IATI Data Access Needs Consultancy

UNDP is the knowledge frontier organization for sustainable development in the UN Development System and serves as the integrator for collective action to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNDP’s policy work carried out at HQ, Regional, and Country Office levels, forms a contiguous spectrum of deep local knowledge to cutting-edge global perspectives and advocacy. In this context, UNDP invests in the Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of field-based and global technical expertise across a wide range of knowledge domains and in support of the signature solutions and organizational capabilities envisioned in the Strategic Plan.

The Effectiveness Group assists UNDP and its partners to achieve higher quality development results through an integrated approach that links results-based management and performance monitoring with more effective and new ways of working. It seeks to do so by enabling UNDP and others to be more innovative, and knowledge and data-driven by identifying, testing, learning, sharing, and institutionalizing what works. It acts as a hub on quality UNDP programming, all aspects of results-based management and development performance monitoring and analysis, South-South cooperation, and global effectiveness partnerships.

Drawing on the comparative advantages of UNDP in strengthening country capacities to manage and coordinate development cooperation, the Effectiveness Group within the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support coordinates the Secretariat of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) a coalition of more than ninety members including donor and partner country governments, foundations, multilateral and civil society organizations. IATI seeks to address challenges facing a range of development stakeholders in the sharing and use of information on development cooperation resources. It was launched at the Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (2008) and since September 2013, UNDP has co-hosted the IATI Secretariat in a Consortium together with UNOPS (which leads on financial management and logistics) and UK-based NGO Development Initiatives (which administers the development of the IATI Standard as well as IATI’s website, tools, and technical support). UNDP leads day-to-day management of the Secretariat and outreach and engagement with IATI stakeholders and provides substantive support and policy advice to IATI’s governing bodies, including its annual Members’ Assembly and its Governing Board.

Through the IATI Strategic Plan 2020-25, the Secretariat is tasked with supporting partner country governments to better access and use IATI data. UNDP undertakes this work and often carries out detailed reprocessing work to match the data requested with what can be accessed directly using available IATI tools (Datastore Query Builder; d-portal.org). It does this jointly with the IATI Technical Team through a bespoke data query in the datastore, followed by a time-consuming manual process using Excel. This process is neither sustainable nor scalable, however it has provided invaluable lessons to feed into activities planned as part of the wider technical infrastructure development work of the initiative.

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

As an interim measure while new tools foreseen as part of the recent IATI Technical Stocktake are being designed and built, and in order to carry out more usable research while continuing to support requests received from partner countries, UNDP wishes to engage a consultant to undertake the following deliverables:

The Consultant will build on previous research (to be provided by the Secretariat) to develop a downloadable dataset that meets the needs of partner country data users and present this using Excel.

1. Draft,data

   Building on previous work by the IATI Secretariat and external IATI data users, consult and agree on a the list of IATI data fields to include, how this data will be processed, and how it should be presented in the Excel sheet to meet the needs of partner country government data users. This work should include a meeting to collect inputs from the IATI Secretariat and a meeting with a small group of partner country focal points.

2. Data must include (but not limited to):

   • Financial data aggregated by quarters – budgets, commitments, disbursements, expenditures;

   • Financial data aggregated by reporting organization, reporting organization type, sector, aid type, finance type, implementing organization, etc.

3. Data processing and presentation should be informed by the following previous work/research:

   • Work undertaken by the Secretariat to process data from the new Datastore for use by the governments of Nigeria and Chad;

   • Previous work to process and present IATI data in a downloadable Excel sheet (Examples: Aid on Spreadsheets; COVID-19 data download

4. Final list of data to include and steps to process the data (1 day)

   After receiving inputs on the draft proposal from the IATI Secretariat, revise accordingly, undertaking up to two rounds of revision in producing the final version.

5. Draft interface and data outputs (10 days)

   Develop simple interface to allow the download of pre-defined datasets by recipient country in an Excel worksheet which should:

6. Update dynamically – potentially daily but frequency to be agreed with the IATI Secretariat;

7. Use the new Datastore API unless otherwise agreed with the IATI Secretariat;

8. Produce downloadable data outputs (potentially 4 outputs per recipient country) in Excel for 1) Planned Spending (e.g. Budgets) for activities and transactions and 2) Past Spending (e.g. Commitments, Disbursements, Expenditures) for activities and transactions. The scope of data to be included and the configuration of these outputs should be informed by the need to keep the file size small to ensure sustainability and should be discussed and agreed with the IATI Secretariat;

9. Include all publishers;

10. Be available for all recipient countries, including all IATI partner countries;

11. Include financial data in standard currency (e.g. USD or Euro) to be determined by country in consultation with the IATI Secretariat;

12. Include in interface 1) information on the data included in the output (e.g. data definitions) and any relevant considerations in use of the data (e.g. relevant details on how publishers publish, etc.); 2) information on how the data is processed and any relevant technical details — as agreed with the IATI Secretariat;

13. Include IATI branding in the interface (to be shared by the IATI Secretariat);

14. Be hosted in GitHub Actions (if necessary to increase storage beyond limits allowed in free version, IATI Secretariat will incur any reasonable hosting costs, which must be agreed before they are incurred).

