Background

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and width of such simplified services and improve the service delivery model to counter the impact of widespread outdated manual processes, resistance to change by civil service staff and a lack of transparency that still frustrates citizens in their attempts to avail of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 5 components of the project:

Component 1: Strengthening existing e-services and launching a second generation of integrated, interoperable e-government applications; (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 linkage with public and private sectors and creating awareness among the citizens.

Access to Information Project - II is looking to recruit a National Consultant for Strategic Coordination who will be responsible to develop “a2i Dashboard”, considering the concept of balanced scorecard, consisting of results management indicators of a2i programmes for measuring the impact from management perspective and generate progress report (monthly, quarterly, bi-annual and yearly, etc.) for the management. Under the strategic direction of the Programme Implementation Specialist of a2i, the incumbent will contribute to the designing and implementation of project strategies, oversee the operations of the project and progress of the different components, organize national and international events in support to the project and maintain functional relationship with all the partners including donors.

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

Overall objective:

The overall objective of the assignment will be the following:

1. Support to the implementation of the Monitoring, Evaluation and Results Management of the project and all its initiatives;
2. Support to the development of a2i dashboard for measuring progress of the a2i programme, considering impact and client satisfaction, process efficiency, financial efficiency, and learning and growth of employees;
3. Maintain documentation of the progress of different components activities;  
4. Support to the development of high quality progress report/ research study report/ article/ brief/ PPT/ Infographics based on the progress of different level indicators for the management of the a2i Programme, relevant stakeholders and national and international audiences;
5. Support management in informed decision making and develop organizational archiving, documentation and dissemination system through effective visualization of the progress;
6. Contribute to the designing and implementation of project strategies;
7. Support in organizing national and international events;
8. Maintain functional relationship with all the stakeholders including the donors;
9. Track, facilitate and ensure the target delivery of the project.
10. Conduct desktop research and analytical discussion with different teams of a2i Programme for mapping high level indicators;
11. Develop the progress indicator for each initiative;
12. Coordination with different teams to define progress indicators, set milestones and target, and update indicator and data regularly;
13. Analyze data collected from the teams and prepare data table and graphical presentation for reporting;
14. Develop high quality reports based on the analysis for the national and international audience;
15. Visualize the progress through infographics and other medium to ensure effective communication;
16. Assist in sharing study findings to the wider stakeholders;
17. Identify and document the risks and issues of the project for the management and Develop risk mitigation proposal for the management;
18. Track the delivery progress of the project against the yearly target

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of Work:

1. Support to the implementation of the Monitoring, Evaluation and Results Management of the project and all its initiatives.

• Develop indicators for measuring the results of existing and new initiatives;
• Provide statistical analysis of outcome data, preparation of programme results brief and presentation for sharing with stakeholders and CO reporting;
• Coordinate with results management focal points of all components to ensure regular update of data in a monthly basis; and
• Ensure regular update of the indicator framework of the project and facilitate the development of outcome monitoring plan for the accomplished activities and related projects to generate evidence on programme effectiveness;

1. Support to the development of a2i dashboard for measuring progress of the a2i programme, considering impact and client satisfaction, process efficiency, financial efficiency, and learning and growth of employees.

• Conduct desktop research on standard monitoring tool and analytical discussion with different teams of a2i Programme for mapping high level indicators, considering impact and client satisfaction, process efficiency, financial efficiency, and learning and growth of employees;
• Set SMART indicators, considering the concept of Balanced Scorecard, for each initiative as per management perspective;
• Develop a2i Dashboard to track and monitor the progress of the initiatives of a2i;
• Integrate all data generated portal of a2i with a2i Dashboard;
• Present a real-time and at-a-glance view on different category of generated system data and status for monitoring instantly; and
• Manage the data of the Dashboard to show the progress in different graphs, charts or in numbers as the requirement of the management and audience.

Maintain documentation of the progress of different components activities.  

• Prepare tracking sheet on the decisions taken in management meeting and follow up;
• Prepare tracking sheet to follow up the progress of Gantt chart prepared by the teams to implement different initiatives;
• Support to coordinate quarterly review meetings and tracking the decisions; and
• Update supervisor about the progress of the decisions time to time.

Support to the development of high quality progress report/ research study report/ article/ brief/ PPT/ Infographics based on the progress of different level indicators for the management of the a2i Programme, relevant stakeholders and national and international audiences.   

