UN Institute for Training and Research
Duration of the contract
4 months assignment starting 1 September 2022
Deadline for submission of applications
04 August 2022
Organizational Unit
Defeat-NCD Partnership
Remuneration
Total US$ 38,000 (output based and will be made upon satisfactory completion and acceptance of the deliverables)
AREA OF SPECIALISATION/THEMATIC AREAS:
Developer of Software Application Architecture, Web Developer, Customer Service
OVERVIEW:
UNITAR is an autonomous body within the United Nations that was established in 1965 pursuant to a UN General Assembly resolution. UNITAR’s mission is to develop the individual, institutional and organisational capacities of countries and other United Nations stakeholders through high quality learning solutions and related knowledge products and services to enhance decision-making and to support country-level action for overcoming global challenges.
The Defeat-NCD Partnership (DNCD) is the practical response to the widespread call for action on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs). Formally launched during the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 24th September 2018. The Defeat-NCD Partnership is a ‘public-private-people’ partnership anchored in the United Nations but extending well beyond to include governments, multilateral agencies, civil society, academia, philanthropies, and the private sector.
The Defeat-NCD Partnership’s vision is that of a world in which there is universal health coverage for NCDs. This is a direct contribution to the transformational 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to which all nations have subscribed.
The Defeat-NCD Partnership’s mission is to enable and assist approximately 90 low resource countries, in its initial scope, to scale-up sustained action against NCDs so that they can progress on SDG 3, ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages” and, more specifically, to achieve target 3.4 to “reduce, by one-third, premature mortality from NCDs by 2030″.
The Defeat-NCD Partnership’s practical work is organised around four interconnected pillars that, taken together, constitute a comprehensive service package to tackle the most common gaps and constraints that challenge low-resource countries.
The DNCD Partnership’s four pillars of work include:
- National NCD Capacity Building: to ensure that partner countries have essential institutional capacities, structures, systems, and financing in place to tackle NCDs in a sustained and sustainable manner.
- Community Scale Up of NCD Services: to bring more of the necessary prevention and management of NCD services directly to more people who need them.
- Affordability and Accessibility of Essential NCD Supplies (The Defeat-NCD Partnership Marketplace): to enable the consistent provision of affordable essential NCD medicines, diagnostics, and medical equipment and supplies in low resource countries.
- Financing for Country Level NCD Programming: to establish a long-term sustainable financing model for NCD programming in low resource countries.
GENERAL OBJECTIVES OF THE CONTRACT AND SCOPE OF WORK:
A web-based Order Management System (OMS) needs to be designed by a Systems Designer/ Analyst for initiating and managing the orders of the NCD medicines, diagnostics, medical equipment, and supplies needed by designated entities in some 83 low resource countries.
Use of open-source technologies for the development of the recommended system is preferred. However, proprietary/subscription-based models can explored if found suitable.
The designated entities placing the orders will be public health Institutions (hospitals, departments in the national ministries of health, health care centres, NGOs active in the field of health care and selected private sector entities). The system will be operated and maintained by DNCD.
The designed, developed, and the deployed OMS will be used by the relevant personnel of DNCD (including procurement and finance dimensions), appointed Procurement Agents and Service Providers, these latter having only restricted access to it as decided by DNCD. In addition, all predefined and approved partners (the above-named Institutions may be allowed access to OMS by DNCD to see the status of the current orders e.g., quotation requested, quotation received, quotation assessed and outcome of the assessment, placement of orders with manufacturers etc. and to see the movement of the consignment through the supply chain.)
Order status will be available from the OMS at any given time till the required products (NCD medicines, diagnostics, medical equipment, and supplies) have been delivered to the entity placing the order. The system will also provide payment status, expected delivery dates, dates of quality inspection, pre- shipment inspection, results of inspection, dispatch dates, transportation method (s) expected arrival dates, port (s) of arrival, confirmation of arrival, damage reports and management of damaged goods together with status of insurance claims, if any.
The OMS will be the repository for centrally storing all critical documents linked to a specific transaction i.e., agreements and contracts, quality control documents, shipping documents, Pre-Shipment Inspections (PSI), Quality Assurance documents, periodic order status reports and financial reports. The system should be capable of handling around three hundred orders per annum at steady state (in around three years’ time.) The outline of the “System Schema has been depicted in Diagram 1. It indicates the main business processes that OMS will need to operate. Diagram 1 can be found on this link https://defeat-ncd.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Diagram_Designing-the-NCD_-OMS_Defeat-NCD_UNITAR.pdf
The OMS underpins a simple business model described below:
Requests for Products (NCD medicines, diagnostics, medical equipment, and supplies) are placed by Institutions in the Low/Medium resource countries that need NCD drugs, diagnostics, and related medical supplies. All requests for Products, while originating from the Institutions in the relevant countries will be vetted by the DNCD personnel before being sent to the appointed Procurement Agent for action.
On completion orders are paid from funds that either come from the Institutions themselves or are provided as grants from donors.
When the system has reached steady state (reached in about two years) it is expected that between around 150 orders per annum will be active at any given time.
Essential elements of OMS:
(1) Process centralisation and automation; (2) multi-channel integrations for use across the world; (3) Payment processing using existing treasury applications; (4) Providing real-time alerts, statistics, and reports; (5) Providing pro-active analysis and monitoring of selected country stock positions; and (6) Supplier Performance Metrics.
