Background

Background and Objectives

UNDP is committed to the long-term, sustainable development of democratic governance in Liberia throughout the electoral cycle, including support to key democratic institutions and processes. Under this objective, UNDP supports the National Elections Commission (NEC) and its constitutional mandate to plan, manage and organize elections in compliance with the national legal framework, international standards and best practices

The Support to the Liberian Electoral Cycle Project’s (hereinafter “the Elections Project”) overall objective is to enhance the democratization process in Liberia through improved electoral institutions and processes. The program aims at strengthening the capacity of NEC to provide a platform to undertake institutional and legislative reforms and execute the necessary measures to ensure the ability of the NEC - the principle electoral management body - to plan, manage and deliver credible, transparent and inclusive elections for Liberia.

In the view of upcoming Special Senatorial Elections and possibly a Constitutional referendum scheduled for October 2020, the NEC will conduct a voter roll update in March. This update exercise will consider the existing voters’ database of 2017 while including new registrants, notably those that became eligible voters reaching 18 years of age, those who have not registered during the previous electoral cycle and those wishing to have their data corrected or relocate from one precinct to another. The aim of the exercise is to create the voters’ registration roll for 2020 electoral processes that would be inclusive, verified and sufficiently professional to be acceptable to the electoral stakeholders.

The election observers noted during the 2017 general elections the challenges to the current active voter registration system, as well as the final registration roll (FRR) produced through the system. The Lessons Learnt Conference held in 2018 confirmed that a number of challenges encountered during the electoral process disenfranchised some Liberians. Moreover, some level of distrust in the FRR was demonstrated by the electoral stakeholders, notably political parties, during the 2017 general elections. While an effective Civil Register would address some of the key challenges, the government of Liberia yet needs to implement the initial steps. The credibility of the upcoming Special Senatorial Elections and possibly a referendum depends, among other things, on the actual and perceived integrity of the FRR.

Considering the national ownership and a need to build the capacity of the NEC staff, the Data Center Consultant will work with the two NEC Data Center staff and other relevant NEC’s departments to ensure the readiness of the registration database for the upcoming Special Senatorial Elections and referendum; support NEC in effectively communicating on the technical aspects of the voter roll update process, notably the credibility safeguards, to the public to enhance overall integrity of the FRR; and build upon the existing assessments of cooperation between the National Identification Registry (NIR) and the NEC to support the work towards the implementation of credible biometric voter register for the 2023 electoral cycle.  The Consultant will be further requested to support NEC Data Center staff in their daily work with the view to enhance their capacity. Support will be also provided to ensure readiness of other NEC’s software and databases necessary for the upcoming elections, including but not limited to the accreditation and candidate nomination software and databases, as well as data center and tally operational plan and database, including the NEC results website.

Duties and Responsibilities

SCOPE OF WORK, RESPONSIBILITIES AND DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPOSED ANALYTICAL WORK

Scope of work III. Duties and Responsibilities  

Under the direct supervision of the Chief Technical Adviser (CTA), and in close collaboration with the NEC Directors for Data Center, the Consultant will provide technical support to the NEC Data Center for the upcoming voter registration and election process. The key pillars of the consultancy should include support to NEC in (a) assessment of existing mechanisms and suggestions for improvements to enhance its integrity; (b) preparation of the key processes related to the upcoming elections; and (c) effective communication on the technical processes to the electoral stakeholders.

The consultant will support NEC to carry out following activities:

•           Review and update of existing procedures and regulations related to the voter roll update, exhibition and FRR;

• Update of the training procedures for the data center staff;

• Following up to the ICT infrastructure assessment, evaluate existing voter registration database and its vulnerabilities and recommend improvements for 2020 voter registration process;

• Programming and update database software to carry out the 2020 voter registration roll update using Optional Mark Recognition (OMR) system, with particular focus on mitigating multiple registration;

  •           Development of software to be used for field operations and voters tracking;

• Design mechanism to improve communication and data transmission from the field to the NEC HQ (central database);

• Ensure the key aspects of the voter registration database are functioning to effectively ensure (1) the allocation of new registrants on the existing voters roll; (2) the reallocation of voters on the database - voters’ transfers from one voter registration

  Center / precinct to another; (3) data cleansing and deduplication; (4) determination and removal of underage voters;

  •           Redevelopment of post processor to accommodate new voters and exhibition data from

                the voter roll updates process;

  •           Update databases and software using Microsoft C# technology;

• Effectively communicate each steps of the voter roll update process to the public with the objective to increase public trust in the process;

• Update of key software and databases for the upcoming 2020 elections;

• Any other task as may be deemed necessary during the course of the assignment.

Competencies

Required Skills and Experience

5. FINANCIAL PROPOSAL

6. EVALUATION

ANNEX

ANNEX 1- TERMS OF REFERENCES (TOR)

ANNEX 2- INDIVIDUAL CONSULTANT GENERAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Annex 3 - INDIVIDUAL CONSULTANT NOTICE