• Develop high quality reports focusing the indicator-based progress of the different components;
• Compile and consolidate monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual programmatic performance reports;
• Prepare annual reports and other periodic reports for the donor organizations (UNDP, USAID, analysis and maintain international standard;
• Write various needs-based progress report for the internal and external teams;
• Develop different research proposals, articles and assist in the publication
• Develop articles/results brief based on the research report and data set
• Assist in the development, compilation and sharing of evidence in a timely manner to the project management for effective decision making

Support management in informed decision making and develop organizational archiving, documentation and dissemination system through effective visualization of the progress

• Visualize the indicator progress reports/research study report/article/brief/PPT/Infographics;
• Visualize the progress of the different components of the project using the appropriate software and techniques;
• Organize findings sharing and validation meetings with the different teams of the project;
• Share findings to the wider stakeholders; and
• Visualize the study findings in PowerPoint Presentation.

Contribute to the designing and implementation of project strategies

• Contribute to actions related to strategy development, project design, implementation and operation plan;
• Support to prioritize the functions and activities considering the management perspective; and
• Help to set comparative goals of the prioritized functions and activities for project performance and growth.

Support in organizing national and international events.

• Prepare concept notes, talking points and invitation letter for events;
• Prepare detailed budget for the national and international events;
• Prepare the invitation letter for the national and international participants;
• Coordinate with the admin of a2i to ensure smooth operations of the event; and
• Develop outcome reports based on the events.

Maintain functional relationship with all the partners including the donors

• Maintain regular communication with the partners and donor organizations;
• Manage field visit of the donors at the project implementation areas;
• Prepare short reports/ write ups for the donor organizations;
• Manage the meetings between the project senior management and donor organizations, if required; and
• Coordinate with the donors on different issues as and when required.

Track, facilitate and ensure the target delivery of the project

• Develop a delivery tracking framework for monitoring the delivery progress of the project based on the project plan/ Annual Work Plan;
• Track the delivery progress through monthly and quarterly meetings;
• Develop a dashboard for delivery tracing in discussion with the Programme Implementation Specialist;
• Identify team-wise, activity-wise and overall budget deviation; and
• Identify high-priority areas in terms of the delivery in discussion with the Programme Implementation Specialist.

 Expected outputs / deliverables:

Supervision and Performance Evaluation:

The Consultant- Strategic Coordination will be working with the Programme Implementation Specialist of Access to Information – II Project.

Timeframe and deadlines:

The assignment will be for 120 working days over 6 months.

Reporting authority:

National Consultant for Strategic Coordination will closely work with the Programme Implementation Specialist of Access to Information – II Project. The incumbent will be paid on deliverables basis.

Competencies

Competencies:

• Demonstrates commitment to UNDP’s mission, vision and values;
• Knowledge in working with governance issues will be get advantages;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Familiar with and shares the vision of human development as laid out in the flagship HDR series.
• Encourages Knowledge Sharing and Learning;
• Disseminates specialized knowledge and experience;
• Actively works towards continuing personal learning and development in one or more Practice Areas;
• Acts on learning plan and applies newly acquired skills.

Development and Operational Effectiveness

• Ability to perform a variety of standard specialized and non-specialized tasks and work processes that are fully documented, researched, recorded and reported;
• Ability to review a variety of data, identify and adjust discrepancies, identify and resolve operational problems;
• Ability to perform work of a confidential nature and handle a large volume of work;
• Ability to provide input to business process re-engineering, implementation of the new system.

Leadership and Self-Management

• Focuses on result for the client;
• Has demonstrable leadership skill;
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
• Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure;
• Demonstrates openness to change;
• Responds positively to feedback and differing points of view.

Required Skills and Experience

Academic Qualifications:

• Minimum Masters in Statistics/ Management Information System (MIS)/ Development Studies/ Sociology/ Anthropology/ Social Work/ Social Welfare/ Population Sciences/ Economics/ Public Administration or any other relevant discipline.

Years of experience:

• At least 05 years’ experience in working in the development sector in real time data dashboard design and development, project management, monitoring and evaluation etc.
• Minimum 02-year experience in data management and visualization.

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 individuals must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

• A curriculum vitae outlining the candidate’s educational and professional experience (including past experience in similar projects and at least 2 references)

• 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

Travel

All envisaged travel costs must be included in the financial proposal. This includes all travel to join duty station/repatriation travel. In general, UNDP should not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel to a higher class, he/she should do so using their own resources.

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 Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed