International Consultant – To undertake a terminal evaluation of the Governance and Democratic Participation Programme (GDPP)

The Government of Ethiopia has over the last two decades has shown great commitment to implement policies and programmes aimed at stimulating a rapid transformational development reform agenda largely by prioritizing investments to build and operate social and economic infrastructure, improving capacities within government to broaden access to basic social services such as education, health and water and sanitation, and prioritizing public investments in pro-poor economic sectors such as agriculture and food security. On top of the economic and social transformation, strides have also been made in the governance landscape such as ratifying a largely progressive constitution, efforts to address inequalities, policies that promote gender equality, and establishment of democratic institutions.
That policy orientation and commitment have resulted in significant improvements in Ethiopia’s human development indicators. In view of the county’s context and bold development transformational vision, it has been found important to make deliberate efforts to further broaden space for greater citizen engagement and participation in the development process to create a sense of shared prosperity, strengthen social cohesion and sustain peace and stability.
Despite these positive developments, the country still faced several setbacks. Prior to 2018, the country had been characterized by instability and growing dissatisfaction of large groups of the population, primarily the youth. Widespread and protracted public protests and growing street and youth dissatisfaction forced a series of reforms to be launched under PM Haliemariam Desalegn. Nevertheless, that growing dissatisfaction and popular demands for change and reform ultimately resulted in a change in government in February 2018. Therefore 2018 marked a pivotal year in the history of Ethiopia which resulted in the introduction of a wide-ranging transformational reform agenda across the political, democracy and socio-economic landscape.
With the election of Dr. Abiy Ahmed as the new PM by the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition, launched a raft of Proclamations accompanied by promising announcements including opening the political space, freeing political dissidents and engage in comprehensive institutional reforms of the public sector and a programme of privatization of public enterprises. In his inaugural speech, the new PM highlighted the need for what he termed as ‘an inclusive political process’ with the Opposition playing a more active role. The PM urged all Ethiopians to put their differences aside as they worked together to forge a solid democratization process. He identified civil rights and freedom of movement and organization, the right to political participation, representation and the right to freedom of expression as key in this process. He also reaffirmed his government’s commitment to ensure the full participation of women in public life and his personal commitment to advancing the equality agenda.
However, what has emerged recently is that the country has entered into a serious period of political instability and armed conflicts in various regions of the country. Most notably the conflicts in the Tigray, Amhara, and Afar Regions following the Law Enforcement Operation of the Government in the Tigray region in November 2020 have resulted in the displacement of millions of people, and have also created a humanitarian, social and economic crisis. However, despite these conflicts and unrest in various parts of the country, a national election that was judged to be fair and peaceful resulted in the highest turnout of voters during 2021.
The GoE-UNDP Governance and Democratic Participation Programme (GDPP), a five-year multi-stakeholder’s programme (June 2017 to December 2021), has as the main objective of supporting the country sustain efforts towards enhancing institutional capacities and frameworks for strengthening good governance and deepening democratic participation in accordance with the Constitution and International Human Rights Conventions to which Ethiopia is a signatory. Progress in these areas is critical and believed to enable the country to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP II).

The programme was designed based on the foundations and lessons learned from the former Democratic Participation Programme (DIP). That programme sought to support initiatives aimed at addressing governance bottlenecks, issues of inclusivity, transparency, and accountability, and to nurture the development of a more responsive system of governance and peaceful coexistence. The launch of GDPP in 2017 was against a very different backdrop where there were significant risks attached to a governance programme being launched at a time where the enabling environment was fairly restricted. But the changes ushered in 2018 demonstrate that provision of democratic governance support needs to be adaptive to changes in the political landscape in order to capitalize on emerging opportunities.

GDPP was designed to deliver on the following five inter-related and complementary outputs:

1) Political processes of federal and regional state legislative bodies are more inclusive and effectively deliver on their constitutional mandates;

2) Federal and regional state systems of governance are more accountable, transparent and are delivering public services in more inclusive and responsive ways;

3) Citizens are more empowered to voice their concerns and actively participate in decision-making processes at all levels of the development, governance and political processes and systems;

4) Systems and mechanisms for promoting social cohesion, managing diversity, preventing and managing conflicts, fostering dialogues and building peace are further strengthened at national and sub-national levels; and

5) Access to justice enhanced and human rights promoted and protected across Ethiopia.

