Background

!!!! UNDP templates and documents are available for Download at the following links:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/297e72t7i3v2969/AADDRyUo2uoNrYjuD8NLmdl0a?dl=0

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qv93OExDe6UMk9UFTwOD3OXBK9YjCTlp/view?usp=sharing

NB: Please note that online/application system does not support Russian/Ukrainian language, information provided in the on-line application form must be in English only.

1. Context

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been active and present in eastern Ukraine for the past decade, prior to the conflict, with a focus on community development, civil society development, and environmental protection. Work on addressing the specific conflict-related development challenges built on this earlier engagement, established partnerships, and started in 2015 through the United Nations Recovery and Peacebuilding Programme (UN RPP). UN RPP is a multi-donor funded framework Programme formulated and led by the UNDP in collaboration with the Government of Ukraine and in cooperation with a number of partnering UN agencies (UN Women, FAO, UNFPA). UN RPP was designed to respond to, and mitigate, the causes and effects of the conflict in the east of Ukraine. It is an integral component of the UNDP Country Programme and is therefore fully aligned with the United Nations Partnership Framework (UNPF).

In October 2018, four UN agencies (UNDP, UN Women, FAO and the UNFPA) have countersigned a new joint project document, funded by the EU. The overall objective of the project is to restore effective governance, support economic recovery and promote reconciliation in the crisis-affected communities of Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts in Ukraine, thereby enhancing the credibility and legitimacy of local governments in the government-controlled areas of the regions. It will contribute to peacebuilding and prevent further escalation of the conflict in Ukraine through effective and accountable decentralization, gender-responsive recovery planning and equal access to services, as well as enhanced economic recovery and development.

Component III of UN RPP “Community Security and Social Cohesion” aims to reach some of its goals through small grants and mini-initiatives fund establishment. This includes implementation support of the projects strengthening community security and social cohesion through testing innovative legal aid, access to justice, conflict resolution and peacebuilding mechanisms at local level.

The legal aid system of Ukraine managed by the Coordination Centre of Legal Aid Provision (the “CC”) requires ICT solutions to be accessible to its recipients. Such requirement should let the beneficiaries to receive free of charge legal aid services and check the status of their cases from the remoted settlements, non-government controlled areas of both Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and the annexed Autonomous Republic of Crimea & the city of Sevastopol. The existing website of the CC (https://www.legalaid.gov.ua/) contains the needed information and contacts of relevant service providers inside the system, however there is no possibility to request the assistance or track the case online.

For this reason, UN RPP seeks highly qualified professional who will update the website of the CC and develop a web application ensuring further integration with the CC’s website (incl. publish and launch of the developed web application on a “legalaid.gov.ua” subdomain).

2. Scope and Objective of the Assignment

The overarching goal of this assignment is to provide the CC with the ICT tool to improve the provision of the free of charge legal aid services. During this assignment the Consultant will coordinate his/her activities with representatives of the CC and the UN RPP. The UN RPP will provide all contacts on the initial meeting.

The existing website (https://www.legalaid.gov.ua, the “Website”) is based on open-source CMS WordPress 5.4.1,  written using PHP as the scripting language and using MySQL databases for storing information. The exact details and specifications of web server, theme, available APIs, external third-party plugins and extensions that are currently being in used by the CC will be provided to the Contractor on the initial meeting.

The purpose of this assignment is to develop and successfully integrate user’s personal area (the “Cabinet”) into the Website. The Cabinet has to be developed as a stand-alone application software that runs on a web server (i.e. web application) and later integrated and launched on a subdomain of the CC (e.g. “user.legalaid.gov.ua”).

Minimum requirements for such web application are:

• information on free legal aid must be displayed in the context of the user account or individual;
• system must have mechanism for delimitation of access rights;
• a mechanism for searching and sorting information according to certain criteria must be implemented;
• the ability to enter information from directory in the fields of the system, where the use of directory will be appropriate;
• a mechanism for signing electronic documents with an electronic digital signature must be provided;
• possibility of data exchange using API;
• authentication using electronic signature or email.

All technical terminology is understood in accordance with current standards and recommendations of international bodies responsible for standardisation on the Internet (i.e. World Wide Web Consortium).

Duties and Responsibilities

3. Duties and responsibilities

The Contractor is responsible to develop and successfully integrate the Cabinet into the Website.