15. Final interface, data outputs, and technical documentation (5 days)

    After receiving inputs on the draft interface and data outputs from the IATI Secretariat, revise accordingly, undertaking up to two rounds of revision in producing the final version. Share clear technical documentation on how the tools were developed and how the data was processed.

This work is anticipated to take no more than 20 working days in total and will be overseen by the UNDP Project Analyst, under the overall supervision of the IATI Secretariat Coordinator, with inputs from the Technical Team. The consultant is expected to provide regular updates on the progress of this work through email or other agreed method.

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity and fairness, by modelling the UN / UNDP’s values and ethical standards;

• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UN/UNDP; and

• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Technical Competencies:

• Excellent client orientation and interpersonal skills and able to communicate effectively at all levels of the organization;

• Capable of working in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment with tight deadlines, managing many tasks simultaneously;

• Able to manage complexity and to handle confidential and sensitive issues in a responsible and mature manner;

• Impeccable analytical skills and able to research, analyse, and draft well and able to present convincingly;

• Exercises the highest level of responsibility; and

• An excellent team player, projecting a positive image and ready to take on a wide range of tasks to create an enabling environment for the supervisor, focusing on results for the client, and responding positively to feedback.

• Proven ability to work independently and under pressure with tight deadlines, managing multiple projects simultaneously (required).

• Demonstrated experience with Python and developing open source tools is required.

Academic qualifications:

• Master’s Degree in International Development, Social Sciences, Knowledge Management, or related area required. 

Experience:

• A minimum of 5 years of professional working experience in international development, particularly related to development finance data required.
• A minimum of 5 years working with national public finance or aid information management systems in developing countries required.
• Previous experience working with governments in developing countries to integrate IATI data into national aid information management systems will be added advantage
• Previous experience processing IATI data will be an added advantage
• Previous experience working with international, multi-stakeholder processes or initiatives required

Language:

• Fluency in written and spoken English is required.

Note: The above documents need to be scanned in one file and uploaded to the online application as one document.

• The financial proposal should specify an all-inclusive daily fee (based on a 7-hour working day – lunch time is not included – and estimated 21.75 days per month).
• The financial proposal must be all-inclusive and take into account various expenses that will be incurred during the contract, including: the daily professional fee; (excluding mission travel); living allowances at the duty station; communications, utilities and consumables; life, health and any other insurance; risks and inconveniences related to work under hardship and hazardous conditions (e.g., personal security needs, etc.), when applicable; and any other relevant expenses related to the performance of services under the contract.

• This consultancy is a home-based assignment, therefore, there is no envisaged travel cost to join duty station/repatriation travel.

• In the case of unforeseeable travel requested by UNDP, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between UNDP and Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed. In general, UNDP should not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources.

• If the Offeror is employed by an organization/company/institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under a Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate at this point, and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Financial Proposal is to be emailed to [email protected] and NOT submitted together with the CV/P11. Please use the financial proposal template which can be downloaded from here Financial Proposal Template. Please do not include your financial proposal in your technical application package. All financial proposlas should be emailed to [email protected] before 11:59pm ET 8 October 2020 with a message Title “Financial IATI Data Access Needs Consultancy”.Only financial proposals from shortlisted candidates will be reviewed.

Evaluation process

Applicants are reviewed based on Required Skills and Experience stated above and based on the technical evaluation criteria outlined below.  Applicants will be evaluated based on cumulative scoring.  When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

• Being 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 where technical criteria weighs 70% and Financial criteria/ Proposal weighs 30%.

Technical evaluation – Total 70% (70 points):

Candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% (49 points) of the maximum obtainable points for the technical criteria (70 points) shall be considered for the financial evaluation.

Financial evaluation – Total 30% (30 points)

The following formula will be used to evaluate financial proposal:

p = y (µ/z), where

p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated

y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal

µ = price of the lowest priced proposal

z = price of the proposal being evaluated

Contract Award

Candidate obtaining the highest combined scores in the combined score of Technical and Financial evaluation will be considered technically qualified and will be offered to enter into contract with UNDP.

Institutional arrangement

• The Consultant will work under the guidance and direct supervision of the Project Analyst under the overall direction of the IATI Secretariat Coordinator.
• The Consultant will be home-based and if working from a time zone other than EST, the Consultant will need to have at least three overlapping daily work hours with the EST time zone for applicable meetings with the IATI Secretariat. 
• The Consultant will be responsible for providing her / his own laptop, and internet access if home-based.

Payment modality

• Payment to the Individual Contractor will be made based on the actual number of days worked, deliverables accepted and upon certification of satisfactory completion by the manager.

• The work week will be based on 35 hours, i.e. on a 7-hour working day, with core hours being between 9h00 and 18h00 daily.
   

Annexes (click on the hyperlink to access the documents):

Annex 1 – UNDP P-11 Form for ICs

Annex 2 – IC Contract Template

Annex 3 – IC General Terms and Conditions

Annex 4 – RLA Template

Annex 5  – Financial Proposal Template should be email to [email protected] before 11:59pm ET 8 October 2020 with a message Title “IATI Data Access Needs Consultancy”.

Any request for clarification must be sent by email to [email protected] 

The UNDP Central Procurement Unit will respond by email and will send written copies of the response, including an explanation of the query without identifying the source of inquiry, to all applicants.