Background

Introduction

This terms of reference (TOR) sets out the expectations for an independent consultancy mission to conduct public expenditure management bottleneck analysis and business process mapping of the Climate Resilient Grants of the District Development Fund (DDF-CRG), implemented under the project on Effective Governance for Small-scale Rural Infrastructure and Disaster Preparedness in a Changing Climate in Lao PDR 2013-2017 (hereafter called as the project). This independent consultancy mission is commissioned by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) in close coordination with and complementary to the project terminal evaluation mission to be conducted by October 2017. 

About the project

The project started in 2013 and closes end of December 2017. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) - Department of Disaster Management and Climate Change (DDMCC) is the Implementing Partner (IP) and has overall responsibility for the management of the project. A national Project Support Unit was set-up at the MoNRE led by the Project Manager and housing a staff of ten. The Project Board oversees the implementation of the project. The project is implemented in 12 districts of 2 provinces of Sekong and Saravane in southern Lao PDR. It is a project supported by the UNDP and the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) 2 of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the UNCDF. The objective of the project is “Local administrative systems affecting the provision and maintenance of small scale rural infrastructure will be improved through participatory decision making that reflects the genuine needs of communities and natural systems vulnerable to climate risk”. In order to achieve this, the project applies a ‘three-pronged’ approach: (i) strengthening of the national, provincial and district capacities for planning for rural infrastructure that incorporates climate considerations; (ii) direct financing for infrastructure projects to vulnerable districts through an existing District Development Fund (DDF) mechanism; (iii) implementing ecosystem-based adaptation measures that provide additional climate resilience at the watershed level of project infrastructure intervention. Out of this three interrelated outcomes/components to achieve the project objective, UNCDF is the Responsible Partner to support achieving the outcome 2: “Incentives in place for small-scale rural infrastructure to be protected and diversified against climate change induced risks (droughts, floods, erosion and landslides) benefitting at least 50,000 people in 12 districts of Sekong and Saravane provinces”.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of Work

The main objectives and scope of this independent consultancy mission is to conduct public expenditure management bottleneck analysis and business process mapping of the DDF-CRG, with a view to the required institutional capacity needs for direct access to global climate financing facilities such as GEF and Green Climate Fund (GCF) in the future. The findings of this consultancy mission will contribute to codifying lessons learnt and policy briefs on institutional capacity and public expenditure management of the climate resilient grants, involving fiscal transfer and local planning, budgeting, financial management, procurement and reporting process. The consultancy mission will be conducted in linkage with and complementing to the project terminal evaluation in accordance with the UNDP and GEF M&E policies and procedures. The terminal evaluation will use the evaluation matrix of specific questions and indicators following the criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability of the project. It will also review how the ten recommendations provided by the Mid-term Review Final Report (15 September 2016) is followed up. As parts of the recommendations, the project Results Framework was revised to reflect the adjusted target small-scale infrastructure projects reduced from 48 to 28, which was based on a more realistic assessment of how many of this climate-proofed infrastructure projects can be implemented within the timeframe of the project and approved by the Project Board in December 2015. It was recommended to conduct a capacity assessment of the local administrative institutions to meet the required competence level to integrate climate risks into participatory planning and financing of small scale rural water infrastructure provision, and possibly to identify some remaining capacity needs and institutional bottlenecks.

The key issues for the consultancy mission to review and deliver are as follows:

• Business process mapping of the DDF-CRG financing assessed against the DDF-CRG guideline packages, showing a number of decision making steps/approvals and average times pursuant to the fund flows and implementation of small scale projects funded under the DDF-CRG;

• The business process mapping should also clarify the actual fund flows and approval requirements from initial requests to the payments of contractors, illustrating the process form identification and selection of projects to submission of project profile (with costing, designing etc.) and to approval of project and the reporting timelines;

• The business process mapping needs to clearly highlight critical bottlenecks that have impacted on the actual process in the context of time delay and the number of approvals required;

• Based on the findings of the initial mapping and applying standard tools related to the Business Process Reengineering (BPR), a modified streamlined process to build an optimized system for the DDF-CRG needs to be developed with a view to incorporating the process into the new Treasury Information Management System (TIMS) for budget execution being developed by the National Treasury Department of the Ministry of Finance (MoF);

• To support the new process map, an accompanying narrative (about 4 pages) that comprehensively explains the new process and its integration within the TIMS needs to be provided with, in addition to a short detailed presentation (about 10 Slides) illustrating the actual and streamlined recommendations;

• The business case for the streamlining and institutionalization of the process needs to be formulated with a view to identifying the existing capacity gaps and institutional building for future direct access by the national and local government to global climate financing (e.g. GEF and GCF), while asking the question on how best the Performance Assessment (PA) of the DDF-CRG to be carried out by the government system in order to build the DDF-CRG inside the national treasury and audit systems (e.g. once the PA done by the responsible ministry and the State Audit Organization (SAO) to audit the PA results)

  APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY

  An overall approach and method for conducting

  The consultancy mission must provide evidence-based information that is credible, reliable and useful.

