Background

UNCDF is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s 47 least developed countries. With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.

UNCDF strategy ‘Leaving no one behind in the digital era’ is based on over a decade of experience in digital finance in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. UNCDF recognizes that reaching the full potential of digital financial inclusion in support of the Sustainable Development Goals aligns with the vision of promoting digital economies that leave no one behind. For further detail on UNCDF strategy, refer to; https://www.uncdf.org/article/4931/global-strategy-leaving-no-one-behind-in-the-digital-era

Since 2013, UNCDF has been implementing a market development approach on digital finance in Uganda.  With the support of the Sweden Development Agency (SIDA), UNCDF will execute the “Leaving no one behind in the digital era” strategy in country until 2024 under the “Connect” Rural Uganda Programme. The Programme has the aim to develop an inclusive digital economy in Uganda with a specific focus at empowering rural communities, smallholders’ farmers, agri-business and refugees - to lead productive and healthy lives, by expanding access and usage of digital services.

The Consultant will be responsible for designing, developing, testing and deploying robust and scalable big data ETL (Extraction, Transformation, Load) pipelines to support in data analytics and generating key indicators based on simulated and (or) actual telecoms GSM and mobile money data and effectively visualizing UNCDF's qualitative and quantitative data including performance indicators.

The objective of this assignment is two-fold:

1. Develop PowerBi dashboards that consolidate and visualize data from telecom providers in Uganda. The dashboard will be used by the UNCDF team to better target interventions and monitor results of ongoing activities.
2. Extract, clean and consolidate relevant data from the MTN Management Information System and update the PowerBi dashboard.

Duties and Responsibilities

The dashboard has several levels:

• Ecosystem-level: This dashboard shows information on providers’ total customer base at national, regional, sub-regional and district level. The information is related to mobile phone and mobile money penetration, mobile money usage, mobile money transactions, and agent and merchant coverage, disaggregated by sex and age group (youth, elderly). The list of indicators and level of disaggregation will be finalized during the project inception phase. The objective of this dashboard is to track the digital ecosystem development, identify gaps and use the information to better target UNCDF interventions.

• UNCDF project-level: These dashboards show the results of UNCDF projects across a set of standard key performance indicators and indicators customized to the digital solution that is developed and tested.

• UNCDF country-level: This dashboard consolidates the results from the various UNCDF projects across a set of key performance indicators.

Under the supervision of the the Results Measurement Analyst the Dashboard and Analytics Consultant will be responsible for the following activities and deliverables:

1. Inception: Conduct meetings with UNCDF team, finalize indicators and develop workplan

• Final list of indicators
• Workplan

2. Develop the PowerBi dashboards

• Dashboard structure and design for the three levels (Ecosystem, UNCDF projects, UNCDF country)

3. Telecoms synthetic data generation and Data extraction, transformation and loading pipeline development

• Synthetic data for initially populating designed dashboards
• ETL pipelines

4.  Extract, clean and consolidate MTN data and populate the dashboards (ecosystem and project)

• Updated MTN dashboards (ecosystem and project)

5.  Develop data governance document

• Dashboard governance document
• Reporting templates

6. Train the UNCDF team on using the dashboard

• Training materials
• Manual

7.  Extract, clean and consolidate MTN data and update the dashboards (ecosystem and project)

• Updated MTN dashboards (ecosystem and project)

8. Review the dashboards (Ecosystem, UNCDF projects, UNCDF country)

• Updated dashboard structure and design

The table below outlines the list of key deliverables, due date and level of effort foreseen:

Competencies

• The consultant must have demonstrable experience in building software tools to generate synthetic telecoms GSM and mobile money data
• Hands-on experience in analyzing complex telecoms data
• Building automated, robust, and scalable big data ETL pipelines to load data from disparate data sources
• Automated reporting and dashboards development
• Experience with Apache Spark and Hadoop ecosystem related technologies
• Ability to scope, design and deliver various Big Data solutions
• Design and implementation of modern Data APIs for both internal and external data access
• Collaborate with other development and research teams

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Data Science or other relevant advanced degree is mandatory

Experience:

