Background

The global development challenges have become increasingly interrelated, requiring us to take interdisciplinary approaches and seek non-linear solutions. Important development trends like urbanization, climate change, and inequality pose significant challenges on our path to achieve the 2030 agenda of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

These transformations happening against the background of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) are questioning our traditional approaches to development design and delivery.  The innovation brought by 4IR has unveiled the huge potential and opportunities to transform the economies, societal and governance structures and boost our ability to make 2030 Agenda reality.

However, concerns and uncertainties abound regarding the impact of the emergence and penetration of AI, automation, and other technologies on labor market, the nature of work, inequality, economic and political structures, growth models, and how public institutions serve people. Though the scope and scale of these concerns are way beyond the purview of any single entity, the innovative and actionable responses could be generated with collective efforts from governments, international organizations, private sector, civic society, academia/think tanks, and other partners.

Following several years of implementing innovative approaches in development, UNDP in Asia Pacific has managed to significantly diversify its partner base, develop new skill sets and harness new resources. And as an important development actor, UNDP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific (RBAP) strives to support countries to design effective solutions to tackle complex development challenges and accelerate action on the progress towards achieving the SDGs, through collaborations with changemakers and other stakeholders in the ecosystem to strengthen the network of knowledge, experience, resources and capacities.

Given the systemic nature of development challenges faced by the region, as well as the opportunities opened up by the fast advancements in local markets, UNDP RBAP decided to establish the Regional Innovation Centre (RIC) in Bangkok, Thailand, to spearhead institutionalization of the new ways of doing development, provide a safe space to test development solutions through a structured portfolio of policy experiments, and encourage a culture  that would help UNDP be on the front-foot in terms of spotting, understanding and integrating new development approaches into its work. The RIC is envisaged to have four core functions with different but linked scope: exploration, experimentation, scaling-up, and capacity building.

The experimentation function will be the empirical learning engine to retain the RIC’s relevance in the market. It will ensure that the experiment portfolio is coherent with the nature of the systemic challenges UNDP and regional governments have to tackle, scale up learning through intensive interaction and reflection, as well as feed insights into program implementation.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of work:

 1. System mapping to understand levers for intervention and existing assets

• Provide guidance and support to clients (country offices and national governments) in mapping the context and nature of development challenges, with a particular focus on understanding systemic issues beyond traditional silos and classifications and identifying drivers of change
• Support and collaborate with governments, UNDP country offices, and partners to map existing assets through processes such as lead user innovation and positive deviance

2. Experiment portfolio design

• Help clients define a logic of intervention and hypotheses of change that are a coherent fit to the system level challenges identified
• Help develop a portfolio logic against which to evaluate the fit and coherence of individual experiments

3. Experiment design and prototype testing

• Guide on the experiment design across the design and testing phase to validate the hypotheses and test the effectiveness of identified prototypes, including (but not limit to) defining variables, formulating hypotheses, and coordinating experimental protocols;
• Develop a framework to capture the learning from the experiments in such a way that it favours critical reflection and rapid adaptation over static reporting
• Provide technical guidance on strategies and methodologies for experiment design, roll-out and validation based on the experiment conditions, resources available, and requirements
• Examine the results from the testing of prototypes and translate them into programmatic decisions on next steps and implications for improvement and scaling-up.

4. Learning and working outloud

• Help embed a portfolio logic in clients’ work
• Working with clients to encourage reflection and capturing of insights from individual experiments, as they related to the overall portfolio logic
• Help clients disseminate insights from the experiments via social media platforms as a way to regularly reflect and engage with external audiences.
• Provide technical consultation and training for governments, UNDP country offices, partners, and other clients through various phases including asset mapping, developing a portfolio logic, experiment design, prototype testing, and evaluation;

5. Strategic development and operation of the RIC

• Contribute to the formulation of the RIC’s service lines and development priorities;
• Jointly with UNDP country offices and relevant programme teams engage with clients to formulate pipeline of projects responding to their needs and demands for the RIC’s service delivery;
• Support other activities related to the design and operation of the RIC.

Expected Outputs and Deliverables:

The consultant is expected to deliver the followings:

• Develop methodologies for a portfolio approach and experiment design that are suitable for UNDP context. Encourage their dissemination to country offices and governments through learning by doing;
• Work with clients to apply the portfolio logic, design the portfolio of experiments, and assist them in the implementation;
• Develop system maps and help country offices develop suitable approaches for system mapping, including mapping of existing assets;
• Develop support materials (guidelines, templates, etc.) that can guide clients through the experimentation process;
• Trainings, webinars and capacity building sessions on all aspects of experimentation;
• Write blog posts and contribute to generating learnings and experience from experiments and share them within the RIC network;
• Support the planning and implementation of RIC activities.

Institutional Arrangement:

The Head of Experiment will be directly supervised by the Director of the Bangkok Regional Innovation Centre. S/he is expected to work closely with the programme team and operation team in UNDP related to the initiatives in the RIC and support to advance the broader innovation agenda in UNDP.

Working space, facilities, personnel, project information related to UNDP and the RIC, as well as logistical support will be provided as needed throughout the assignment of the contract.

