy Committee assessed and reviewed SFDA policy
• IT strategy and work plan formulated
• Corporate Human Resources Developed
• The Institutional strategy was developed by Booz Allen Hamilton.

• Activated the role of SFDA in supporting the government in meeting its post accession commitments, as a result SFDA was tasked a focal point for PSP.

SFDA  – Phase II (2012 - 2016):

The second phase of the UNDP support started in 2012 to assist SFDA to effectively deal with the development of its second strategic plan from 2012 to 2016 which focuses mainly on building broad and deep capabilities, ensure thoroughness, transparency, and consistency in enforcement and communication, and complete the coverage of all relevant areas

The main objectives of this project are:

1. Support SFDA in building broad and deep capabilities,
2. Support SFDA to ensure thoroughness, transparency, and consistency in enforcement and communication,
3. Support SFDA to Complete the coverage of all relevant areas as per SFDA’s mandate,
4. Develop systems and processes to improve pro-activity in addressing emerging risk

SCOPE OF THE EVALUATION:

The Mid- Term evaluation project expected to address the following issues:

Assessment of results and achievements:

  Has sufficient progress been achieved vis-à-vis the outcome, "expanded national capacity for food, drug and medical devices including training as measured by the outcome indicator,

• What are the main factors (positive and negative) that affect the achievement of the outcome?
• Are the outcome indicators capable of measuring the achievement of the intended outcome?
• Have the outputs been achieved as measured by the output indicator?
• What are the main factors (positive and negative) that affected the achievement of the intended outputs?
• Are the output indicators capable of measuring the achievement of the intended output?
• What are the unintended results (positive and negative) and what are the contributing factors?
• Have the planned activities been successfully implemented?  What are the factors affecting the successful or unsuccessful implementation of planned activities?  
• What are the plans for monitoring and evaluation and are they done periodically as planned? Have the recommendations from monitoring and evaluations implemented?  If not, what are the obstacles and what are the measures for improvements?
• Have the lessons learned from prior phases been effectively used?
• Are the results sustainable? Will the outputs & outcomes lead to benefit beyond the life of the existing programme?
• Is there an exit strategy

Assessment of efficiency and adequacy:

• Review and assess the professional capacity and quality inputs and activities by the implementing Partner both at the central and branch level.
• Assess the efficiency and adequacy of the management structure.
• Assess the efficiency and adequacy of team structure and personnel distribution to effectively carry out the day-to-day activities in the field and in support of the activities. 
• Have organizational arrangements been cost effective?  How can they be improved?
• Has the Advisory Committee, an oversight advisory body, met as scheduled, and provided quality policy advice and recommendations to improve project implementation?  What is the quality of their inputs to ensure that activities are on track and results are achieved in accordance with the project work plan?
• What kind and level of safety measures available in the field operation and to what degree are they followed?  What is the level of awareness of the staff both in the field and at branches and at the central level on safety issues?  

Assessment in the aspect of beneficiaries:

• Assess what partnerships established with local authorities, community leaders and members.  What is the level and area of their participation and contributions?
• What level of understanding local authorities, community members including men, women, and children have on the issue and the UNDP project.

Gender aspect:

• Is gender issue adequately mainstreamed throughout the project?  If not, what are the reasons, and what can be done?
• How does the project address gender aspect of the issue?  If not, what are the reasons, what should be addressed, and how should they be done?
• How does the project contribute to the capacity building of women?  If not, what are the reasons, and what can be done for capacity building of women?

Sustainability:

• Are there regular updates done effectively on national strategy, and are there mechanisms to inform or to train all staff on the updates? 
• Are there national standard of operation built on international standard, and are there mechanisms to inform and train all related staff on the standard of operation?
• Are there refresh trainings systematically organized and periodically carried out to field staffs, staffs at the branches, central office on different subjects and units?    
• Assess the national capacity of the SFDA in the area food, drugs, medical devises knowledge.  What are the gaps, and measures for enhancement?
• Are all the necessary reports are produced in a good quality and submitted in a timely manner?
• Has the Institutional memory such as documents and data been stored in an organized and systematic fashion so that it is accessible and available when required?
• Has the organizational capacity built with clearly written out rules and regulations with clear understanding of them by the staff and having all the work processed according to them?

Assessment on organizational capacity:

• Are there statutes of national agencies clearly stating necessary information such as organizational structure, purpose, function, information on board etc?  If so, assess the quality and identify the gaps if any.
• Are there any documents clearly stating guide-lines, manuals, which include information such as authorization capacity, work flow etc.  If so, is staff regularly trained on them?  Is the work done according to the written guidelines and manuals?  What are the factors contributing to the current status? What and how should it be improved?

• What is the capacity of human resource department? Are the documents related to personnel systematically stored with sufficient level of confidentiality to the personal information?  Are there policies regarding protection on personal information and are the staffs trained on them?  What is the quality of the contracts prepared by the project?  What is the quality of sign-in/out system?  Is there systematic recording system for leaves, and what is the quality?  What type of system are there to record the attendance of field staff?
• What is the capacity of logistic department? Are there guidelines and are staffs regularly trained on them?  What kind of systems are there regarding assets and equipments?  Are they properly recorded, maintained, used and stored? 

Partnership Strategy/Visibility:

• Are there effective partnerships among parties involved in implementation of the project such as national entities, donors, civil society organizations and UNDP? 
• Have the partnerships expanded during the second phase of the project?  What were the factors affected the change?  How can the partnerships further enhanced?
• What are the existing levels and strategies of ensuring visibility of donors?  Are there rooms for enhancement?

Technical Assessment:  (To be filled by SFDA)

• FOOD Sector:
• DRUG Sector:
• Medical Devices Sector:
• SPS Sector:

Recommendations:

• Recommendations need to be made on each topic and they must be objective, realistic, and practical so that they can be implemented in the phase III of the project.
• Recommend realistic time-frame for implementation of the recommendations.

Duties and Responsibilities

The mid-term evaluation will assess the above-indicated project in terms of relevance, appropriateness, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability.  It will review the performance of the project against the objectives stated in the strategic and annual plans. 

The objective of the project evaluation is to assess how the outputs of the above-mentioned project have contributed to “achieving high impact goals as set by the SFDA mandate”.  The assessment of this project was strategically placed at this particular time in order to promote needed adjustments, identify lessons learned and draw up a sustainability plan for the project prior to end 2017, date of project completion. The outputs of this project are to be evaluated for their contribution to the achievement of the objectives. Efficiency and effectiveness, are of prime importance but also transparency and accountability.  The review will illustrate intended and unintended results. 

The evaluator will be tasked to provide recommendations aiming to improve various aspects of the project towards achievement and quality delivery of the project. 

DELIVERABLES

• Outline and presentation of the main findings should be prepared for the debriefing session at the end of the mission.
• The report should include executive summary, background, description of the evaluation methodology, results of the evaluation, and strategies and recommendations for continued UNDP assistance towards the achievement of the project
• The report should be submitted to the SFDA President and UNDP Resident Representative.
• The report should contain at least following annexes:
•              Terms of reference for the evaluation
•              Itinerary (actual)
•              List of meetings attended
•              List of persons interviewed
•              List of documents reviewed
•              Any other relevant material

The report should be submitted as one electronic copy and three signed hard copies.

EVALUATION CONSULTANTS:

An international consultant/s and one national consultant/s will be contracted to perform the evaluation. The consultants are expected to work in a team, and the international one will lead the team.  The national consultant will provide inputs regarding the national context, community development and ensure particular attention is paid to the assessment of organizational aspect.  The team must include experts who have proven knowledge and relevant work experience in the field of Food and Drug, sound knowledge about results-based management (especially results-oriented monitoring and evaluation). Also the team should have an expertise in organizational management. The consultant/s will design the detailed evaluation scope and methodology, conduct necessary data collection activities including field trips, meetings and desk analysis.  The consultants will take the overall responsibility for the quality of the evaluation report. 

Knowledge of Arabic language is an asset.

Consultants will familiarize themselves with the project through a review of relevant document prior to beginning travel to the region.  These documents include at least:

• Project documents
• Project budgets
• Project work plans, progress reports
• Strategic plans

SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)

Past reports on the project

•  UNDP guideline for evaluation
•  Evaluation reports

National development plan

EVALUATION TIMEFRAME: 20 working days in November 2014 (12 days in Saudi Arabia & 8 days in home country)

Preparation for evaluation, review of documents (1 days)

Briefing (0.5 day)

Field missions including desk reviews, field visits, interviews (11 days)

Submission of outline on main findings and briefing session (0.5 day)

Preparation of final report (3 days).

Competencies

Functional Competencies:      

• Understands and applies fundamental concepts and principles of a professional discipline or technical specialty relating to the position;
• Strives to keep job knowledge up-to-date through self-directed study and other means of learning;
• Demonstrates good knowledge of information technology and applies it in work assignments.

Core Competencies:

• Demonstrating/safeguarding ethics and integrity;  
• Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment;
• Self-development, initiative-taking;
• Acting as a team player and facilitating team work;
• Facilitating and encouraging open communication in the team, communicating effectively;
• Creating synergies through self-control;
• Managing conflict;
• Learning and sharing knowledge and encourage the learning of others. Promoting learning and knowledge management/sharing is the responsibility of each staff member;
• Informed and transparent decision-making

Required Skills and Experience

• The Consultant/s must have an advanced degree in environmental/health science or equivalent.
• S/He should have at least 20 years of practical experience with demonstrated ability in project evaluation and formulation, especially for institutional capacity development.
• Knowledge of environmental, Food, Drug and Medical devices issues and efforts is essential.