• 5+ years of experience of IT platform implementation in a highly technical and analytical roles is mandatory
• Expertise in the use of Power BI is mandatory
• Knowledge of Data Lake/Hadoop platform implementation, including hands-on experience in implementation and performance tuning Hadoop/Spark implementations is preferred
• Understanding of Apache Hadoop and the Hadoop ecosystem. Experience with one or more relevant tools (Sqoop, Flume, Kafka, Oozie, Hue, Zookeeper, HCatalog, Solr, Avro) is preferred
• Familiarity with one or more SQL-on-Hadoop technology (Hive, Impala, Spark SQL, Presto) is preferred
• Experience developing software in one or more programming languages (Java, Python, Scala, R)
• Current hands-on implementation experience in Advanced large scale ETL development
• Working knowledge of Big Data tools, Python, R, Air Flow, Red Shift, Athena, RabitMQ
• Hands-on experience in building robust enterprise level data APIs

Language requirements:

• Spoken and written proficiency in English is mandatory.

Timeline, total number of working days, duty station:

• Timeline: 160 days spread over 12 months
• Duty station: Kampala, Uganda

Progress Controls & Payments:

Payment will be made against satisfactorily completion of each deliverable. All payments shall be disbursed only upon written confirmation of acceptance of the outputs which and authorization for payment by the Results Measurement Analyst.

Disbursement of the final payment shall require a signed performance evaluation of the consultant.

The payment schedule will be as follows:

Application process:

Interested individuals must submit the documents mentioned below as proposals in order to demonstrate their qualifications (Note: the system does not allow multiple uploads of documents. Applicants must make sure to upload all documents in one PDF file).

All applications must contain the following information:

• Cover letter with a summary statement of competencies and motivation rationalizing how the applicant meets the qualifications and can deliver the requirements of the Terms of Reference (TOR);
• Earliest availability and proposed schedule for consultancy;
• Signed financial proposal for the assignment outlining: all-inclusive fee (including professional fees and other professional expenses, such as insurance, taxes, etc.). Template for this is available at http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_file.cfm?doc_id=29916).

Please make sure you have provided all requested materials. 

Evaluation: 

Step I: Screening & Longlisting : Applications will be screened and only applicants meeting the minimum criteria will progress to the pool for shortlisting.

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Data Science or other relevant advanced degree is mandatory
• Expertise in the use of Power BI is mandatory
• 5+ years of experience of IT platform implementation in a highly technical and analytical roles is mandatory.

Step II: Shortlisting (30% out of technical assessment)

UNCDF will produce a shortlist of candidates and technically evaluate candidates as per education and experience requirements in this Terms of Reference.

Shortlisting scoring (100 points):

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Data Science or other relevant advanced degree is mandatory
• Expertise in the use of Power BI is mandatory
• 5+ years of experience of IT platform implementation in a highly technical and analytical roles is mandatory
• Knowledge of Data Lake/Hadoop platform implementation, including hands-on experience in implementation and performance tuning Hadoop/Spark implementations is preferred
• Understanding of Apache Hadoop and the Hadoop ecosystem. Experience with one or more relevant tools (Sqoop, Flume, Kafka, Oozie, Hue, Zookeeper, HCatalog, Solr, Avro) is preferred
• Familiarity with one or more SQL-on-Hadoop technology (Hive, Impala, Spark SQL, Presto) is preferred
• Proficiency in English is mandatory.

As applicable, only applicants scoring minimum 70 points or more shall be invited for an interview.

Step IV: Interview (70% out of technical assessment): An interview shall be conducted with the candidates having passed the desk review with a minimum scoring 70 points.

Step V: Financial Evaluation: Only candidates obtaining minimum 70% on the total Step II (Desk Review) + Step III (Interview) shall be considered as technically qualified and be reviewed further for financial evaluation. 

The following formula will be used to evaluate financial proposal: lowest priced proposal/price of the proposal being evaluated x 30%.

Award Criteria:

The contact shall be awarded to the applicant whose offer have been evaluated and determined as:

Responsive/compliant/acceptable; and Having received the highest combined weight (technical scores) 70% + financial 30%= 100%.

Both individual consultants and individual employed by a company or institution are welcome to apply. 

Any individual employed by a company or institution who would like to submit an offer in response to a Procurement Notice for IC must do so in their individual capacity (providing a CV so that their qualifications may be judged accordingly). Women candidates or women-owned businesses are strongly encouraged to apply.

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