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Local Governance and Social Innovation Platform Consultant

Home Based - May require travel

  • Organization: UNDP - United Nations Development Programme
  • Location: Home Based - May require travel
  • Grade: Consultancy - National Consultant - Locally recruited Contractors Agreement
  • Occupational Groups:
    • Development Cooperation and Sustainable Development Goals
    • International Relations
    • Democratic Governance
    • Public Policy and Administration
    • Civil Society and Local governance
    • Governance and Peacebuilding
    • Innovations for Sustainable Development
  • Closing Date: Closed

Background

Building responsive and accountable institutions at all levels of government is central to ensuring that development is both effective and sustainable. An overarching theme to UNDP’s work to create responsive and accountable institutions throughout the Pacific region and encouraging strong citizen engagement. This increased engagement not only further improves responsiveness, but also ensures citizens feel a sense of ownership of, and commitment to, development decisions affecting their lives. 

For the majority of people in the region, local government remains the most accessible level of government. It is the most direct way for people to access basic services and opportunities to improve their lives, to participate in public processes where decisions affecting their lives are made, and to exercise their rights and obligations. As such, effective local governance is key to inclusive and sustainable development. It is also essential for improving the quality of life of people both in urban and rural settings and in particular in outer islands, reducing inequality across society, and enhancing relations between people and public institutions.

For a region like the Pacifics, relatively small population dispersed over a huge area in the Pacific Ocean makes efficient service delivery a daunting challenge. Environmental, social and economic factors, including limited land access and productive resources, have increased human mobility, including internal migration. Consequently, haphazard urbanization and urban development, and the creation of informal settlements have led to new forms of hardship and scant access to public services[1]. Further, it is not only the physical access and long distances between islands that makes service delivery difficult, generally, weak governance structures and limited human resources capacities, both at the national and the provincial levels, exacerbate the situation.

Although Pacific Islands Countries have had relatively low numbers of COVID-19 cases in comparison to other regions of the world, they have however not been spared the devastating social, economic and political impacts of this global pandemic. Highly linked and connected to the economic impact of the pandemic is the curtailment of the ability of both central and local governance structures to deliver the most basic services to citizens and residents. As the economic crunch has significantly affected the ability of central government to disburse funds to local authorities and for local authorities to collect revenue using the usual revenue streams which include charging for services, service delivery has been significantly crippled. Fiscal and policy measures made at the central level by reserve banks, Ministries of finance and budgets passed by parliament have inevitably limited downflow of resources to the local level.  For the Pacific Islands states efficient service delivery has historically been a daunting task due to the geographical sparseness of the countries and remoteness of the islands. This has been exacerbated by COVID-19 and with further constraints not only on human movement but the availability of resources for basic services.

 

COVID-19 has highlighted the vital role of local governance in people’s daily life. With restricted movement, for example, one has to reply completely on the local and most geographically close space to access the whole range of basic services. Now more than ever, citizens throughout the world and in particular in the pacific island countries, citizens need to have a full range of services within reachable proximity and this highly depend on the capacity of joint efforts of local and central governments to make this possible. There is demand of higher level of government being closer to the population – to deliver essential services to ensure people are safe and secure through this pandemic (clean water, sanitation, housing and citizen security). In addition to the deep increases in expenditures and decreases in local revenues, governments at all levels continue to deal with challenges on fiscal decentralization and power devolution issues. The pandemic also brought additional challenges to the private sector and civil society at the local level which also play a key role in promoting economic development and ensuring transparency and accountability of government action. Local authorities remain the coalface for citizens engagement, service delivery and delivery of SDGs. Subnational systems remain key in crisis recovery bringing together climate change, green economic recovery, and service delivery for human rights for the most marginalized in the spheres/jurisdictions of influence. Unfortunately, in this complex situation, governments, local administrations, private sector, academia, civil society organizations and development agencies lack tools to better understand the systematic challenges that needs to be addressed.

 

SDGs Governance and Social Innovation Platform

Since 2016, UNDP has been assisting national and subnational governments to localize SDGs globally. Local governance is key to achieving the SDGs. Thus, translating SDGs at subnational level is imperative. However, despite the complex and interconnected nature of the SDGs, many of the current development initiatives are still designed to address specific issues linearly. A Social Innovation Platform is designed to integrate and bring together actors and actions for a systemic approach to address SDGs.