  The consultant will review all relevant sources of information including but not limited to the project document (results framework), MOU between MoNRE and UNCDF (approved and countersigned by MoHA and UNDP in November 2013), the DDF-CRG guidelines, instructions and manuals (regarding fund flow and reporting requirements, procurement, accounting requirements, and inspection and audit), the Mid-term Review Final Report (15 September 2016), the DDF-CRG assessment report by UNCDF (October 2016), the relevant official and supporting documents including the Summary of the Endorsement of DDF-CRG Investment Projects and the District Annual Investment Plans (DAIPs) on DDF-CRG between 2013-2017, the Summary DDF-CRG Implementation Reports in between 2013-2017 (Summary Report on DDF-CRG Small Scale Investment Projects in 4 districts in FY 2014-2015 (4 districts), in 12 projects in FY 2015-2016 (11 districts) and 12 project in FY 2016-2017), DDF-CRG transfer and transaction, achievements and lessons), and any other materials that the consultant considers useful to design and formulate the DDF and PRF Collaboration Framework. An indicative list of documents that will be provided to the consultant for review is included in Annex of this terms of reference. Standard BPR tools and methodologies (referencing world bank) need to be applied with all process mapping being completed using the industry standard templates.

   

  The consultancy mission is expected to follow a participatory and consultative approach ensuring working under the overall guidance of the MoNRE – DDMCC as the Implementing Partner and the National Project Director and under the technical supervision of UNCDF Laos and in close collaboration with the project team (especially National Public Financial Management Coordinator). Interviews and consultations will be held with the following organizations and individuals at a minimum:

• MoHA/GPAR (DG of Planning and Cooperation Dept./National Programme Manager of GPAR) and the GPAR-DDF project staff;
• MoF – National Treasury Department, Budget Department and Fiscal Policy Department;
• World Bank team in charge of providing technical assistance in the areas of public financial management (PFM) and the TIMS (e.g. business process mapping template of the treasury systems);
• UNDP GEF-LDCF2 project technical coordinators;
• UNDP staff (Head of Environment Unit and Chief Technical Advisor);
• UNCDF staff (Technical Specialist and Programme Management Specialist);
• UNCDF LoCAL Global Programme Manager and the LoCAL Secretariat staff;
• Governor or Vice Governor of the target province and Chief or Deputy Chief of the target district(s) and DDF coordination bodies at the provincial and district level (e.g. Provincial Support Team, District Development Support Committee, District Development Support Team);
• Project contractors

Total of working days:         22 working days (during August-September 2017)

DELIVERABLES:

The National Consultant is expected to provide required support and contribution to the International Consultant in delivering the required deliverables below including, but not limited to, reviewing relevant documents, data collection, meeting appointments, travel arrangements, interpretation/translation, note taking during meetings, and other tasked as required by the International Consultant. Please refer to Section 5 of the full ToR for the detailed 3 key deliverables which will be jointly achieved with the international consultant.

Competencies

Functional:

• Shares knowledge and experience
• Plans and prioritizes work activities to meet organizational needs
• Builds and sustains relationships with key stakeholder groups and project team
• Demonstrates excellent and effective written and oral communication skills
• Demonstrate respect to knowledge, culture and religion in a multidisciplinary demands
• Applies the required depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise to meet job demands
• Uses information technology effectively as tools and resources
• Demonstrates flexibility and adaptability in taking on this type of consultancy

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability
• Treats all people fairly without favoritism.

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• Minimum Bachelor’s degree or higher or equivalent) in public expenditure and financial management, international affairs and development, computer sciences or related fields

Experience

• Minimum 5 to 7 years of relevant professional experience in undertaking business process reengineering (BPR) preferably in the context of financial systems and processes
• Sound knowledge in and understanding of BPR in the field of treasury systems and process, public financial management and/or development fund management (climate change/local government development preferable)
• Demonstrated experience in bottleneck analysis applied to development fund management in developing countries and Asia is an advantage

• Sound understanding of Lao government systems: political and financial and institutional arrangements and procedures
• Experience in UNDP-UNCDF or GEF funded projects is an asset

Languages

• Full command of English and Lao language is required

Cumulative analysis: The award of the contract will be made to a consultant who offer has been evaluated and determined as:

• Responsive/compliant/acceptable, and

• Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria:

  * Technical Criteria weight; [0.7]

  * Financial Criteria weight; [0.3]

   

  Only a consultant obtaining a minimum of 49 points in the technical rating would be considered for the financial evaluation.

   

  Note:  Any request for clarification must be sent in writing to the following e-mail: surith.sengsavang@undp.org  with CC to thilaphong.oudomsine@uncdf.org

  UNDP Lao PDR will respond in writing by standard electronic mail and will send written copies of the response, including an explanation of the query without identifying the source of inquiry, to all consultants.

  Please note that only short-listed candidates will be notified.

  Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

  For more detailed information about UNDP Lao PDR please visit our website at http://www.la.undp.org/lao_pdr/en/home.html