UNDP Jobs - 79951- International Consultant for Statistical Office of

International Consultant for Statistical Office of Montenegro (MONSTAT)

Location :

Podgorica, MONTENEGRO

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

03-Sep-2018

Application Deadline :

24-Jul-18 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

3 September 2018 - 30 June 2020

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

40 consultancy days

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.

Background

One of the goals of the Statistics Development Strategy 2014-2018 refers to the greater use of administrative resources in order to reduce costs and burden of reporting units. With respect to this, the Statistical Office of Montenegro has significantly increased the use of administrative resources for the production of statistical data in different domains in the previous period. However, there is still space to increase the use of administrative data.

Before moving on to usage of the administrative data, each potential source of data must be analysed and checked in terms of the contents, definition, as well as completeness of the data in the registry itself. In this way, the quality of registers and the ability to use them for the production of official statistics are assessed. If the quality of a register is not satisfactory, a register holder will indicate noted deficiencies and is expected to undertake activities with the aim of improving its content. If the quality of a register is satisfactory, decision will be made to use it for statistical purposes and a trial investigation is carried out to test the data processing methodology.

Duties and Responsibilities

Objectives of the assignment:

The objective of the assignment is to support the Monstat to be able to use more efficiently administrative data across various institutions by hiring international consultant through the following activities:

Quality assurance of the contents of registers from the perspective of the needs of official statistics.

Conduct a control of the content of the variables of all registers used by the Statistical Office of Montenegro as administrative sources. This will ensure a clear definition of the legislation and subordinate legislation governing the content of each specific register on one side, while ensuring full compliance of variables contained in registers with statistical needs, on the other. These activities will ensure identification of a proposal for improving existing legislation in a sense to satisfy statistical needs for the production of official statistics using administrative sources.

Quality assurance of filling in the registers from the perspective of the needs of official statistics.

Conduct a coverage analysis of each register variable. Namely, specific variables that exist in the registers have a low percentage of availability i.e. a large number of unknown phenomena, which, given the statistical aspect, are considered inaccurate, cannot be used in statistical production and is considered unavailable. By indicating lack of availability of existing variables in the specific register, the quality of data and the quality of the statistical product would be significantly improved when the data from the administrative registers are used.

Job content:

Under the supervision of the UNDP Project Manager and Director of Monstat the international consultant will perform the following tasks:

Maintain active communication and close cooperation with Monstat colleagues;
Maintain active communication with owners of the administrative registers;
Organize meetings with all relevant parties when it is necessary;
Conduct practical work on the control of the content and coverage of the register variables;
Write report on the current state of play;
Prepare two analyses on: (i) content of the variables of seven chosen registers and (ii) coverage within these seven registers used by the Statistical Office;
Prepare final report on the achieved results and recommendations on: necessary change of legal and IT infrastructure within country (if applicable) and next steps for the increased usage of the administrative registers for statistical purposes.

Expected results:

Report on the current state of play
Analyses on: (i) content of the variables of seven chosen registers used by the Statistical Office and (ii) coverage within these seven registers
Final report on the achieved results and recommendations on: necessary change of legal infrastructure within country (if applicable), next steps for the increased usage of the administrative registers for statistical purposes and methodology that have been used for measuring quality of administrative sources related to content and coverage.

Timing and reporting: The international consultant will work under direct supervision of the UNDP Project Manager and Director of Monstat. He/she will be obliged to provide monthly reports on the respective deliverables during the assignment.

Time duration and travel: The international consultant will be engaged under individual contract for up to 40 consultancy days, in the period of 3rd September 2018 – 30th June 2020 divided in eight 5-day visits. International consultant will work at the Monstat premises, pursuant to the work plan. The travel and accommodation costs should be included in the lump sum figure.

Competencies

Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
Promotes the vision, mission and strategic goals of UN/UNDP;
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
Ability to lead strategic planning, results-based management and reporting;
Builds strong relationships with clients, focuses on impact and result for the client and responds positively to feedback;
Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
Demonstrates good oral and written communication skills;
Demonstrates ability to manage complexities and work under pressure, as well as conflict resolution skills.
Excellent organizational and time management skills.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

University degree, advanced degree would be considered as an asset;

Experience:

10 years of professional experience, in statistics or economics, programming or a sector relevant for implementation of this contract;
At least 7 years of working experience in statistics with a good understanding of the characteristics of official statistics and the organization of a national statistical institute and national statistical system;
Relevant professional experience in thematic areas pertaining to administrative data sources used for official statistics, linkage of the administrative data sources with official statistics data;
Experience in at least 2 EU-funded projects on administrative data sources;
Experience with statistical cooperation is necessary.

Language:

Excellent command of spoken and written English language.

Other:

Database development, sql, vb.net, metadata, statistical data processing, web services, XML;
Team leader in at least one project in development of official statistical system.

Criteria for selection:

Combined Scoring method will be used. When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract should be made to the inidividual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as: (i) responsive, compliant, acceptable, and (ii) having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation.

Technical criteria weight - 70% (Background and education 10%; Relevant previous experience 20%; Substantial knowledge/Required competencies 30%; Required language 10%);
Financial criteria weight - 30%.

Only offerors obtaining a minimum 490 points for technical criteria will be considered for the financial evaluation. For more information on procurement methodology for Individual Contractors, please refer to Procurement Notice.

Application procedure:

Interested applicants are requested to submit their applications by July 24, 2018 by using the Apply now button. The application should contain a duly completed Personal History Form (P11) that can be downloaded from http://www.me.undp.org/content/montenegro/en/home/operations/jobs.html. Please note that UNDP jobsite system allows only one uploading of application document, so please make sure that you merge all your documents into a single file.

Only the short-listed applicants will be contacted and requested to submit a letter of interest including a price quotation indicating the lump sum (in EUR) requested for the work envisaged in the section "Description of Responsibilities".