Consultancy for Consortium Partner Targeting and Referrals System

1. Background

The Emergency to Resilience (E2R) Consortium aims to meet the essential needs (including access to land, food, health and nutrition, income, protection, shelter, WASH) of host and displaced populations resulting in better living conditions and improved coping capacity, leading to self-reliant communities. The E2R response adopts a multi-tiered approach to address the emergency lifesaving needs in Michika and Madagali and to foster the transition and local integration of IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) in Yola, South and Numan. Both tiers will adopt an area-based comprehensive approach.

The E2R partners, NRC (Norwegian Refugee Council), IRC (International Rescue Committee), DRC (Danish Refugee Council), JDCP (Justice Development and Peace Commission), and BBC Media Action, have clear added value and sectoral expertise to offer within Adamawa State in Yola South, Numan, Michika, and Madagali, fostering IDPs’ local integration and providing life-saving emergency response. They join forces to provide a comprehensive area-based response. All partners are established in Adamawa and have a current footprint, community acceptance, and knowledge of the context, which will be leveraged to inform the intervention.

In order to achieve its goals, the consortium will continuously engage in project management processes, particularly monitoring and evaluation through which it can leverage to make informed decisions and reach more beneficiaries in hard-to-reach areas of its operational area.

In line with its ambition, the consortium will operate in a dynamic environment with processes that could result into a limited immediate access to reliable programmatic and operational data on participants targeting, selection and referrals mechanisms. This in addition to the critical nature of the consortium requires immediate solutions, especially a customized system to effectively manage targeting and referrals processes.

1. What would the system do?

The primary focus of this project is to design an online targeting and referrals system that efficiently enable the following tasks:

• Develop a fully electronic workflow that seamless integrate the different core functions involved in joint targeting and selection taking into consideration specificities of key sectors (protection, Wash, protection, information, counselling and legal assistance, Economic recovery and market systems, health and nutrition)

• Create a unified database for the consortium that allows to monitor participants between members using assigned unique ID;

• Set up automated dashboards (based on eligibility criteria) that allow to conduct analysis on selection of participants (cutoff points)

• Generate real time data/information in a form of dynamic dashboards, graphical reports, tabular reports on consortium participants (reach);

• The system should generate timesheets for cash for work participants to track real time of start and end time of work;

• Ensure all modules related to targeting and referrals are accessible through different sources: Mobile phones, online and offline devices;

• Using a validation and an email notification system, data on participants lists and referrals requests can be reviewed and approved with predefined type of feedbacks classified in a list;

• Accountability module (database and reporting formats) to register referrals cases, monitor in the unified database;

• Beneficiary functionality within the system. The consultant/firm is expected to analyse data structures for flows into and out of the system and come up with a beneficiary module designed around 3 levels:

  • Individual beneficiary;
  • Household;
  • Community (a geographical area, this could be a village, etc.)

The beneficiary module should allow to run the following:

• Adding and editing beneficiary records: beneficiaries can be linked to multiple activities, projects, sectors;
• Beneficiaries can be linked to multiple other beneficiaries, or to beneficiaries across the hierarchy, e.g. an individual can be linked to a household, group, and/or community;
• The system can assign a unique ID per beneficiary to be used for all core competencies within the country programme;
• The system will ensure that all beneficiary data areGDPR compliant. To this end, data will be anonymised and protected by permissions and workflows;

1. Details of the Assignment/Methodology

The selected firm, consultant or team of consultants is expected to complete the configuration of the global design. The firm/consultant will use the consortium tools, data and internal materials as a basis to frame processes, data flows, data types and structures. Prior to the design and development, he/she will also conduct consultations with consortium members including specialists, project coordinators and managers, and M&E. The proposed methodology will be amended and approved by the consortium.

The consultant/firm is responsible for defining the requirements of the desired system in consultation with the consortium. The Consultant/firm should refer to the following when developing his/her methodology:

• Establish requirements of the new system based on country programme structure;
• Determine internet connectivity requirements at all levels;
• Define roles and responsibilities for the system administrators and users;
• Allow necessary data entry or importing of data from other information systems and data sources, export in various formats (PDF, excel, etc);
• Present summary dashboards showing progress towards achieving results;
• Provide administrators with tools for reconciling discrepancies between different data sources;
• Upload, edit and share files.

The system shall be compatible with the consortium internet operating system. The system should have enough flexibility to accommodate changes and open to customisation as required for the future. In addition, the system should support use of multiple users at a time in both online and offline contexts. It should be compatible with mobile capability (Android / IOS) with high security.

The consultant/firm will be expected to conduct trainings to ensure that the system is both relevant and useful to the consortium partners.

1. Deliverables

The consultant or team of consultants/firm is expected to produce the following deliverables:

• Inception report detailing the understanding of the consultant/firm against the objectives. The report will be presented for validation by a reference committee and incorporate feedback and comments;
• Weekly work outputs/updates should be shared to ensure alignment with the ToRs;
• Completion report: upon completion of the assignment, the consultant/firm should submit a final completion report outlining key modules including characteristics of the system developed;
• A user manual (no more than 10 pages);
• Video tutorials and help systems;
• Training of the consortium Staff and handover to ensure ownership of the system.

1. Duration

The mission will be carried out over a total of no more than 60 days over a calendar period of no more than 2 months.

1. Required skills and experience

In order to be successful, the consultant/ firms will have to meet the following criteria:

• Demonstrated expertise in Enterprise Resources Planning Software;
• Experience in AGILE Methodology and other industry standards;
• Substantial expertise in Monitoring and Evaluation, management of M&E databases, field surveys, use of qualitative and quantitative statistical methods;
• Track records in the implementation of similar projects;
• Training and facilitation capacity;
• A valuable experience of GIS and ICT applications;
• Proven professional experience in web technologies, including the development and deployment of web-based information systems.

1. Ethical Considerations

The consultant/firm must keep all materials and data received confidential throughout the consultancy. Consultant(s) agree to read, understand and sign a code of conduct policy with which they must comply. The online system is the property of the consortium which determines its use. The two parties (Consortium and consultants) agree to observe the confidentiality of any information linked to the assignment.

1. Application

The technical and financial proposals of up to 8 pages maximum (excluding annexes) should include the following:

• Proposed methodology;
• Composition of the team;
• CV of the member(s) of the team including references;
• Detailed budget of the offer;
• An extract (3-5 pages) from similar assignments;
• A cover letter, your capacity and experience as well as your availability.