Duration of the Assignment:

1 December 2018 – 30 November 2019, with maximum 240 days worked (maximum 20 days/month for 12 months)

Duty Station:

Bangkok, Thailand with possible travel for missions

The Head of Experiment at the Regional Innovation Centre is expected to work at UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub and/or Regional Innovation Centre (if different). If there is any travel, the mission would be agreed with supervisor in advance and s/he would be reimbursed for travel costs in line with UNDP policy.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats all people fairly without favouritism.

Technical Competencies:

• Analytic capacity and demonstrated ability to process, analyse and synthesise complex, technical information;
• Proven ability to support the development of high quality knowledge and training materials, and to train technical teams;
• Proven experience in the developing country context and working in different cultural settings.

Communication:

• Communicate effectively in writing to a varied and broad audience in a simple and concise manner.

Professionalism:

• Capable of working in a high pressure environment with sharp and frequent deadlines, managing many tasks simultaneously;
• Excellent analytical and organizational skills.

Teamwork:

• Projects a positive image and is ready to take on a wide range of tasks;
• Focuses on results for the client;
• Welcomes constructive feedback.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s degree or higher in Business Administration, Public Administration, Economics, Social Science, International Relations, International Development or related fields;

Experience:

• A minimum of 5 years of professional experience in development programming or policy and social innovation. A previous working experience in Asia and the Pacific is an asset;
• Proven professional knowledge and experience in social innovation approaches such as Design Thinking, behavioral insights, Qualitative and Quantitative User Research, Experiment Design & Validation, Ethnographic Research, and Impact Evaluation;
• Demonstrated ability to work with clients to help surface unarticulated needs
• Demonstrated ability to apply a portfolio logic to experiments
• Demonstrate ability to design experiments,  validate hypotheses and test the prototypes;
• Demonstrated ability in running co-design session and capacity-building in experimental design, lean iteration and impact evaluation.

Language:

• Excellent written and spoken English required

Competencies:

• Demonstrated commitment to UN’s mission, vision and values;
• Demonstrated sound judgement, diplomacy and sensitivity to confidential matters;
• Demonstrated ability to meet deadlines and work under pressure;
• Innovative thinking, good coordination, organizational skills, and teamwork;
• Open, action-oriented and risk-taking mindset and eager to learn;
• Respect for individuals, gender, and cultural differences.

Price Proposal and Schedule of Payment :

Consultant must submit a financial proposal based on Daily Fee. Consultant shall quote an “all-inclusive” daily fee for the contract period. IC Time Sheets must be submitted by the Contractor, duly approved by the Individual Contractor’s supervisor, which shall serve as the basis for the payment of fees.

In general, UNDP shall not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources

In the event of unforeseeable travel not anticipated in this TOR, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between the respective business unit and the Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed.

Travel costs shall be reimbursed at actual but not exceeding the quotation from UNDP approved travel agent.  The provided living allowance will not be exceeding UNDP DSA rates. Repatriation travel cost from home to duty station in Bangkok and return shall not be covered by UNDP.

Criteria for Selection of the Best Offer:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology, Cumulative analysis

The award of the contract shall be made the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as a) responsive/compliant/acceptable; and b) having received the highest score out of set of weighted technical criteria (70%) and financial criteria (30%).

Technical Criteria for Evaluation (Maximum 70 points)

• Criteria A: Education (max 5 points)
• Criteria B: Proven professional experience in development programming or policy and social innovation (max 10 points)
• Criteria C: Proven professional knowledge and experience in social innovation approaches such as Design Thinking, Systems Mapping, Qualitative and Quantitiative User Research, Experiment Design & Validation, Ethnographic Research, and Impact Evaluation (max 10 points)
• Criteria D: Demonstrated ability to work with clients to help surface unarticulated needs (max 15 points)
• Criteria E: Demonstrated ability to design parallel experiment, validate hypotheses and test the prototypes (max 15 points)
• Criteria F: Demonstrated ability in running co-design sessions and capacity-building training on experimental design, lean iteration and impact evaluation (max 15 points)

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% of the total technical points would be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

Financial Criteria for Evaluation (Maximum 30 points)

Financial score shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal being evaluated and the lowest priced proposal received by UNDP for the assignment.

Documents to be included when submitting the proposals:

Candidates wishing to be considered for this assignment are required to submit the following documents to demonstrate their qualifications. Please group them into one (1) single PDF document/ or one ZIP File as the application only allows to upload maximum one document:

1. Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP;
2. Personal CV, 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 template provided;
4. Technical Proposal B (maximum two pages), including a) a brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment; and b) a methodology, on how they will approach and complete the assignment.

Incomplete proposals may not be considered. The short listed candidates may be contacted and the successful candidate will be notified.

ANNEXES

Annex I - TOR_ Head of Experiment, Bangkok Regional Innovation Centre

Annex II- General Condition of Contract

Annex III - Offerors Letter to UNDP Confirming Interest and Availability and Financial Proposal

All documents can be downloaded at :http://procurement-notices-admin.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=50729