The Cabinet must have the following features:

• registration using a combination of email and password and email validation for Registered User (who will be able to use only a Free Legal Aid module);
• registration using an electronic signature issued by a certification authority (in the meaning set out in the Law of Ukraine “On electronic trust services” for the term “a qualified provider of electronic trust services” (?????????????? ??????? ??????????? ???????? ??????) (the “CA”) for Verified User (who will be able to use the Free Legal Aid module and the Free Secondary Legal Aid module);
• login using a special area/block that will be available on each page of the existing Website using:
  • a combination of email and password
  • an electronic signature issued by an CA (full list available on a website of the Central CA);
• submitting new applications for receiving free primary legal aid;
• submitting new applications for receiving free secondary legal aid with obligatory attachment of either new document or uploaded to the Cabinet earlier;
• uploading of supporting documents to each application;
• uploading of documents confirming the right to receive secondary legal aid;
• review of history of personal cases submitted and their statuses. Inter alia, the following parameters have to be visible:
  • submission date;
  • status of the application (submitted/rejected/closed/assigned to an advocate/re-assigned to an advocate %name%/pending/assigned to %staff name%);
  • name of the advocate/staff member assigned to this case
• submitting acknowledgments and complaints, feedback and evaluation about the actions of the employees of the legal aid system;
• downloading submitted applications and responses on them;
• participation in surveys, e.g. about satisfaction with the received services.

Key design requirements for the Cabinet:

• user-friendly adaptive design (including for persons with disabilities);
• similar visibility to the existing website (https://www.legalaid.gov.ua/);
• adhering to the basic design standards of the Ukrainian Government Website Design System (https://design.gov.ua);
• the cabinet should be optimised for viewing at a resolution of 1280x1024 without a horizontal scroll bar and without empty (white) fields for the main types of resolution.

User roles

On a back-end level, all users registered on a website must be divided by user roles for “Registered User” and “Verified User” (jointly the “Users”). In addition, a special “Administrator” role (existing or newly added users with full access to the existing website) has to be foreseen. “Administrators” shall keep their existing full access to all sections of the website (incl. full access to detailed information about all Users’ accounts) even after completion of this assignment. Additional “Local administrator” user role has to be added: accounts with such role will have the full access only for cases/requests within their regions (oblasts).

Both Registered User and Verified User should have an option to submit information in their Cabinet as shown in the table below.

Actions and user permissions

Notwithstanding with the User’s role, he must have access to all features listed above, unless other is stated in this section. In addition to them, the following features have to be foreseen and implemented by the Contractor:

Key design requirements for the Administrative part:

• user-friendly adaptive design (including for persons with disabilities);
• similar visibility to the existing website (https://www.legalaid.gov.ua/);
• adhering to the basic design standards of the Ukrainian Government Website Design System (https://design.gov.ua);
• the cabinet should be optimised for viewing at a resolution of 1280x1024 without a horizontal scroll bar and without empty (white) fields for the main types of resolution

Additional actions that have to be developed and associated for the purpose of usage of Administrator only:

• upload of surveys (questionnaires);
• reviewing and exporting of the results of their completion (in .pdf/.xlsx/.csv filetypes);
• review the information on number of applications and complaints addressed to each regional and local secondary legal aid centre;
• access the applications, complaints and relevant documents;
• review and download applications, complaints, acknowledgments, feedback and evaluation, documents, and relevant statistical information;
• possibility to manually change user roles.

When creating additional site pages, the concept, styles, fonts, site mark-up requirements must be preserved and fully comply with the original website, brand book and layouts provided by the CC.

Requirements to the structure of the website:

All the names of the sections of the site below are provided for informational purpose only. Exact names of the sections and pages and may change. The Contractor has to modify the name of the pages upon request of the CC or the UN RPP.

• Main page of the Cabinet
• Submit an application
• History of submitted applications
  • Application (-s) details
• Send a feedback
• Account settings
• Logout

The “Main page of the Cabinet” has to provide at least the following information blocks:

• Basic information of the User
• Menu
• Status of the last submitted application
• Statuses of all submitted applications
• Upload a document;
• Verification link (to request upgrade for the Verified User status; enabled for Registered User only)

The “Submit an application” page has to provide the User with a specially designed form, allowing to:

• Provide a title of the application (text only, no hyperlinks enabled);
• Select a type of the application (using a drop-down selector);
• Provide a description of the application (text only, no hyperlinks enabled);
• Select a date of the incident (NB: not obligatory);
• Attach a document from already uploaded;
• Upload a new document;
• Send a submitted form.

