Background
In every society, there are people who suffer from diseases that have a severe, chronic, progressive course, are life-threatening, and require vital and, as a rule, costly treatment. For such citizens in the developed countries of the world there are additional state guarantees (social, medical, financial, etc.), which must provide them with vital medical services and goods, including medicines, medical devices, special medical nutrition products, without which life and health can be provided. We find such people under threat. Citizens suffering from rare (orphan) diseases belong to a particularly vulnerable category of people, as their treatment is lifelong, vital and expensive.
According to the EU Recommendation of 8 June 2009 on action in the field of rare (orphan) diseases ? 2009 / ? 151/02 a rare disease is defined as a disease that is life-threatening or characterized by a severe progressive, chronic course, the prevalence of which among the population not more than 5 people per 10,000 population.
In total, there are between 5,000 and 8,000 rare (orphan) diseases in the world, affecting 6-8 percent of the population. One of the main priorities of the WHO is to ensure that states have access to the medical care and rehabilitation they need, including citizens with rare (orphan) diseases.
Given these principles and priorities, Ukraine is committed to providing citizens suffering from rare (orphan) diseases, measures to prevent such diseases, the organization of medical care, continuous and free access to essential medicines, medical devices and relevant food products for special medical food.
About 80% of orphan diseases occur at the genetic level, 20% of rare diseases are the result of oncological and onco hematological diseases, infections, autoimmune diseases. In 75% of cases, orphan diseases develop in childhood, but the symptoms of some of them may occur in adults. In most cases, these diseases are chronic, accompanied by disability and often lead to death. It should be noted that lethal outcomes for 30% of patients occur before the age of 5 years. 50% of orphan diseases lead to disability, one in five patients suffers from pain, one in three cannot lead an independent lifestyle.
To identify the risks of orphan diseases from the first days of life, in Ukraine newborns are given early diagnosis - newborn screening, which is currently the most accurate way of early diagnosis of genetically determined pathologies, which detects diseases that can seriously affect mental and physical development of children.
In order to implement the state policy on newborn screening and control and monitoring of the incidence of orphan diseases among children, the National Information System of Newborn Screening (NBS) is being created.
In line with this, UNDP seeks the services of a National Consultant to provide developer services for the National Information System of Newborn Screening as part of eHealth.
Duties and Responsibilities
MAIN OBJECTIVES OF THE ASSIGNMENT
The main objective of this assignment is to provide developer services for the National Information System of Newborn Screening to review, analyze, setup/upgrade CI/CD approaches.
DESCRIPTION OF RESPONSIBILITIES / SCOPE OF WORK
The Consultant will be responsible for conducting the following activities in order to achieve the overall goal of the assignment:
- Case management of Problem Reports from initiation to closure;
- Remote and on-site problem diagnostics, troubleshooting and repair;
- Troubleshooting up to isolation only of faulty software;
- Support unlimited number of technical support cases to restore solution functionality and for general questions related to configuration and operation;
- Provide Problem Report logging;
- Case management until final resolution
- Self-serve system support;
- Escalation management;
- Ticket reviews of open cases;
- Operational reviews based on the type of problem
- Collaborating with developers personnel in case management (if needed);
- Maintenance of new modules CBD eHealth;
- Design solutions aligned with long-term architecture and technology strategy;
- Develop infrastructure as code for CI/CD pipeline;
- Monitoring, setting up, controlling, updating and maintaining the administrative IT infrastructure;
- Coordinate the appropriate parties to execute case and defect management, including:
- Identifying key participants from the stakeholders and developers to support case management execution, environment support, defect triage, etc. and securing resource allocations
- Providing ongoing monitoring and oversight of case management progress, and managing escalations if required
- Periodically inspecting, servicing, cleaning, or replacing parts of IT system to prevent sudden failure
- (Predictive monitoring of software and hardware in order to use important/expensive parts to the limit of their serviceable life
- Facilitate and/or participate in regular defect meetings to review defects with key project stakeholders
- Analyzes formal defect/ bug results
- Writing Problem Reports document
- Assists in the development of change control processes, practices and guidelines
- Investigate and document defects reported by users to prioritize and resolve defects
- Review and validate defect resolutions with stakeholders; ensure all workarounds are documented and approved by the appropriate project manager;
- Support project team members in the analysis and issue, resolving the defects
- Modifying software to fix errors, adapt it to new hardware, improve its performance, or upgrade interfaces
- Directing system testing and validation procedures in case management
- Directing software programming in case management
- Analyzing information to recommend and plan the installation of systems or modifications of an existing system
- Preparing reports on case management specifications, activities, or status
- Conferring with project managers to obtain information on limitations or capabilities.
DELIVERABLES
Deliverable # | Task description | Deadline |
1 | Technical requirements to CI/CD pipelines for CDB of Newborn Screening System to deliver stable upgrades, new modules, fixes
Expected result:
The draft TR is agreed with MOH | 1st month |
2 | Development of “to be” CI/CD pipelines for newborn screening system
Expected result:
| 2nd month |
3 | The pipeline for setting up new environments for newborn screening system
Expected result:
| 3rd month |
4 | Launch “to be” CI/CD pipeline and alerting mechanisms for newborn screening system
Expected result:
| 4th month |
COPYRIGHT
The Deliverables shall be submitted in Ukrainian/English. The title rights, copyrights and all other rights whatsoever nature in any material produced under the provisions of this TOR will be vested exclusively in UNDP.
MONITORING/REPORTING REQUIREMENTS
Work-progress reporting/monitoring meetings will be held with the National Consultant on a regular basis. UNDP will be responsible for all quality control and evaluation of work-progress of the performance of the National Consultant. No reports or documents should be published or distributed to any third party without prior approval of the UNDP.
The Consultant will duly inform UNDP of any problems, issues or delays arising in the course of implementation of assignment and take necessary steps to address them.
All reports and results are to be submitted to the UNDP in electronic form (*.docx, *.xlsx, *.pptx, and *.pdf or other formats accepted by UNDP). All deliverables and presentations shall be provided in Ukrainian/English, all reports shall be submitted in English.
PROPOSED PAYMENT METHOD
Payments will be made in 4 tranches according to the following payment schedule:
- upon satisfactory submission of deliverable #1 – 25%
- upon satisfactory submission of deliverable #2 – 25%
- upon satisfactory submission of deliverable #3 – 25%
- upon satisfactory submission of deliverable #4 – 25%
MANAGEMENT ARRANGEMENTS
The consultant shall be responsible for managing the process of the work implementation, its resources, logistics and expenditures related to the tasks in a timely and accurate manner. The consultant will be reporting to the UNDP Health Programme Specialist in liaison with the Project manager of NBS Project from the Ministry of Health side.
Competencies
- Demonstrate/safeguard ethics and integrity;
- Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment;
- Self-development, initiative-taking;
- Act as a team player;
- Encourage and participate in open communication in the team, communicate effectively;
- Create synergies through self-control;
- Manage conflict;
- Informed and transparent decision-making.
Required Skills and Experience
Minimum qualifications and experience:
Education:
- University degree in IT, programming, technical sciences or other related field
Experience:
- At least 3 years of experience as an Developer/DevOps
- Knowledge of the development stack (back-end: Java (Eclipse or Kotlin) or Elixir and front-end: JS (React))
- Proficiency with REST, SOAP will be considered an advantage
- Good knowledge of SQL (PostgreSQL , MongoDB) will be considered an advantage
- Proficiency with Swagger (or analogue) will be considered an advantage
- Hands-on experience with CI/CD tools will be considered an advantage
- Hands-on experience with automated testing tools will be considered an advantage
- Hands-on experience with monitoring, logging and alerting tools will be considered an advantage
- Proficiency with project management tools: Jira, Confluence (or analogue)
- Proficiency in Ukrainian, working knowledge of English
DOCUMENTS TO BE INCLUDED WHEN SUBMITTING THE PROPOSALS
Applicants shall submit the following documents:
Required |
|
| Letter of interest/proposal, explaining why the applicant considers him - or herself the most suitable for the work |
| Personal CV, including information about past experience in similar projects/assignments and contact details for referees. |
| Financial proposal |
EVALUATION
- University degree in IT, programming, technical sciences or other related field (Bachelor's degree - 17 pts, Master`s degree - 20 pts)
- At least three years relevant experience as an Developer/DevOps: (3 years - 15 pts,
4 years and more - 17 pts) - Knowledge of the development stack (back-end: Java (Eclipse or Kotlin) or Elixir and front-end: JS (React)) - 5 pts
- Hands-on experience with CI/CD tools - 2 pts
- Experience with REST, SOAP - 2 pts
- Knowledge of SQL (PostgreSQL, MongoDB) (good knowledge - 2 pts., advanced understanding - 3 pts)
- Experience with Swagger (or analogue) - 2 pts
- Hands-on experience with automated testing tools - 2 pts
- Hands-on experience with monitoring, logging and alerting tools - 2 pts
- Experience with project management tools: Jira, Confluence (or analogue) - 5 pts
- Proficiency in Ukrainian, working knowledge of English - 7 pts, proficiency in Ukrainian and English – 10 pts
Cumulative analysis
Contract award shall be made to the incumbent whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:
a) responsive/compliant/acceptable, and
b) having received the cumulative highest score out of a predetermined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation.
* Technical Criteria weight: 70%
* Financial Criteria weight: 30%
Only candidates obtaining a minimum 70% from the maximum available technical score (49 points) would be considered for the Financial Evaluation
The maximum number of points assigned to the financial proposal is allocated to the lowest price proposal and will equal to 30. All other price proposals will be evaluated and assigned points, as per below formula:
30 points [max points available for financial part] x [lowest of all evaluated offered prices among responsive offers] / [evaluated price].
The proposal obtaining the overall cumulatively highest score after adding the score of the technical proposal and the financial proposal will be considered as the most compliant offer and will be awarded a contract.
Travel
In the case of unforeseeable travel, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between the respective business unit and the Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed. In general, UNDP should 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.