Background

Pacific Island Countries (PICs) still face significant challenges in achieving meaningful participatory democratic governance that is responsive to the needs of ordinary citizens, including the poor and marginalised, and that promotes sustainable development.  The challenges are manifested in political instability, lack of financial and human resources capacity, and weak policy and regulatory frameworks. Participatory decision making is severely limited, with women and young people under-represented in formal political structures across the region. 

Although Parliaments can play an instrumental role in addressing the challenges, they themselves suffer various constraints such as weak staff capacity, weak parliamentary procedures, processes including inactive committees, limited access to critical information for law making and oversight and inadequate systems and equipment. The small size of many Pacific Islands legislatures often makes it difficult to sustain full parliamentary service functions, compounded by limited specialist capacity, poor access to legal guidance, training, information and research services, and limited financial resources.

UNDP Parliamentary Development Support

UNDP’s Parliamentary Development support to Pacific countries seeks to address the limited capacities in Parliament to discharge their mandate in relation to legislation, oversight and representation, and thereby contribute to promoting good governance in their respective countries. In this regard, the UNDP Pacific Office in Fiji provides support to Parliaments of 15 Pacific States and territories to become more effective and efficient through strengthening the work of their committees related to legislation and oversight, building the capacities of legislators and professionalism of staff, and improving outreach and citizen engagement.

COVID-19 and Online Events

With COVID-19 disrupting travel across countries, the UNDP Pacific Office Parliamentary Development portfolio adopted different online tools for providing capacity building and other support to the Pacific Parliaments. It has organized series of webinars for the regional parliaments, country specific workshops and bilateral sessions and meetings on need basis. UNDP also piloted hybrid learning events which were jointly implemented by UNDP Pacific Office in Fiji and in-country parliamentary staff and experts.

As opening of borders does not seem likely in the near future, UNDP intends to build on its existing online capacity building experience and create and implement structured capacity building sessions for partner parliaments. In this regard, the UNDP Pacific office is looking for  an E-learning Consultant who will provide high-level technical support to the development of the related strategy as well as support the implementation of activities.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of Work/ Expected Outputs

Under the general guidance and supervision of the UNDP Parliamentary Development Specialist and in close consultation with the Parliamentary Development Team, the E-Learning Consultant will undertake the following duties and responsibilities:

• Design, customize and implement online learning approaches and tools on different parliamentary topics for Pacific parliaments.

  • The approaches may include self-paced/directed courses, webinars, video explainers, automated FAQs chat bots, virtual exchanges, chat rooms, online mentorship programme, just to name a few.

  • The task will also involve helping the parliament team to recruit suitable people / firms who may be able to help implement some of these ideas; in that regard, the consultant will produce a quick mapping of the current offer proposed online on parliamentary development by international partners and development agencies assisting parliaments directly or indirectly worldwide (IPU, CPA, WFD, IDEA, OECD, NDI, IRI, IFES, etc.)

• Work with parliamentary development experts / advisors and UNDP’s partner parliaments to create curriculum and learning materials suitable for online learning activities.

• Identify and help recruit suitable online learning experts that can deliver online sessions on parliamentary development.

• Coach and train UNDP’s parliamentary development staff and consultants in delivering effective online learning sessions.

• Continually seek and support new approaches, practices and processes to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of online training. This may include, but not limited to:

  • Organizing feedback sessions with participants and customizing the learning approaches.

  • Incorporating feedback collection mechanism within different learning tools and session.

  • Integrate follow up activities and networking sessions into all activities implemented by the parliamentary development team at regional and national level.

     

     

Institutional Arrangement

• The Advisor will be home based as travel is not expected due to COVID-19 travel restrictions.

• In his/her work, the Advisor will be given access to the Pacific parliamentary development documentation, workplan, and whatever background material existing relevant to the specific deliverable.

• If travel is mandated at any stage, for all travels undertaken through this consultancy, UNDP will purchase air tickets for the Advisor based on the most direct route and cost-effective route as per UNDP Travel Guideline.

• UNDP will also provide Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA) to the Consultant for the duration of his/her stay at the respective duty station at UN approved DSA rates.

   

Supervision/Reporting

• The Advisor will report directly to the UNDP Parliamentary Development Specialist.
• The Advisor will provide to UNDP brief summary reports of activities undertaken and advice provided every 20 working days during the consultancy period, for administrative and payment purposes: and
• All reports and documents relating to the assignment will be submitted to the UNDP Pacific Office based in Fiji.