The “History of submitted application” page has to provide the User with a list of his sent applications, providing information about:

• See the title of the application;
• See submission date;
• See the status of the application (submitted/rejected/closed/assigned to an advocate/re-assigned to an advocate/pending);
  • If the application has been assigned a status of “Assigned to an advocate/re-assigned to an advocate” – to see the name of the advocate assigned on this case;

After clicking on the application, a page with detailed description of the case opens.

The “Application (-s) details” page provides full information submitted by the User, the status of the application, name of the advocate assigned (if applicable), detailed answer on this application (if applicable) and date of the answer (if applicable).

The “Send a feedback” form provides user with an option to send feedback. The page has to have the following elements:

• Type of the feedback (acknowledgment/complaint/general feedback/ evaluation of the actions of the employees of the legal aid system/other) designed in a drop-down way;
• Title of the feedback (text only, no hyperlinks enabled);
• Detailed description field (text only, no hyperlinks enabled);
• E-mail;
• Mobile phone number.

The “Account Settings” page has to provide user with:

• an option to edit his/her personal and/or contact details;
• mark his/her status as a person with disabilities (to be selected using a drop-down menu);
• request upgrading to a Verified User;
• other options that might be relevant.

Authorisation on the website

Registered Users and Verified Users

The Users can log in on any page of the Website using a special authorisation form in the upper right corner. The form contains:

• Text field for user login
• Text field for user password
• A button for authorisation using an electronic signature.

Administrators

Administrators can login using the same login form as the Users.

Access granting requirements

When trying to enter to the Cabinet, a visitor who did not perform the authentication must be asked for a login using username and password or the electronic signature.

After passing the authentication, the system should check the User's credentials and authority to access the requested section. If access is denied, the User should receive a message about the impossibility of access to the closed section.

Requirements on website filling and support:

As part of the work on this assignment, the Contractor ensures the basic filling of the Cabinet’s sections with the information provided by the Customer.

The Contractor provides processing of illustrations to bring them into line with technical requirements and HTML-layout of prepared materials. The Contractor will also have to provide entering of provided texts, retouching and editing of images as well as other works to be done before the Cabinet goes public.

Supporting of the Cabinet and the Website after the Cabinet is launched has to be performed by the Contractor for 2 weeks after the final release.

Page layouting requirements:

1. The HTML document must conform to the W3C standard in the xHTML Strict and be aligned with the HTML5 standard and the CSS3 specification.
2. The HTML document of the site must have a block layout (

   -based layout), nested blocks should be marked with paragraph indents and tabulations have to be used for indents.

3. The HTML code of the site should be structured and easy to understand, and the tags have to be neatly nested, ambiguous points have to be commented.
4. The page should be displayed as identically as possible in all modern browsers: Internet Explorer 11.0 and higher, Mozilla Firefox 75.0 and higher, Opera 65.0 / Microsoft Edge 79.0 / Google Chrome 79.0 and other browsers based on Chromium 75 and higher, Safari 13 and higher and with monitor resolutions from 1280x1024 to 1920x1080.
5. All styles should be taken to the styles.css file, defining styles directly on the page is not allowed.
6. The usage of JavaScript tools should be limited; JavaScript code should be used only in case if similar functionality cannot be implemented with HTML5/CSS3.
7. All java scripts should be stored in the /js/ folder, pasting scripts directly into the html code is not allowed, except for situations when it is not possible to export scripts to a separate file.
8. All style names must be set out in English language and tags have to be written in lowercase.
9. All external links must have the “title=” parameter specified.
10. All externals links, if their usage is required, must use "nofollow" parameter for attribute "rel" (rel="nofollow") with a possibility to disable such parameter upon request.
11. All images must have the “alt=” parameter specified.
12. Usage of only one

    heading per page is allowed.

13. The CC and the UN RPP reserve the right to request additional changes in code in order to eliminate critical errors in the validity of HTML and in CSS files (W3 validation services http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ and https://validator.w3.org might be used as sources).

Provision of documentation

At the time of the project delivery, the Contractor has to provide the CC with the following set of documents:

• A quick guide to moving the system to another hosting site.
• Documentation on the modules of the CMS.
• A brief user guide (reference information) on the administrative part of the site.

Organising a special training for at least 2 representatives of the CC have to be provided before the final delivery date.

Provided technical documentation should be accepted by both CC and UNDP.

The procedure for transferring the site to the customer’s hardware

After release the production version of application, source codes must be transferred to CC.

Requirements on data exchange

The Contractor has to provide an option on exchanging of all information submitted by the User using API. Technical details and specification of API protocol will be communicated to the Contractor.

