Background

A fundamental government responsibility is providing information and services aimed at improving the social and economic welfare of its citizens. During the first phase of the Access to Information (A2I) Project, fundamental progress was made in improving access to public services through electronic means. However, it is critical to expand the breadth and width of such simplified services and improve the service delivery model to counter the impact of widespread outdated manual processes, resistance to change by civil service staff and a lack of transparency that still frustrates citizens in their attempts to avail of government information and services.

The objective of the 2nd phase of the project is to increase transparency, improve governance, and reduce the time, difficulty and costs of obtaining government services for under-served communities of Bangladesh. This is to be achieved by the following five components of the project:

Component 1: Strengthening existing e-services and launching new integrated, interoperable e-government applications or tools; (e-Service)

Component 2: Sensitizing government officials, training for service providers and expanding digital literacy among the general public; (Capacity and Awareness)

Component 3: Forging strong policy and strategy links to ensure implementation of needed legal and regulatory changes in support of the project; (Enabling Environment) and

Component 4: Promoting innovation in the delivery of e-services. (Innovation)

Component 5: Establishing linkages with public and private sectors and creating awareness among citizens.

‘Access to Information II is planning to recruit a National Consultant G2B Data Center Expert who will support the initiatives for maintaining and developing existing partnerships, whilst also identifying new G2B service providing organizations to work with.

The project is funded by the Government of Bangladesh, UNDP and other development partners, and is implemented by Cabinet Division and ICT Division.

Objectives:

The overall objective of the assignment will be the following:

• The objective of the appointment is to provide quality support to A2I for various infrastructure and network support, operation, implementation and maintenance activities under National Data Centre (NDC) of Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) or other collocated data centre, and provide technical inputs.
• This includes assistance in Business/Technical Requirement Analysis, Network Architecture Design, Server Low Level Configuration and Maintenance, Network & Server System Problem Analysis, Device Testing & Quality Assurance, Technical coordination with A2I, Data Centre team, collaborating with stakeholders on substantive Hardware and software related issues, provision of technical inputs and quality assurance on network operation and maintenance reports.
• He / She will work with the team leader of A2I designated team leader

Duties and Responsibilities

The assignment will focus on the following areas and activities:

Overall: The consultant’s scope of work will be as following, but not limited to:

• Maintain network infrastructure.
• Install and configure Physical and Virtual Servers in windows, linux, bsd, solaris etc.
• Functional knowledge on various hypervisor technique such as Virtualbox, VMWare, KVM, OpenVZ& LXC.
• Server stress and security hardening and testing periodically.
• Install & Manage Network Management System (NMS) such as Nagios, ZenOSS, Observium, Librenms etc.
• maintain and configure SMTP mail gateway.
• Manage SMS server.
• Manage Cloud infrastructure.
• Deploy & manage cluster Database.
• Work with Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) based application.
• Maintain a thorough understanding and analysis of the basics behind the Internet and its workings (DNS, Security, IP Routing, HTTP, VPN, Email Routing, SPAM, etc.).
• Manage VPN systems and maintain users.
• Manage virtual firewall, virtual VPN, virtual NAS, virtual Router and Security appliances for access to vital business applications accordance to defined policies.
• Configure complex wireless networking that supports open or secured access and the ability to support voice and video applications.
• Maintain a thorough understanding of Local Area Networking.
• Testing and maintenance of server & network in NOC and server farm.
• Managing assigned projects and program components to deliver services in accordance with established objectives.
• Analyze historical data of infrastructure.
• Periodical report of infrastructure.
• Regular monitor of server, network usages and physical hardware.
• Responding to inquiries from staff, administrators, service providers, site personnel and outside vendors and etc. to provide technical assistance and support.
• Supervising the administration of systems and servers related network to ensure availability of services to authorized users.
• Participate in team meeting and provide substantial technical inputs for improvement of product/services.
• Technical and Product/service related document, Progress Reports preparation.
• Provide inputs, information and statistics for quarterly, annual and other reports to the BCC, NDC or other collocated service provider and Access to Information (A2I) project.
• Any other duties as assigned by management.

Please specify the deliverables and describe works in the scope of the works.