The implementation of the GDPP commenced in July 2017 based on the initial visioning and workplan of the programme. The programme was implemented through the National Execution (NEX) modality supporting x11 Implementing Partners towards enhancing the democratization process and good governance in the country. A large number of GDPP Implementing Partners was unprecedented. The Ministry of Finance provides the overall Government oversight of the Programme. In order to reflect the dramatic shifts in the policy priorities within the democratic governance landscape in 2018, prompted the need to refocus GDPP to reflect the changed context and resulted in the development of the GDPP Repositioning Paper. The Repositioning Paper, which was tabled and approved by the GDPP Programme Management Board in December 2018. The need for the Repositioning was to ensure that GDPP remained relevant and reflective of the changed policy priorities and to ensure identified activities addressed the aspirations of the new PM and the transformational reform agenda. The GDPP Results Framework was also reviewed and resulted in an increase in the number of sub-outputs necessary to achieve the high-level outputs and outcomes. The repositioning of the Programme in 2018/2019 saw GDPP take actions to target the support towards helping to create an enabling environment for citizens and media engagement in the political and governance reforms. The results yielded with the support of the programme included the development of the civic engagement policy framework, the new media law, and also approval of the Inter-Governmental Relations Policy. As a standard operating procedure, UNDP ensures that an external independent mid-term evaluation exercise is conducted to assess the progress of its projects/programmes. The Mid Term Review enables a formal opportunity to assess the overall progress of a programme, results achieved and also identifies any emerging issues revealed during implementation that may require modifications/adjustments to the Programme in the remaining cycle. That external mid-term review of the programme was undertaken in 2020 to assess if GDPP remained relevant and responsive to the needs of the country. The GDPP Mid-Term Review revealed that the programme remains relevant with the value addition to enhance democratic transformation and political participation. GDPP was affirmed as a strong enabling platform for supporting the realization of the transformational democratization agenda through the various achievements recorded by the participating Democratic Institutions. GDPP was also found to have enabled the democratic and accountability institutions to strengthen their mandate through direct and clear investments associated with institutional and human capacity development. The Review also revealed that the new governance arrangements and policy priorities have been reinforced including an increased emphasis on Human Rights, Rule of Law, accountability, peace, and stability.

The MTR findings and recommendations were presented and endorsed by the GDPP Programme Management Board (PMB) in November 2020. The Mid-Term Review (MTR) also provided valuable evidence and suggestions about how to enhance the longer-term impact of the Programmme and the value of allowing more time for the programmatic interventions to mature and thus be capable of providing solid evidence that GDPP support was yielding positive results. The implication was that to end GDPP as scheduled in December 2021 would be a lost opportunity in the context of institutional development within the democratic governance sector.
Among the ten recommendations contained in the MTR together with the Management Responses (MRs) presented and discussed at the GDPP Programme Management Board (PMB) held in November 2020 saw the Board focustheir attention on the need to ‘revisit the thematic focus and institutional scope of the GDPP’. As a result of the Board discussions the PMB instructed UNDP to prepare an Options Paper that would look the issues associated with the proposed narrowing down of the thematic focus and institutional scope of GDPP as the means to better maximize results.

That Options Paper was presented and discussed in the June 2021 PMB meeting. The Board decision was that the institutional scope and thematic focus of GDPP should be narrowed and that would result in the number of Implementing Partners being reduced from 11 to 6. Similarly, the thematic focus of the programme would be narrowed by focusing on themes including social cohesion & reconciliation; stronger institutions of representation (legislatures); more effective, efficient, transparent & inclusive public administration; ethics & integrity; and civic & media space. The proposed revised thematic focus would be further discussed and analyzed during the design phase of a new iteration of democratic governance support. The Board agreed that a six-month cost extension bridging period (January – June 2022) would be appropriate to enable the focus on working with x6 Implementing Partners that would include: House of People’s Representatives (HoPR); House of Federation (HoF); Ethiopia Human Rights Commission (EHRC); Federal Ethics & Anti-Corruption Commission (FEACC); Ethiopia Media Authority (EMA); Ethiopian Institute for Ombudsman (EIO). This would enable the Implementing Partners (IPs) to complete activities started in 2021 but would also enable the IPs to be fully involved with the development of the new iteration of democratic governance support which would go live in July 2022.
Therefore, this independent terminal evaluation of the Programme will also help to inform the likely design and content of the new iteration of democratic governance support capitalizing on the achievements, lessons and best practices of GDPP.

