Location : Dhaka, BANGLADESH
Application Deadline : 10-Nov-13
Additional Category Millennium Development Goals
Type of Contract : Individual Contract
Post Level : National Consultant
Languages Required : English
Expected Duration of Assignment :45 working days over a period of 4 months
Background
UNDP in partnership with the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) of the Local Government Division, Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development & Cooperatives and UN-Habitat is implementing the Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction Project (UPPRP) in Bangladesh with funding from the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) and UNDP. The UPRR (2008-14) project is the largest urban poverty reduction initiative in Bangladesh. The project aims to improve the livelihoods and living conditions of three million urban poor and extremely poor people, especially women and girls, living in 23 towns and cities in Bangladesh. Key strategies include community mobilization; improvement of physical infrastructure; support for livelihoods development; developing partnerships between communities and service providers; and influencing policy. In order to provide this support to communities in poor urban areas, the Government of Bangladesh and the United Nations work together to manage and implement UPPR. It is the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) that hosts and executes UPPR at a national-level. UPPR works jointly with the Municipality or City Corporations.
Duties and Responsibilities
Context of the Current Assignment:
The UPPR project is due to be completed in August 2014. The project has covered considerable grounds in terms of building community institutions, delivering services and linking communities with the government and non-government agencies providing services. In order to ensure the sustainability of the project results, the project sustainability strategy is committed to (i) institutionalize UPPR practices and operational systems into the Pourshavas and City Corporations; and ii) influence national and municipal policies for sustainable poverty reduction and promoting the urban poor participation in local urban governance. Relevance of this assignment is also rooted in the context of the country's weak urban governance structure that has yet to sufficiently develop to address the issues of urban poverty. While municipal governments are best-placed to address urban poverty, lack of decentralization of power and resources, coupled with weak institutional capacities, greatly constrains the powers, functions, jurisdictions and financial capacities at the municipal level Also, urban planning and policies have been fragmented in Bangladesh. In the absence of any policy framework, national planning, municipal governance, urban poverty and migration are disconnected. As a result, the social and political exclusion of the urban poor and migrants from the formal urban space and the urban governance (including the national and municipal services) perpetuate the vicious cycle of urban poverty. A lack of urban poverty focus in national policy and lack of adequate decentralization of power are further exacerbated by under-funded and overstretched municipal governments that lack a mandate for urban poverty reduction, hence a missing accountability and responsiveness to the urban poor. Improved responsiveness and accountability of these actors and coordinated participation of key actors involved in urban planning and management would better integrate the urban poor into formal processes of urban governance. From a policy perspective, there have been some positive developments in recent years. The new Pourashava law, the draft National Urban Sector Policy, the sixth Five-Year Plan and the Outline Perspective Plan all recognise the importance of the urban sector and include strategies to address some of the myriad challenges arising from rapid and unplanned urbanisation. Despite these positive policy directions, a number of challenges remain there in terms of decentralization of power, capacity of LGIs, lack of institutional coordination, lack of focus on urban poverty and budget allocations for services targeting in low income areas in cities and towns. In this context, UPPR sustainability strategy intends to develop capacities of the urban LGI and influence the policy environment constraining the urban governance in sustaining the project outcomes, in particular, and addressing the needs of the urban poor and extreme poor, in general.
Objectives of the Assignment: The objectives of this consultancy include:
- Identify the strengths and capacity gaps of Local Governance Institutions for institutionalizing UPPR practices to address the needs of the urban poor and extreme poor in a sustainable manner.
- Analyse the strengths of and gaps in legislations and related policies ( or lack of it) enabling and constraining urban LGIs in (i) seeking participation of the urban poor and the extreme poor in urban governance; (ii) addressing the needs of the urban poor and the extreme poor.
- Identify opportunities and constraints or challenges in building capacity of the urban LGI, and addressing the policy gaps for pro-poor municipal governance.
- Based above analysis, international best practices and in line with UPPR's sustainability strategies, recommend short term and long term strategies and action plan to address (i) the capacity, and (ii) policy gaps for enabling the urban LGIs in playing effective role in sustainable urban poverty reduction and promoting participation of the urban poor in urban governance.
Scope of Work:
The scope of activities under this contract consists of the following:
(a) After having a comprehensive understanding of the UPPR project and its functioning, this assignment will undertake institutional analysis of the structure, systems, administrative process, services and human and financial resources of different categories of the urban LGIs through extensive literature survey and stakeholders consultations. The analysis will also include the role of LGIs and its coordination mechanism, or lack of it, for implementing social protection and other services of the central government and the capacity and systemic gaps in their implementation. The gaps in LGI's mechanism for coordination with other service providing agencies will need focused attention in the analysis.
This assignment will also undertake analysis of the budget allocation by the central government to the urban LGIs of different categories and the amounts and the rationale of municipal budget allocations on different services in the slum and non-slum areas. This analysis will also include the alignment of municipal functioning with the UPPR practices and how effectively and to the extent LGIs can take over the role of UPPR's functioning.
(b) An extensive analysis of the policy environment will include (i) the strengths and weaknesses of the existing national and LGI level polices, (ii) gaps in the content of the policy and the factors constraining their implementation, and (iii) the way these policies enable or constrain the LGIs in addressing the issues of the urban poverty and participation of the urban poor in urban governance. This analysis will also focus on possibility of and constraints in institutionalizing UPPR practices in the LGIs. This will require extensive survey of the secondary literature, policy documents and stakeholders consultations. (c) This mission will consult other ongoing urban projects and government and non-government institutions to identify collaboration opportunities for (i) field level convergence to sustain the UPPR activities; (ii) capacity building of the LGIs and related institutions to sustain UPPR outcomes, and (iii) policy alliance for sustainable urban poverty reduction. This will require analysis of (i) the current institutional strengths of the organizations impacting capacities and policies of the urban LGI such as Local Governance and Engineering Department (LGED), National Institute of Local Governance (NILG), Bangladesh Municipal Development Fund etc.; (ii) initiatives of other development partners/ projects; (iii) policy lessons from UPPR. (d) The recommendation is expected to include short term and long term strategies and agreed action plan based on (i) above analysis; (ii) international best practices; (iii) lessons from other urban development projects in the country; (iv) policy lessons form UPPR.
Duration of the Assignment, Duty Station and Expected Places of Travel:
Duration: The assignment will be for 45 working days for the national consultant over the period of 4 months commencing from mid November 2013 to mid March 2014.
Duty Station: The consultant will operate from Dhaka but his/her role will involve travel to a samples of the 23 towns in which UPPR works. Expected Places of Travel: The Consultant will visit sampled project towns outside Dhaka.
Final Products/Services:
Deliverables
Time line
No. of consulting days
Inception report after initial literature survey along with agreed work plan
First week
Five days
A brief mission report on initial findings and a presentation to UPPR/UNDP (after literature survey and consultations)
Within two months
Twenty five days
A draft report on institutional and policy analysis and a presentation on key findings
Within three and half months
Ten days
A detailed final report with (i) detailed analysis of the subjects under the scope of work and (ii) recommendations including short term and long term strategies and agreed action plan (electronic copy, three hard copies and a final presentation)
Within four months
Five days
Progress Controls and Payment Installments:
Progress Controls: The Consultants will work directly under the supervision of International Poverty Reduction Specialist and overall guidance of International Project Manager. Payment Installments:
- 20% after completing submission of inception report (along with agreed work plan);
- 30% after submission of mission report with initial findings (after literature survey and consultations);
- 50% upon completion of all tasks.
Competencies
Corporate Competencies:
- Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN's values and ethical standards;
- Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
- Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
- Treats all people fairly without favoritism.
Functional Competencies:
- Encourages Knowledge Sharing and Learning;
- Disseminates specialized knowledge and experience;
- Actively works towards continuing personal learning and development in one or more practice areas, acts on learning plan and applies newly acquired skills.
Required Skills and Experience
Academic Qualification:
- Minimum a Master's or Equivalent degree in social science or development studies with specialization in Public Administration/ Public Finance/ Urban Governance/ Local Governance;
Experience and Skills:
- Minimum seven years of national experience in governance and poverty related policies and institutions;
- Experience in analyzing governance institutions and public budget (preference to candidates having experience in institutional analysis of municipal governance and municipal budget);
Language: Fluency in English and Bangla.
Personal and attitudinal requirements:
- Good communication and interpersonal skills;
- Teamwork: ability to establish and maintain effective working relations as a team member, in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic environment with sensitivity and respect;
- A team-player and self-starter, able to work with minimum supervision, with sound judgment.
Evaluation of the Candidates: Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology: Cumulative analysis: The candidates will be evaluated through Cumulative Analysis method. When using the weighted scoring method, the award of the contract will 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 a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation. Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points in the technical evaluation would be considered for Financial Evaluation. Technical Evaluation Criteria (Total 70 marks)
- Qualifications-Master's or Equivalent degree in Social Science or development studies with specialization in Public Administration/Public Finance/Urban Governance/Loval Governance (7 Marks)
- Minimum Seven Years of experience in working on policy and governance related issues (42 marks)
- Considerable experience in analyzing governance institutions and budget of public institutions (preference to experience in institutional analysis of municipal governance and municipal budget) (21 marks)
Financial Evaluation (Total 30 marks) All technical yqualified proposals will be scored out 30 based on the formula provided below. The maximum points (30) will be assigned to the lowest financial proposal. All other proposals received points according to the following formula: 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
Financial Proposal :
Financial Evaluation: In the second stage, the prices proposal of all contractors who have attained minimum 50 points of the total points in the technical evaluation will be compared for their price. The contract will be awarded to the bidder offering the ‘best value for money' through cumulative analysis method. The financial proposal should indicate the following:
- Daily Lum Sump Consultancy Fee
- Travel/transport cost (only if travel is required outside the duty station)
- Living allowance (only if travel is required outside the duty station)\
- Miscellaneous such as communications fees etc.
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.
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