Duration of the Work

Parliament Development Unit will contract the e-Learning Advisor Consultant on a Long-Term Arrangement (LTA). It is envisioned that the engagement will be for approximately 100 days over the period from March 2021 to May 2022. The call-off for the LTA will be via issuance of new TOR for each assignment or based on monthly progress activities

Contract Arrangement

The successful individual will sign the UNDP Individual Consultant Long Term Agreement.  The engagement will be on an intermittent basis with the stated duration based on the required services. UNDP will issue separate terms of reference and purchase order for each specific assignment as a call-off from this IC LTA. The TOR will outline the expected outputs, and the number of days to be engaged

Duty Station

• The IC will be home-based and may be required to travel to project countries in the Pacific region upon developments of the health/sanitary situation on the ground

• The IC maybe also be required to travel outside of the Pacific region from time to time.

• When in-country, the IC will be required to be present at the UNDP office where a space will be allocated

Competencies

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills;
• Strong analytical, reporting and writing abilities skills;
• Openness to change and ability to receive/integrate feedback;
• Ability to plan, organize, implement and report on work;
• Ability to work under pressure and tight deadlines;
• Comprehensiveness knowledge of the UN environment and policies, government operations and non-Stake actors particularly in the Pacific.
• Outstanding communication and organizational skills;
• Excellent presentation and facilitation skills.
• Demonstrates integrity and ethical standards;
• Positive, constructive attitude to work;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Required Skills and Experience

Educational Qualifications:

• A Master’s degree with emphasis in adult learning, instructional design, education, behavioral sciences, organizational development, business or a related area

Experience

• At least 5 years’ experience working on adult learning / online learning programmes. Experience of parliamentary strengthening and democratic governance is required.

• Experience in the Pacific and/or a developing country context will be an advantage.

• Knowledge and hands-on experience of various online learning approaches and tools is strongly required.

• Excellent analytical, writing and drafting skills and experience of providing policy advice

• Experience working with government institutions, international organizations (experience in working with UN agencies) is an asset

• Experience of working with highly level officials such parliamentarians, politicians, and parliamentary staff is required.

• Good representational and liaison skills; Ability to meet deadlines and excellent English writing and communication skills

Language requirements

• Fluency of English language is required;

• Knowledge of local languages would be an asset.

Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments

Consultant must send a financial proposal based on Daily Fee. Consultant shall quote an all-inclusive Daily Fee for the contract period. The term “all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, communications, consumables, etc.) that could be incurred by the IC in completing the assignment are already factored into the daily fee submitted in the proposal. If applicable, travel or daily allowance cost (if any work is to be done outside the IC’s duty station) should be identified separately. Payments shall be done on a monthly basis based on actual days worked, upon verification of completion of deliverables and approval by the IC’s supervisor of a Time Sheet indicating the days worked in the period.

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

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.

Evaluation Method and Criteria

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

Cumulative analysis

The award of the contract shall be made to 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%). Financial score shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal being evaluated and the lowest priced proposal received by UNDP for the assignment.

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points (70% of the total technical points) would be considered for the Financial Evaluation

Candidates may be called for an interview, which will be used to confirm and/or adjust the technical scores awarded based on documentation submitted.

Documentation required

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications.

• Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability and Financial Proposal using the template provided in Annex II.

• CV indicating all experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the bidder and at least three (3) professional references.

Note: Successful individual will be required to provide proof of medical insurance coverage before commencement of contract for the duration of the assignment.

Incomplete, joint proposals and proposals sent to the wrong mailing address will not be accepted and only candidates for whom there is further interest will be contacted.

Individuals interested in this consultancy should apply and will be reviewed based on their own individual capacity.

All required templates are available on the UNDP Procurement website: www.pacific.undp.org

Annexes

• Annex I– Individual IC General Terms and Conditions

• Annex II – Offeror’s Letter to UNDP Confirming Interest and Availability for the Individual IC, including Financial Proposal Template

Above documents can be accessed from UNDP website via following link:

https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=75430

Proposal Submission

• All applications must be clearly marked with the title of the consultancy (E-Learning Advisor - LTA) with reference (PN/FJI/014/21) and submitted via UN Job shop by\before 2 March 2021.

• Note: UNDP Jobs only supports single document upload hence ensure that the proposal consolidated and submitted as one single document

• For further information concerning this Terms of Reference, please contact UNDP Pacific Office by email: procurement.fj@undp.org

   

Women applicants are encouraged to apply