Consultancy Services for the Joint Mid-Term Evaluation of the UNDAF Outcome 4.2, Lilongwe, Malawi

Closing date: Tuesday, 13 January 2015

CONSULTANCY SERVICES FOR THE JOINT MID-TERM EVALUATION OF THE UNDAF OUTCOME 4.2

Location : Lilongwe, with Limited Travel to Selected Districts, MALAWI

Application Deadline : 13-Jan-15

Additional Category

Democratic Governance

Type of Contract : Individual Contract

Post Level : International Consultant

Languages Required : English

Starting Date : (date when the selected candidate is expected to start)

02-Feb-2015

Duration of Initial Contract : 50 days

Expected Duration of Assignment : 10 Weeks

Background

The Malawi United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) 2012-2014 has 14 priority development outcomes. As a Delivery As One volunteering country, the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) agreed that individual UN agencies would adopt appropriate UNDAF outcomes in their CP documents instead of developing agency specific outcome statements for their respective Country Programme Documents (CPDs).

Outcome 4.2, namely: Public institutions are better able to manage, allocate and utilize resources for effective development and service delivery by 2016 is one of the six outcomes of the UNDAF to which UNDP is directly contributing financially and technically. The areas of intervention under the outcome are contributing to MGDS II, Theme 5: Improved Governance - Sub-theme 1: Economic Governance. In addition, the interventions under the outcome are contributing to the MGDS II, Theme 2: Social Development - Sub-theme 2: Health.

Outcome 4.2 has four outputs as follows:

• Output 4.2.1: Capacity for public sector management strengthened for effective service delivery;
• Output 4.2.2 Public institutions utilize RBM systems for planning, monitoring and evaluation to enhance ownership and leadership for achievement of development results;
• Output 4.2.3 Government has sufficient capacity to effectively negotiate, manage and account for development assistance;
• Output 4.2.4: National institutions have the capacity to align policies, programmes and budgets with national development strategies and the MDGs.

The interventions under this outcome are being implemented assistance from the following UN agencies: UNAIDS, UNDP, UNFPA and UNICEF. Support from UNFPA, UNICEF and UNDP is both technical and financial while UNAIDS is meant to provide in-kind technical assistance. UNDP is the lead UN Agency for the Outcome.

A decision among the participating agencies has been reached to conduct a joint mid-term evaluation of UNDAF Outcome 4.2.

Duties and Responsibilities

The purpose of the evaluation is to Assess the contribution made by the UNCT, collectively, and participating UN agencies, individually, to strengthening public institution capacity for development effectiveness and public service delivery as envisaged under outcome 4.2 of the UNDAF including cross human rights and gender equality.

The main objectives of the evaluation are to:

• Determine the extent to which the planned outcome and related outputs have been achieved or are being achieved and the likelihood of being achieved by the end of 2016 in general and the extent of participating UN agencies' contributions;
• Determine the impact, both positive and negative, from achievement of the outcome and its related outputs;
• Document lessons learnt from the implementation of the interventions;
• Make recommendations for the UNCT and specifically for each participating UN agency in strategic areas for improving the achievement and sustainability of the outcome; partnership arrangements, mainstreaming of cross-cutting issues and resource mobilization strategies.

The evaluation will cover the period from January 2012 to 31 December, 2014. Geographically, the evaluation is national in nature although there are also district interventions. It will include a review of the UNDAF annual work plans and annual reports, agency level project documents and work plans and related progress reports. Annex 4 provides a list of further documents to be consulted by the evaluators.

The consultant will be required to deliver the following:

• Inception report;
• Key emerging issues paper;
• Draft evaluation report;
• Final Evaluation Report.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Promotes the vision, mission and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Demonstrate integrity by modelling the UN's values and ethical standards;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Functional Competencies:

• Proven experience in leading consultancy teams;
• Track record of conducting evaluation of national development projects in any of the these areas aid and development effectiveness; public sector management capacity development; capacity building for development planning, budgeting, M&E or Results Based Management;
• Excellent communication skills for report writing and presentation of research and evaluation projects backed by extensive technical reports and publications.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Minimum of Master's degree in in economics, business administration, regional development/planning or any other social sciences related to development assistance management and economic governance.

Experience:

• 5 years of experience in conducting evaluations of UN agency project, outcome and Country Programme or UNDAF evaluations in the past five years.

Language:

• Ability to communicate in English Language

Methodology

The evaluation team should provide details in respect of:

• Review of project documentation. Review of key project documents such as approved program documents, recent studies, evaluations and reviews, project monitoring documents, disbursement reports, progress reports and other information available implementing agencies or participating UN agency offices;
• Construct a theory, identify detail evaluation questions, methods (mixed methods) and instruments, stakeholder mapping, etc.;
• Data collection: visits to selected stakeholders to carry out in depth interviews, inspection, and analysis of the project activities; phone interviews and performance data surveys of institutions not visited in person; interviews with the implementing agencies and participating UN agencies. For each of these interviews, the consultant should first develop and present their ideas for the content and format of the interview forms that will be applied to capture the information required, as well as the method to be used in administering them and tabulating the results;
• Analysis: Data triangulation and analysis triangulation to validate evidence and arrive at findings;
• The evaluators will be expected to develop and present detailed statement of evaluations methods/approaches in an inception report to show how each objective, evaluation question and criterion will be answered.

Report Requirements:

• An inception report which will be due within 5 days of signing the contract;
• Draft evaluation report;
• Final Report due 9 weeks after signing of contract.

Documents to be included when submitting the proposals:

• Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications by 13th January, 2015, before 5 pm;
• Explaining why they are the most suitable for the work;
• Provide a brief methodology on how they will approach and conduct the work;
• Financial Proposal;
• Personal CV (P11 Form) including past experience in similar projects and at least 3 references.

Proposals must include all four documents. Proposals not meeting this requirement will be rejected.

Financial Proposal:

• Contracts based on daily fee.

The financial proposal will specify the daily fee, travel expenses and per diems quoted in separate line items, and payments are made to the Individual Contractor based on the number of days worked.

Travel

All envisaged travel costs must be included in the financial proposal. This includes all travel to join duty station in Lilongwe /repatriation travel.

Evaluation

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodologies: Cumulative analysis

When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract should be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated 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

Criteria A: Educational background - a maximum of 10 points

Criteria B: Experience in conducting evaluations of UN agency or any international development agency project, outcome and Country Programme or UNDAF evaluations in the past five years - a maximum of 20 points.

Criteria C: Track record of conducting evaluation of national development projects in any of the following areas:

• Aid and development effectiveness;
• Public sector management capacity development;
• Capacity building for development planning, budgeting, M&E or Results Based Management - a maximum of 40 points.

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70 points in the Technical Evaluation would be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

Financial Criteria weight - a maximum of 30.

The financial score for the financial proposal will be calculated in the following manner:

• Sf 100 x Fm/F, in which Sf is the financial score, Fm is the lowest price and F the price of the proposal under consideration.

(Total Financial Maximum points 100 points)

Total Score

The technical score attained at by each proposal will be used in determining the Total score as follows:

• The weights given to the technical and financial proposals are: T= 0.7, F=0.3;
• The Total score will be calculated by formula: TS St x 0.7 + Sf x 0.3;
• TS - Is the total score of the proposal under consideration;
• St - is technical score of the proposal under consideration;
• Sf - is financial score of the proposal under consideration.

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

http://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_job.cfm?cur_job_id=52810