UNDP applies an ‘area-based’ social innovation approach to strengthen local governance. The approach helps communities exploring partnerships and investments with public/private sectors, informs policy reforms, and supports UNDP’s role as an ‘integrator’. The Social Innovation Platform has five core dimensions: 1) Deep listening, systems mapping & sense making; 2) Co-creation & prototyping capabilities in 5 interconnected levels (community relations; start-ups; large scale public-private partnerships; public service redesign & new regulation); 3) Portfolio approach; 4) Collaborative management & soft power; and 5) Transformation Capital.

The UNDP Pacific Office will pilot the work on Social Innovation Platforms in Fiji. Within the context of challenges arising from Covid-19 Pandemic, UNDP’s work on Social Innovation Platforms begins with a critical rethink of how to approach development challenges and identifying solutions outside of traditional project cycles, recognizing innovation as an intrinsic design principle to program development.

UNDP is seeking a consultant to support the pilot work on Social Innovation Platforms in Fiji.

 

[1] World Bank, Hardship and Vulnerability in the Pacific, 2014.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of Work/Expected Output

The Local Governance and Social Innovation Platform consultant will be responsible for the timely implementation of the following activities:

  • Support the identification of a local administrative area in Fiji to pilot the work based on Local Governance analysis by UNDP and other sources.

  • Facilitate engagement and communication with relevant authorities and community leaders at all levels

  • Collect data and information and conducting interviews, mappings and interpretation

  • Facilitation on coordination, dialogue, and learning among actors (bureaucrats and practitioners) in each key sector.

  • Maintaining partnerships with relevant stakeholders at subnational level, including but not limited to local government, private sector, philanthropy, academics, the media, youth, PwD, and women/girls.

  • Support the coordination of activities and events at subnational level to ensure the program delivery, such as arranging meeting/workshops/focus group discussions and facilitating consultants to conduct analysis.

  • Support effective planning, budgeting, implementation, and monitoring of project performance, and the preparation of high quality, timely, and results oriented progress reports.

  • Support the compilation of key sources of information and best practices for thematic issues and facilitate access to this information by relevant counterparts.

  • Development of reports and lessons learnt reports

 

Expected Outputs and deliverables

Deliverables

No. of days

Inception Report Stakeholder

      3

Local Governance Stakeholder mapping and engagement report

      5

Data collection tools and report on deep listening and ethnographic interviews/discussions with communities and stakeholders in selected area

     17

Paper/Report on proposed local level actions -SIPs with strong SDGs integration/portfolio approaches and multi-stakeholder process

      5

Inception report on implementation of selected SIPs

     10

Mid-term report on implementation of selected SIPs

     10

Final report on implementation of selected SIPs

     10

TOTAL

     60 days

Institutional Arrangement

  • The Consultant will be required to work closely with the Effective Governance Deputy Team Leader, and the EG Team Leader.

  • All reports and documents relating to the assignment will be submitted to the UNDP Pacific Office based in Fiji.

  • In undertaking the assignment, UNDP will provide some logistical support to the consultant with the provision of relevant documents and facilitating virtual meetings and interviews.

Duration of the Work

  • The consultant will spend up to 60 working days between October 2021 to June 2022

 

Duty Station

  • Home based/UNDP Office.

  • Report to UNDP Pacific Office for Effective Governance in Fiji

Competencies

Functional Competencies:

  • Ability to organize tasks independently and assume responsibility;
  • Ability to capture, develop, share and effectively use information and knowledge;
  • Strong oral and written communication skills;
  • Excellent drafting, reporting and presentation skills;
  • Results driven, ability to work under pressure and to meet required deadlines;
  • Openness to change and ability to receive/integrate feedback;
  • Proven ability to work in a team, develop synergies and establish effective working relations within the practice teams, other counterparts (as required, e.g. donors and CSOs).

Required Skills and Experience

Educational Qualifications:

  • A Master’s degree level in political sciences, anthropology, international relations, Governance, law, social sciences, public administration, public management or in an equivalent area.