Additional performance and security requirements will be communicated to the Contractor by the CC after signing of the contract.

4. Deliverables

The following deliverables will be provided by the Consultant:

5. Proposed Payment Schedule

UNDP will pay the negotiated amount in 3 tranches as per delivery of the output outlined above.

Delivery of output 1 – 25% of the total payment

Delivery of output 2 – 45% of the total payment     

Delivery of output 3 – 30% of the total payment     

The payment will be processed upon the full completion and acceptance of deliverable in accordance with certificate of payments provided by the UN RPP Community Security and Social Cohesion Specialist.

6. Monitoring and Reporting Requirements

The Consultant will report to the Community Security and Social Cohesion Component Lead of the UN RPP who accept and approve deliverables specified above. The Contractor has to work closely and cooperate in duly manner with other UN RPP specialists if needed.

The Consultant must adhere to the system of monitoring, evaluation and quality control implemented by the UN RPP and provide the necessary information, reports and tools according to the present schedule or as soon as possible (within a reasonable time).

All reports to the UN RPP shall be submitted electronically (format of .docx or .pdf) on electronic source or in the form of electronic communication with the attached final product. The reports should be prepared in Ukrainian or English.

Competencies

Experience and Qualifications Requirements

• At least Master’s Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science or any related field.
• At least 5 years of relevant experience in software and website development using the programming language of PHP, HTML, CSS.
• Confirmed knowledge in website development using the programming language of PHP, HTML, CSS.
• Experience in the implementation and technical support of software products, interaction with end users.
• Experience in software/application design according to the basic requirements of the customer.
• Proven experience in developing responsive and inclusive web designs (including for persons with disabilities).

Language Requirements: Professional fluency in English and Ukrainian.

Competencies:

• Ability to perform analytical and research work,
• Deliver outputs in a timely manner;
• Excellent interpersonal communication skills;
• Sound judgment and maturity to foster a positive work environment;
• Ability to work effectively as part of a team;
• Demonstrated strong analytical, coordination and facilitation skills.

VIII. Documents to Be Included When Submitting the Proposals

Applicants shall submit the following documents:

• Letter of interest/proposal, providing brief methodology on how the work will be delivered and/or approached;
• Professional CV or P11, including information about experience in similar projects / assignments;
• Financial proposal (according to defined deliverables);
• At least three examples of previous works (website development / update);
• At least 2 positive reference from previous customers.

IX. Financial Proposal

 Lump sum contract

The financial proposal shall specify a total lump sum amount, and payment terms around specific and measurable (qualitative and quantitative) deliverables (i.e. whether payments fall in instalments or upon completion of the entire contract). Payments are based upon output, i.e. upon delivery of the services specified in the TOR. In order to assist the requesting unit in the comparison of financial proposals, the financial proposal will include a breakdown of this lump sum amount (including travel, per diems, and number of anticipated working days).

The Consultant will be responsible for all personal administrative expenses associated with undertaking this assignment including office accommodation, printing, stationary, telephone and electronic communications, and report copies incurred in this assignment.

 Travel costs

UNDP will not provide travel / accommodation, these expenses should be included to the 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. UN RPP, however, may help (if needed) with logistics on mentioned issues around Ukraine. Should the Individual Consultants wish to travel on 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 Consultants, prior to travel and will be reimbursed.

Required Skills and Experience

Evaluation Criteria

• At least Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science or any related field – 7 points max: Bachelor’s Degree – 6 points, Master’s Degree – 7 points;
• At least 4 years of relevant experience in software and website development according to the basic requirements of the customer using the programming language of PHP, HTML, CSS – 18 points max: 4-6 years of experience – 12 points, 7 years of experience or more – 18 points;
• At least 3 developed websites using the programming language of PHP, HTML, CSS – 17 points max: 3-5 websites – 12 points, 6 websites of or more – 17 points;
• At least 3 years of experience in the implementation and technical support of software products, interaction with end users – 11 points max: 3-4 years of experience – 7 points, 5 years of experience or more – 11 points;
• At least 3 years of experience in developing responsive and inclusive web designs (including for persons with disabilities) – 11 points max: 3-4 years of experience – 7 points, 5 years of experience or more – 11 points;
• Language Requirements – 6 points max: Professional fluency in English and Ukrainian – 5 points, Professional fluency in English, Ukrainian and Russian – 6 points.

XI. Evaluation Method

 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 pre-determined 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.