Project Evaluator

HiiL is looking for a consultant, or team of consultants, with the following experience and capacity:

• Senior justice sector consultant or development professional- minimum of 10 years experience;

• Demonstrated experience in conducting research and evaluations with quantitative and qualitative components;

• Advanced university degree in law, development, international relations, social sciences, or related field of study;

• Expertise in access to justice programmes in Africa required: ideally with experience in Uganda

• Comfortable working with a broad range of people from different backgrounds and cultures;

• Strong analytical, interpersonal and reporting skills;

• Demonstrated ability to produce high quality data;

• Fluency in English

Introduction

These are the Terms of Reference for the final project evaluation of the Uganda Justice Innovation Programme with grant-ID 51180135.

Programme Background

HiiL has been active in Uganda since 2015. In addition to our headquarters in The Hague with 39 international staff, we have a local office in Kampala with three local staff members (in October 2020).

In partnership with the Swedish Embassy in Uganda, HiiL has been running the Uganda Justice Innovation Programme since 2017 and activities will end on 31 December 2020. The programme was designed to ensure that more people in Uganda, in particular the most vulnerable, are empowered to resolve their most pressing justice problems more fairly and effectively. Together with our partners, we work to increase capacity of the justice system and make it more open, inclusive and innovative. The programme followed on from a Justice Needs and Satisfaction survey that was conducted in 2015 and aimed to address some of those justice needs.

Programme Rationale

At the time of development the rationale behind the programme is summarised below. Lessons have been learnt along the way and some of that rationale will have changed and will need to be incorporated into the evaluation.

Better justice delivery is organised through collecting and sharing data from the experiences of the users of the justice system. This data creates more awareness of the most pressing justice needs, the quality and costs of access to justice amongst the users of justice, civil society organisations, publicly funded justice delivery organisations, academia, the different arms of government, and donors, on the basis of which they can advocate, prioritize, and work to improve services and procedures through evidence-based learning. Additionally by capturing best practices on what works on family justice issues, this can be used by practitioners to improve on the delivery of justice.

Each country has (social) entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is an enabler, a driver and an empowering tool for sustainable development. The power of entrepreneurship can also be harnessed to increase access to justice. The most promising justice entrepreneurs are selected to address problems identified in the justice needs survey and accelerated to increase their impact, based on sustainable funding models and using business acceleration methods. This will increase access to justice that is locally owned, embedded, and sustainably funded.

Finally traditional rule of law building activities, such as building capacity and infrastructure, do not suffice. Innovative approaches that start from citizen’s needs and take the political dimension of rule of law building into account are essential. This requires supporting agents of sustainable change at all levels, including justice reformers at the highest political level who experience strong resistance and challenges in improving the justice system. Through providing peer support and advice to justice leaders at the highest political level, they develop stronger leadership knowledge, skills, attitudes, personalities and networks, which positions them to innovate, develop and maintain effective justice systems.

The majority of the programme has taken place in Kampala, though a part of the work has taken place in other areas (Arua, Mbarara, Soroti, Kibaale district) as well. The original logframe is attached.

Programme Objectives

The main objectives of the programme can be summarised as follows.

• Increased access by justice sector stakeholders in Uganda to information on justice needs and satisfaction within Uganda

• Increased access for people in Uganda to innovative justice services or products.

• Increased dialogue at the highest level of the Ugandan justice system on people centred justice.

The expected outcomes per component of the project can be found in the logframe document attached with this ToR.

Evaluation purpose and intended use

Objective

The primary aim is to assist HiiL management, stakeholders, and the donor (Sida) to understand the overall project performance towards achieving its objectives, and to provide learning points from experiences of the project. Specifically, the evaluation aims to;

• Establish the extent to which the programme outcomes outlined in the logframe and project documents have been achieved.

• learn the extent to which the programme objective, activities and design are responding to the needs of the different target groups.

• improve the development and execution of future programmes

• improve accountability within HiiL through transparency of the level of achievement of the programme objectives

How will the evaluation be used and by whom?

The primary users will be the Management Team of HiiL, the Product Group Directors and local office staff in Kampala to make adjustments and improvements to the design and implementation of future programmes.

HiiL will also use the evaluation to understand how the programme activities fit within the local context of Uganda and align with the national action plans of the Ugandan justice sector.

The evaluation will be shared with SIDA, the Swedish Embassy in Kampala, to contribute to knowledge building in justice innovation programmes. The evaluation may also be shared with the Justice Law and Order Sector Secretariat and Leadership Committee and the Dutch Embassy in Kampala.

Evaluation Scope

The evaluation is based on the project logframe and proposal. The evaluation covers the period of 2017-2020 and focuses on the processes, results at various levels, as well as connections and relations between results. It will concern activities conducted during the SIDA programme in Uganda only.

The evaluation shall conform to OECD DAC criteria for evaluations and focus on the following criteria:

Relevance

• To what extent has the project responded to access to justice needs at the person level?