Duration of the Assignment: 11 months

Deliverables

• Submit a report on Assessment and understanding the present hosting setup, network, Install and configure Physical and Virtual Servers - 20 days after awarding the Contract
• Develop and deploy SMTP gateway and SMS Servers for monitoring - 40 days after awarding the Contract
• Submit a report on Infrastructure inspection - 60 days after awarding the Contract
• Plan and Deploy virtual firewall, virtual VPN, virtual NAS, virtual Router and Security appliances for access to vital business applications accordance to defined policies - 80 days after awarding the Contract
• Submit a plan for better scalability of infrastructure - 100 days after awarding the Contract
• Prepare a plan and report on Maintain a thorough understanding and analysis of the basics behind the Internet and its workings (DNS, Security, IP Routing, HTTP, VPN, Email Routing, SPAM, etc.) - 120 days  after awarding the Contract
• Prepare Technical document for Implementation of G2B Data Centre - 140 days after awarding the Contract
• Capacity development of relevant government ICT focal points on all issues related to Infrastructure for ensuring proper function of the G2B Data center - 160 days after awarding the Contract
• Analyze and prepare a report on historical data of infrastructure - 180 days after awarding the Contract

Supervision and Performance Evaluation.

The National Consultant, Data Center Expert-G2B services will be working with the National Consultant (Data & Hosting Infrastructure) under direct supervision of CTO, technical Team of Access to Information – II Project.

Timeframe and deadlines:

The assignment will be for 180working days over 09 months.

Reports:

The activities done by the incumbent will be regularly monitored by the Director (E-Service) of Access to Information-II Project. The incumbent will be paid on deliverables basis.

Competencies

Functional Competencies

• Technical, analytical and interpersonal skills required.
• Knowledge of understanding Servers, Router/firewall configuration and maintenance.
• Hands-on experience working experience on VPN technologies (IPSEC, SSL, WebVPN, PPTP etc.)
• Expert level skills to work in windows and linux environment.

Development and Operational Effectiveness

• Working experience with Cloud infrastructure, data center management.
• Working experience in Web Security/Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and working record with ICT related relevant private & government project in Bangladesh are expected

Leadership and Self-Management

• Should be a  team player, but able to work independently also
• Ability in establishing and maintaining good working relationships to facilitate work goals
• Fluency in written and spoken both English and Bangla

Knowledge Management and Learning

• Promotes knowledge management in the project and a learning environment in the office through leadership and personal example
• Actively works towards continuing personal learning and development in one or more Practice Areas, acts on learning plan and applies newly acquired skills

Required Skills and Experience

Academic Qualifications:

• A bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE)/Computer Science/ Electronics Engineer/ Telecommunication Engineering or equivalent qualifications from any reputed University.

Years of experience:

• At least 5 years hands-on systems, server & networking experience in any reputed telecom organization.

Evaluation of the Candidates:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology.

Cumulative analysis-

The award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant up on Cumulative Analysis/evaluation and determined as:

• Responsive/compliant/acceptable; and
• 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 marks.Only candidates obtaining a minimum 49% mark in technical evaluation will be considered eligible for financial evaluation.

Technical Evaluation Criteria (Total 70 marks):

Financial Evaluation (Total 30 marks)

All technical qualified proposals will be scored out 30 based on the formula provided below.

The maximum points (30) will be assigned to the lowest financial proposal. All other proposals received points according to the following formula:

p = y (µ/z)

Where:

• p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated;
• y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal;
• µ = price of the lowest priced proposal;
• z = price of the proposal being evaluated.

Financial Milestone:

DOCUMENTS TO BE INCLUDED WHEN SUBMITTING THE PROPOSALS

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications. Proposers who shall not submit below mentioned documents will not be considered for further evaluation.

1. Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP;
2. Personal CV or P11, 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; P11 can be downloaded from the link below: http://www.bd.undp.org/content/bangladesh/en/home/operations/jobs/ 
3. Financial Proposal: Financial Proposal has to be submitted through a standard interest and availability template which can be downloaded from the link below:

 http://www.bd.undp.org/content/dam/bangladesh/docs/Jobs/Interest%20and%20Submission%20of%20Financial%20Proposal-Template%20for%20Confirmation.docx

Please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows to upload maximum one document.