Experience:

  • At least 10 years’ professional work experience relating to the area of local governance systems and institutions strengthening and local development; 
  • At least 5 years’ professional work experience in governance work and basic service delivery;
  • Experience in drafting and writing policy, programmes, or substantive knowledge products in the areas of local governance, governance and local development;
  • At least 5 year’s work or research experience on governance, planning, and development an asset; 
  • Experience working with UNDP an asset.

Language skills:

  • Excellent writing, editing, and oral communication skills in English;

Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments

Consultant must send a financial proposal based on Lump Sum Amount. The total amount quoted shall be all-inclusive and include all costs components required to perform the deliverables identified in the TOR, including professional fee, travel costs, living allowance (if any work is to be done outside the IC´s duty station) and any other applicable cost to be incurred by the IC in completing the assignment. The contract price will be fixed output-based price regardless of extension of the herein specified duration. Payments will be done upon completion of the deliverables/outputs and as per below percentages:

NO

Deliverables

% of Total Contract Amount

Deliverable 1

Inception Report Stakeholder

5 %

Deliverable 2

Local Governance Stakeholder mapping and engagement report

8 %

Deliverable 3

Data collection tools and report on deep listening and ethnographic interviews/discussions with communities and stakeholders in selected area

30 %

 

Deliverable 4

Paper/Report on proposed local level actions -SIPs with strong SDGs integration/portfolio approaches and multi-stakeholder process

8 %

Deliverable 5

Inception report on implementation of selected SIPs

16 %

Deliverable 6

Mid-term report on implementation of selected SIPs

16 %

Deliverable 7

Final report on implementation of selected SIPs

17 %

 

Evaluation Method and Criteria

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

Cumulative analysis

The award of the contract shall be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as a) responsive/compliant/acceptable; and b) having received the highest score out of set of weighted technical criteria (70%). and financial criteria (30%). Financial score shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal being evaluated and the lowest priced proposal received by UNDP for the assignment.

 

Technical Criteria for Evaluation (Maximum 70 points)

Technical Evaluation

Points

  • A Master’s degree level in political sciences, anthropology, international relations, Governance, law, social sciences, public administration, public management or in an equivalent area.

 

10%

  • At least 10 years’ professional work experience relating to the area of local governance systems and institutions strengthening and local development. 

 

30%

  • Experience in drafting and writing policy, programmes, or substantive knowledge products in the areas of local governance, governance and local development.

 

15%

  • At least 5 year’s work or research experience on governance, planning, and development an asset. 

 

15%

Financial evaluation (30%)

30%

 

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points (70% of the total technical points) would be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

Documentation required

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications. Please group them into one (1) single PDF document as the application only allows to upload maximum one document:

  • Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided in Annex II.

  • Personal CV, 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.

  • Technical proposal, including a) a brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment

  • Financial proposal in FJD, as per template provided in Annex II.

     

Note: Successful individual will be required to provide proof of medical insurance coverage before commencement of contract for the duration of the assignment.

Incomplete, joint proposals and proposals sent to the wrong mailing address will not be accepted and only candidates for whom there is further interest will be contacted. Individuals interested in this consultancy should apply and will be reviewed based on their own individual capacity. The successful individual may sign an Individual Contract with UNDP or request his/her employer to sign a Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA) on their behalf by indicating this in the Offerors letter to Confirming Interest and Availability using Annex II.

Annexes

  • Annex I - Individual IC General Terms and Conditions

  • Annex II – Offeror’s Letter to UNDP Confirming Interest and Availability for the Individual IC, including Financial Proposal Template

All required templates are available on the UNDP Procurement website: www.pacific.undp.org.

 

Proposal Submission

  • All applications must be clearly marked with the title of the consultancy (Local Governance and Social Innovation Platform consultant) with reference (PN/FJI/096/21) and submitted via UN Job shop by 27 October 2021.

  • Note: UNDP Jobs only supports single document upload hence ensure that the proposal is consolidated and submitted as one single document.

  • For further information concerning this Terms of Reference, please contact UNDP Pacific Office by email: procurement.fj@undp.org.  

Women applicants are encouraged to apply

This vacancy is now closed.
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