• To what extent were the activities aligned with the strategic plans and objectives of the Uganda Justice Law and Order Sector?

• How effective was the coordination and interaction with internal and external stakeholders?

• Internal: between the various departments and teams, between central and local office

• External: Ugandan justice sector, in particular JLOS Secretariat and JLOS Leadership Committee, innovators, local civil society organisations working on justice innovation

• To what extent were local stakeholders participating in project planning, implementation and follow up?

• To what extent was the project able to adapt and provide appropriate responses and implementation strategies to context changes, changes in needs, and the priorities of the various target groups?

• To what extent were the project’s objectives consistent with the priorities and the needs of vulnerable persons and how appropriate were the implementation strategies adopted?

Coherence

• How well did the activities fit in the Ugandan context?

• To what extent were the activities compatible with other justice innovation programmes/activities in Uganda?

Effectiveness

• To what extent were programme activities implemented?

• To what extent did the programme achieve the short-term, intermediate and long-term objectives (outcomes) for the targeted groups?

• To what extent were the results needed with regards to the overall objective of the programme?

• Which factors hindered or contributed to the achievement of the programme objectives?

• To what extent did the programme benefit vulnerable groups and people living in rural areas?

• To what extent is the frequency and depth of monitoring data gathered sufficient to make informed assessments on the achievement of results?

Efficiency

• To what extent were project results efficiently delivered in regard to the implementation strategies that were used, the use of resources – funds, equipment, time etc

Sustainability

• How sustainable have the outcomes been over the project period?

• To what extent were sustainability mechanisms established by the project including strengthening of justice delivery mechanisms in Uganda?

• To what extent do the sustainable mechanisms link with existing access to justice programmes, government strategies and priorities in Uganda?

Impact

• To what extent has the project contributed to wider changes such as contribution to the justice innovation ecosystem, contribution to policy or justice sector priorities or contribution to increased use of justice data and, in that way, has the programme contributed to making justice more accessible in Uganda?

• Were there positive or negative unintended outcomes as a result of the programme?

Lessons and best practices learned from the project?

• What has worked and not worked among the strategies used to deliver the project?

• What do we learn from the interventions implemented?

Methodology

The proposed evaluation shall build on existing theories and reports conducted previously. Due to the Covid 19 pandemic, travel to the region will not be possible. The evaluation will therefore be done by an international consultant at distance, who is expected to gather data virtually and/or liaise with a local data collection company in Uganda for primary data collection. The evaluation is expected to use a gender sensitive approach/methodology, methods, tools and data analysis techniques.

The design of the evaluation should include the following elements but HiiL remains open to suggestions:

1. Desk research. A desk review will be conducted to assess the activities, processes and results of the programme. It shall be based on collected impact data, outcome monitoring, existing reports, training materials, innovators reports, feedback from local partners.

2. Online interviews with key stakeholders. These informative interviews with internal and external stakeholders feed into the evaluation questions, including the level of coordination and value add of the project to the already existing justice innovation initiatives in Uganda, as well as assessing the sustainability of the programme outcomes. Examples of external stakeholders include: representatives of the JLOS Secretariat and the JLOS Leadership Committee, Uganda Association of Women Lawyers (FIDA), Innovation Village, LAPSNET, Uganda Law Society, Law Development Centre innovators, mentors from the Accelerator programme, those who have used the services from the entrepreneurs, Office of the Chief Justice and office of the Permanent Secretary to the Judiciary. Examples of internal stakeholders: local staff in Uganda, Directors of Product Groups (central office), Project Management (central office), MEL Specialist (central office), CEO (central office), Project Group members (central office).

Implementation

Deliverables

• An inception report with a maximum of 10 pages, with an evaluation matrix and data collection tools in the annexes. These shall be approved by HiiL before the data collection. The report will be submitted in English.

• Monthly briefings with the Steering Committee at HiiL via Google Meet, including a debrief of the initial findings.

• A draft evaluation report for review by HiiL of maximum 30 pages excluding annexes in English.

• A Final Report of maximum 30 pages excluding annexes in English

• A presentation in PowerPoint of maximum 25 slides representing the report including graphs and tables

• Presentation of the final report (remote, maximum 2.5 hours) to HiiL

• Databases with the relevant quantitative (Excel) and qualitative (transcriptions) data and analyses

Timeline

Start date: 1 December 2020

Inception report: 15 December 2020

Evaluation start: 1 January 2021

Draft report: 1 March 2021

Final report: 31 March 2021

Logistical support

A Steering Committee composed of Project Management and MEL Specialist will coordinate the process of the evaluation.

HiiL will provide the following support to the evaluation team:

• Transmission of background materials and information (project proposal, donor reports, logframe, training materials, innovators impact data, meeting notes etc.)

• Introduction to key stakeholders

• Meeting arrangements with internal and external stakeholders if requested

The focal point of contact is the MEL Specialist at HiiL, who is supported by the Steering Committee. The local office in Uganda will provide additional support if required**