SCOPE OF THE WORK AND OBJECTIVES

The scope of work that an International Consultant who will be required to team up with other two national consultants to undertake the Final Evaluation of GDPP, and also the objectives/results that he/she is expected to achieve are as stipulated below.

This Terminal Evaluation will cover the whole implementation period of the Programme (from July 2017 to December 2021). The Evaluation will cover all the eleven Implementing Partners with field visits1 to the selected IPs (at least 50%) by prioritizing IPs that have regional branches or regional counterparts. For selecting the sample IPs that will be visited during field data collection, the complexity of operations, level of achievements of targets, criticality of the role/mandate of the IP towards the reform process and volume of interventions are considered as criteria for stratification.

Assessment of all the five outputs, and corresponding sub-outputs as well as indications/contributions towards the achievement of intended outcomes of the Programme will be in the scope of the terminal Evaluation. The Evaluation will emphasize the operational/implementation mechanisms and arrangements practiced at the programme level and in the respective Implementing Partners (IPs) and their relevance, effectiveness & efficiency, perceptions towards the programme/how UNDP operates, the ownership/commitment level by the IPs, etc. The analyses in the Evaluation need to be gender-focused/sensitive with sex disaggregation of results to clearly reflect on different factors affecting or affected by gender dynamics. In addition, the evidence of efforts to enhance social inclusion by for example engagement with citizens or Civil Society will need to be brought out clearly in the Evaluation.

This Terminal Evaluation will have the specific objectives of:

• Review validity of programme assumptions and the theory of change of the Programme to map the results pathways and also assess cause-effect relationships for highlighting, based on lessons learned, how should the theory of change and results’ pathways of a second programme cycle of GDPP be defined.
• Assess the design, relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability of the programme interventions.
• Identify implementation issues and challenges/bottlenecks which constrain Programme and financial delivery.
• Provide evidence of whether the Programme has been able to accomplish the intended results/outputs and identify attributed factors.
• Identify lessons learned, best practices & recommendations, and document knowledge basis from the programme design & implementation, based on evidence and reliable information, so as to improve a design, scope, and implementation strategies/arrangements of a new iteration of democratic governance support which will be formulated in early 2022.
• Identify strengths and weaknesses of the Programme in the application of rights-based approaches, gender mainstreaming and social inclusion plus identify recommendations to be applied in any future iteration of democratic governance support.
• Review risk assessment & mitigation measures are taken for ensuring progress on implementing the Programme’s interventions. Also, comment on their effectiveness and identify lessons learned about the adaptability/flexibility exhibited by the Programme.

EVALUATION CRITERIA AND QUESTIONS

The Evaluation is expected to apply the internationally accepted evaluation criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability. It will also assess adaptability, responsiveness, coherence and women equality, and gender mainstreaming. Aligning to the evaluation criteria, the Evaluation may need to include and address the following key evaluation questions, among others:

Relevance:

• To what extent the objectives and operations of the GDPP programme were consistent with the need of beneficiaries of the partner democratic intuitions, the need of implementing partners, current country needs, and donors’ policies and expectations?
• To what extent were the interventions aligned with the needs of other key stakeholders, particularly government and other actors in the sectors relevant to governance, democratic participation, and transparency?
• Were the approaches and strategies/arrangements used relevant to achieve intended sub-outputs, outputs, and outcomes of the programme/intervention? To what extent the thematic focus and institutional scope of the Programme were appropriate to achieve intended results?
• To what extent did the interventions respond to the needs of vulnerable groups and women?
• To what extent the Programme was aligned to the SDGs, GTP II, Home-grown Economic Reform Programme, Ten Years Development Perspective Plan, UNDAF (now superseded by the UNSDCF but the Evaluation will focus on the UNDAF), the New Horizon of Hope in Africa, and other relevant national policies?
• To what extent were the Programme’s interventions coherent with UNDP’s policies, strategies, and normative guidance?
• To what extent were the key stakeholders of the Programme, including downstream stakeholders, engaged in the design, implementation and monitoring of the Programme? To what extent is the national ownership and leadership on the planning, implementation, and monitoring of the Programme?
• Did the assumptions and the Theory of Change hold true? If not, why?

Effectiveness:

• To what extent did this Programme achieve its planned sub-outputs, outputs, immediate outcomes, and objectives?
• What were the main expected and unexpected results of the Programme?
• To what extent did the strategic revision for repositioning of the Programme led to achievement (or lack of achievement) of the sub-outputs, outputs, and objectives of the Programme?
• What were the major factors influenced the implementation and operations of the Programme for achievement or non-achievement of results? What was the quality of implementation of the Programme?
• What were the unintended results of the changes in the political landscape and the reforms underway in the country to the programme implementation and achievement of results?
• What are lessons learned and good practices to take up for the future in designing and implementing a new second phase of the Programme?

Efficiency:

• Did the Project’s implementation mechanisms -including institutional arrangements, partnership, support services, etc., efficiently permit utilization of resources and also delivery of services and achievement of results in a timely manner?
• Were the programme resources efficiently used? Was the cost per output/sub-output used in the most cost-effective way or were there areas where savings ought to be made to reduce costs?
• To what extent were project management practices and tools adequate to timely and effectively implement the programme?
• Are project resources adequate and available on time to implement the activities as planned?

Impact:

• What were the long-term effects/outcomes of the programme on the target beneficiaries/institutions and citizens? To what extent were the programme objectives met? What are indications of success?
• Did the interventions of the programme bring about any unintended (both negative or positive) effects on the target beneficiaries/institutions, citizens and/or operational environment?
• What were the gender-specific impacts, especially regarding women’s empowerment?
• How could the programme be improved in its design, implementation and monitoring to have a long-term effect/impact?

Sustainability:

• To what extent are the results and positive changes from the programme implementation up to this point in time likely to continue after the end of the current phase of the programme?
• To what extent did the shift in the governance landscape and political arena of the country would affect the continuity and sustainability of results achieved?
• To what extent were the implementing partners showed ownership of the programme, results, and lessons learned and their ability to continue with the programme with limited or without intervention from UNDP?
• To what extent does the programme establish and maintain effective partnerships with development partners, government, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), etc.?
• To what extent were the participation and ownership of the programme by the IPs and other key stakeholders for ensuring the sustainability of achieved results & lessons learned after the end of the current programme?

Gender:

• To what extent have gender considerations mainstreamed and had been addressed in the design, implementation, and monitoring of the project?
• Is the gender marker data assigned to this project representative of reality?
• To what extent has the project promoted positive changes in women participation in forest conservation and development activities? To what extent women benefitted from this project?

Human rights:

• To what extent have poor, indigenous and physically challenged, women and other disadvantaged & marginalized groups benefited from the work of this program?

The above-listed evaluation questions are not to be considered as exhaustive to address the evaluation purpose and objectives in a comprehensive manner. So, the evaluation questions will be further discussed and elaborated in collaboration with the evaluation team, stakeholders (implementing partners) and UNDP during the inception phase to refine and accept.

METHODOLOGY

The methodology for this Terminal Evaluation will be designed by the selected evaluation team/consultant in consultation with UNDP during the inception phase. However, the Terminal Evaluation team is expected to follow a participatory and consultative approach ensuring close engagement with the Project Team, government counterparts/Implementing Partners, the UNDP Country Office(s), and other stakeholders.
The methodology to be designed by the Evaluation Team will include but is not limited to the following:

• Participatory mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) of data gathering and analysis.
• The Evaluation Team may also need to triangulate information from different sources and methods so as to ensure reliability and validity of data and findings.
• In the inception phase, the selected Evaluation Team will develop an elaborated evaluation matrix that clearly links the evaluation questions with data sources and collection methods. The proposed methods for data collection and analysis should be discussed and agreed upon by UNDP and other stakeholders before their application throughout the evaluation processes.

The mixed methods that will be applied for the evaluation should ensure that women and men from different stakeholders’ groups participate and that their different voices are heard and used. Furthermore, the proposed methods should also clearly outline how Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) principles have been integrated and addressed in the design, planning and implementation, as well as what results have been achieved so far.
The identified evaluation team also needs to expand clearly and in detail the criteria and approach to be used to select representative sample Implementing Partners and stakeholders that will be consulted for data collection at regional and branch offices levels.
Generally, the quantitative and qualitative data to be used for this terminal evaluation will be collected from both secondary and primary sources. The desk level review of available relevant documents at different levels will be the main source of secondary data and information for the evaluation. The Evaluation Team during the desk level review should be able to develop the Indicators’ Summary Matrix as the key deliverable of the desk review.
The primary data from representative sample institutions and individuals will be collected through qualitative and quantitative interviews. The data generated through qualitative and quantitative interviews with the help of customized qualitative interview tools and structured quantitative survey questionnaires will be the sources of primary data. The focus group discussions and key informant interviews/individual in-depth interviews that will be conducted with knowledgeable informants from the Implementing Institutions (including regional counterparts or branch offices), UNDP, Development Partners (DPs), and other stakeholders are the prime qualitative methods to be employed for primary qualitative data collection. The structured quantitative survey that will be carried out with randomly sampled individuals from the Implementing Institutions and/or beneficiaries is the quantitative tool to be used for primary quantitative data gathering. The feasibility of conducting a mini-structured quantitative survey will be discussed and agreed upon during the Inception Phase.
It is critical to include respondent end-users in order to ensure effective triangulation of data and receive feedback from citizens/users of the services on their quality, adaptability, responsiveness and on how they are advancing a normative agenda in the country. The evaluation team’s own observation with the help of observation checklists will also complement the data that will be collected through focus group discussions and key informant interviews/individual in-depth interviews, and also be used for data triangulation. In fact, the evaluation team is expected to propose, during the inception phase, how many qualitative interviews of each type will be conducted by considering the reliability and validity of findings, and also cost and time requirements.
The evaluators should also follow participatory and consultative approaches throughout the evaluation processes so as to ensure active engagement of the Evaluation Manager/Focal Person, Programme Manager, Democratic Governance & Peacebuilding (DGP) Unit, Implementing Partners, Development Partners, Programme’s beneficiaries, and other key stakeholders. The Terminal Evaluation will be conducted in accordance with the UNDP evaluation guidelines, norms and policies/procedures.
The evaluation team will be responsible for revising the approach as necessary and presenting its methodological proposal as part of the inception report. A hybrid approach that combines both physical and virtual meetings for consultations and interviews could be considered during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Due to the COVID-19 situation, the international consultant is expected to work from home/virtually through phone or virtual communication platforms and send out questionnaires, whereas the local consultants will engage in fieldwork and field-level data collection in regional and branch offices. The International consultant will serve as the overall Team leader for the Terminal Evaluation.

EXPECTED OUTPUTS AND DELIVERABLES

The contractor of the assignment is expected to achieve the below outputs and specific deliverables – from the 2nd week of signing the contract within 49 days of contract signing. The main outputs and deliverables of the assignment are such as evaluation inception report, data collection & analysis, debriefing on preliminary findings or aid-memoir, validation workshop, draft evaluation report, final evaluation report, and evaluation briefs & other knowledge products. The whole assignment is expected to be completed within two months period. The main tasks, outputs/deliverables with responsible body/ies, and tentative milestones are as detailed in the table:

Deliverables 1: Inception Phase (inception meetings; designing evaluation (methodology, evaluation matrix, data collection instruments); preparation of inception report – with detailed action-plan for the evaluation; and also review and endorsement of inception report/package)- Timeline to be completed – One Week. 

Deliverables 2: Conducting a terminal evaluation (data collection, analysis, triangulation, and draft report preparation) – Three Weeks. 

Deliverables 3: Submission of draft Evaluation Report and review of the draft report and provide comments – Two Weeks. 

Deliverables 4: Validation workshop and addressing comments and producing final Draft Evaluation Report – One Week.

Deliverables 5: Submitting final draft report which incorporates feedback provided by client/UNDP – One Week.

Acceptance of deliverable mentioned hereafter are subject to UNDP’s approval. 

INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS / REPORTING RELATIONSHIPS

In addition to the specific tasks and outputs that the International Consultant is responsible for, he/she will be the team leader of the evaluation with the additional responsibility to coordinating and providing guidance to the other two seasoned national consultants as well as liaising with the evaluation team with the client/UNDP throughout the evaluation process.

The International Consultant will routinely report to the GDPP Programme Manager (PM) and the Evaluation Focal Person to track progress and get any administrative and technical assistance throughout the evaluation process. The PM and Evaluation Focal Person will also facilitate obtaining approval of outputs/deliverables, and payments as per the appraisal of the deliverables & payment schedules indicate in the contract. The organization and management structure/arrangement for the evaluation and also lines of authority of all parties involved in the evaluation process are as outlined below:

1. UNDP Ethiopia

The Management of UNDP Ethiopia – DGP Unit, will take responsibility to:

• Assign an Evaluation Manager/Evaluation Focal Person who coordinates the evaluation, safeguards independence, provides routine support throughout the evaluation process, and so on;
• Approve the final TOR, inception and evaluation reports;
• Ensure the independence and impartiality of the evaluation at all stages;

• Participate in discussions with the evaluation team on the evaluation design and the evaluation subject, its performance and results with the Evaluation Manager/Focal Person and the evaluation team;
• Organise, participate and coordinate all meetings and debriefings;
• Oversee dissemination and follow-up processes – including the preparation of management responses to the evaluation recommendations;
• Ensure that the team has access to all documentation and information necessary to the evaluation;
• Facilitate the team’s contacts with Implementing Partners and other stakeholders;
• Set-up meetings, and field visits;
• Provide logistic support during the fieldwork;
• Organise security briefings for the evaluation team and provide any materials as required;

2. Partnership Development & Results Management (PDRM) Hub

The PDRM Hub will coordinate and lead the quality assurance process of the evaluation and will be responsible to:

• Manage the evaluation process through all phases including contributing to the drafting of this TOR;
• Ensure quality assurance mechanisms are operational;
• Consolidate and share comments on draft TOR, Inception and Evaluation Reports with the Evaluation Team;
• Ensure the expected use of quality assurance mechanisms (checklists, quality support, etc.);

3. Evaluation Team

The external Evaluation Team in general and the International Consultant, in particular, will have responsibilities to:

• Carry out the desk review and field data collection and also the triangulation and analysis of data collected through desk review and field visit;
• Prepare and present the Draft inception report (containing the methodology and detailed action-plan for the evaluation) and share it with the DGP Unit/UNDP for comments;
• Finalize the inception report with the incorporation of relevant comments from UNDP
• Conduct field visits/research (interviews, observation, etc.). Also where available collect evidence in terms of products that have been generated that can be attributed to GDPP support – for example, manuals, guides, research studies, strategic plans etc.
• Ensure that all aspects of the TOR are fulfilled;
• After approval from the named Evaluation Manager /Focal Person to submit/present preliminary findings to the DGP Unit/UNDP;
• Draft the evaluation reports (using template for reporting, typographic styles and UN spelling);
• Finalize evaluation report on the basis of comments received from different levels;
• Lead the evaluation team and liaise the team with UNDP for any technical and logistical support & arrangements;
• The international and national consultants will be acting as a team be responsible to deliver all the deliverables as per the set milestones in the TOR of the Terminal Evaluation.

4. Implementing Partners and other Stakeholders

The Implementing Partners, Development Partners, and other stakeholders will avail themselves to meet with the evaluation team and provide relevant documents, data and information. They are also expected to share their experiences and perceptions about GDPP performance and ideas for possible modifications to be considered in the design of any future iteration of democratic governance support to help achieve the purpose and objectives of this terminal evaluation.

The implementing partners and other key stakeholders will also take part in various consultation sessions and during validation meetings/workshops.

LOGISTICS AND ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT TO THE PROSPECTIVE CONSULTANT

Government institutions/Implementing Partners and UNDP Ethiopia will jointly facilitate the organization of the meetings and discussion sessions during data collection and validation. The evaluation team may travel in the capitals of selected regions where IPs have branch offices and regional counterparts. (The regions that the team travel for data collection will be determined during the Inception Phase). For any travel outside Addis would need to be factored into the IC costs and payment would be in line with UNDP rates.

Due to the COVID-19 situation, the international consultant could be expected to work from home/virtually through phone or virtual communication platforms and send out questionnaires, whereas the local consultants will engage in fieldwork and field-level data collection in regional and branch offices.

DURATION OF THE ASSIGNMENT/WORK

This assignment is supposed to take a maximum of 52 working days.

The Consultant should possess the following competencies:

Corporate Competencies
Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards; Sensitivity to cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality, and age differences. Fulfils all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment; ability to exercise sound political judgment;

Functional Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by Modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of the project.
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats all people fairly and without favouritism.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, ability to foster networks and partnerships, and good working knowledge of information and computer technology with extensive knowledge of web application content development.
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities. Demonstrated ability to multitask under pressure and to meet strict deadlines often under hardship conditions.

The below indicated educational qualifications, experiences and language skills, and other competencies are required to be met by the potential International Consultant.

Education:

The candidates should have: a minimum of Master’s Degree in governance studies, economics, social policy analysis, public administration, development studies, organizational design/development, or in related social science field; with preferably a combination of academic and technical experience in evaluation, gender analysis, social and economic fields.

Experience:

The candidates for this international consultant position require to meet the following professional experience and expertise.

• A minimum of 10 years of professional experience and proven expertise in conducting programme’s/project’s/policies’ evaluations/reviews (particularly in the governance sector); and development and strategic planning & analysis.
• As international experts, the candidates should have experience in working in/with similar contexts in developing countries (particularly in Africa) and in cross-cultural settings.
• A successful international consultant is also expected to have a deep understanding of the Ethiopian State System in general and the governance landscape in particular.
• Strong knowledge or familiarity with current political, governance, development and donor contexts and issues in Ethiopia would be helpful.

Language:

Excellent knowledge of English, including the ability to set out a coherent argument in presentations and group interactions, is required.

Upon the advertisement of the Procurement Notice, a qualified Individual International Consultant is expected to submit both the Technical and Financial Proposals. Accordingly, Individual Consultants will be evaluated based on Cumulative Analysis as per the following scenario:

cumulative analysis

When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract should be made to the

an individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

a) responsive/compliant/acceptable, and

b) 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]

* Financial Criteria weight; [30]

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points in Technical Evaluation would be considered for the Financial Evaluation

Criteria Max & Points:

Technical Competence (based on credentials and technical proposal):     70% (100 Pts)         

Criteria a) Academic qualifications 10 pts

Criteria b) Relevant work experience (minimum of 10 years experience) 15 Pts

Criteria c) Understanding the TOR; comprehensiveness of the methodology/approach; and organization & completeness of the proposal              30 Pts

Criteria d) Extensive knowledge, skill and experience in the field of evaluation/review/assessment, strategic planning, programme

analysis, governance and gender analysis 15 Pts

Financial   30 % Max 30 Points

The Financial proposal of the technically qualified candidates will be evaluated based on the formula provided below. The maximum number of points (30) assigned to the financial proposal is allocated to the lowest-priced proposal. All other price proposals receive points in inverse

proportion.

A suggested formula is as follows:

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 price proposal

z= price of the proposal being evaluated

Price Proposal :

The Consultant shall submit a price proposal in accordance with the below instructions:

A Lumpsum Fee– The Consultant shall submit an all Inclusive Lump Sum Fee: which should be inclusive of his/her professional fee, Loving allowance, local communication cost, insurance (inclusive of medical health, and medical evacuation). The number of working days for which the daily fee shall be payable under the contract is 52 working days.

Travel and Visa – During the completion of this assignment, if there is a need to travel to Regions in Ethiopia for the completion of this assignment, UNDP will cover the travel cost + DSA. Therefore, please do not include the Travel cost in your price proposal.