The envisaged system has the following business critical processes:
(1) Master Data Management; (2) Data interchange with the appointed Procurement Agent’s IT system using appropriate tools, as may be needed; (3) Supplier selection and long-term Agreements; (4) Order Processing; (5) Order fulfilment; (6) Billing management; (7) Supplier Monitoring; (8) Multiple category filters for quick order search; (9) Online and offline order syncing; (10) FIFO (First-in-First-out) inventory method for certain cases; (11) Add comments or instructions to every order; (12) Customised order workflows export and import orders in bulk; (13) Online and offline order syncing; (14) Add comments or instructions to every order; (15) List and Kanban view of orders preferred; (16) Confirm or cancel orders in bulk; (17) Cloning of repeat orders; (18) Standard and custom invoice templates; (19) Add due dates and tags to orders; (20) Pre-order, backorder, or partial order fulfilment; (21) Order Completion feedback and review; (22) Multiple channel accessibility of the platform including mobile, and web based across the world; and (23) Delivery timelines and Quality review.
The system should be designed to be hosted on cloud. It should have scalability and robustness to sustain increase in parallel users. It should have 24×7 online availability, compatibility, and user friendliness with Windows environment and should be accessible on mobile phones, pads, desktops, and laptops.
The required system will have the following functionalities:
(1) Preparing requests for quotations; (2) Preparing Procurement Orders; (3) Approving Procurement Orders; (4) Modifying Procurement Orders; (5) Tracking the movement of Products through the entire supply chain; (6) Tracking Partial Order completions; (7) Allocating funds from the two sources (Institutions own sources, or the UN, or some other source) to be used for the items procured; (8) Monitoring of financial payments; (9) Linking OMS to the appointed Procurement Agent’s IT system for regular transfer of required data between OMS and the appointed Procurement Agent’s system through an appropriate arrangement; (10) Generating the required financial reports, and reports on the delivery status of products; and (11) The users should have access to standard user interface and consistency across different devices used by them and maintain functionality across devices.
RESPONSIBILITIES/DESCRIPTION OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICES:
Within the delegated authority, and under the direct supervision of the Technical Specialist (Country Support) at The Defeat-NCD Partnership, and under the guidance of Consultant for The Defeat-NCD Partnership Marketplace, the Designer of a Web-Based Order Management System (OMS), will perform the following tasks:
- Determine the scope of the critical business processes: Set out above and map them.
- Understand the relevant Business Models: Interact with the relevant UN staff and the appointed Procurement Agent’s IT Staff as required to understand their relevant business processes and capture data from them appropriately if they impact on the PA’s business with UN.
- Analyse and prepare a high-level design and technical specifications of the Order Management System (OMS). The design should meet the customer requirements and be developed using an appropriate methodology. The design should include recommendations for the underlying software that may be used for different elements of the designed System for subsequent coding stage for its development.
MEASURABLE OUTPUTS/DELIVERABLES/SCHEDULE OF DELIVERABLES:
- A list of critical business processes describing their scope and mapping out these processes. These should include data flow processes and core data set mapping for key business processes. By 22 September 2022
- A description the “System Architecture” along with SDLC deliverables and the essential technical requirements for the development and deployment of the Order Management System that supports the identified essential elements and functionalities set out in this document and can be used subsequently for developing the software application (OMS) that will execute the expected functionalities. By 7 November 2022
- A draft comprehensive report by 7 December 2022 describing the above two elements and indicating time it should take to develop the designed system and implement a stable version of it. The report should clearly indicate any specific architectural decisions that the designer takes and communicate these through appropriate means. Appropriate diagrams should be used in the report to clearly define the topology of the Architecture. All non-functional characteristics that have been considered and which the recommended architecture takes into account should be given in the report along with the reasoning for why they have been considered. A clear rating, using a scale of 1 (min) to 5 (Max) should be given for all the key architectural characteristics taken into account in the design. And a final report after incorporating any feedback from DNCD to be submitted by 29 December 2022.
N.B. The above dates are indicative and are subject to change based on exigencies of work.
PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR EVALUATION OF RESULTS:
- Timely and quality submission of deliverables.
- Activities implemented with a high degree of effectiveness and efficiency.
- High degree of professionalism demonstrated by the consultant.
- Characteristics of the design document: The prepared document will be correct, complete, consistent, unambiguous, flexible, modifiable, verifiable, and understandable by the customer and shall have right level of abstraction. The description of the recommended system architecture should give weights (from a scale of 1 (min) to 5(max) ascribed to each of the following architectural characteristics: Deployability, (ii) Elasticity, (iii) Evolutionary capacity, (iv)Fault tolerance, (v) Modularity, (vi) Overall cost, (vii) Performance, (viii) Reliability, (ix) Scalability, (x) Simplicity, (xi) Testability, (xii) Security, (xiii) Sustainability, and (xiv) Usability.
REPORTING STRUCTURE:
The incumbent will report to The Technical Specialist (Country Support), under the guidance of Consultant for The Defeat-NCD Partnership Marketplace.
FEES:
US$ 38,000. Payment under the contract will be output based and will be made upon satisfactory completion and acceptance of the deliverables, as outlined below:
Amount Date of payment
US$ 8,000 Upon satisfactory receipt of deliverable number 1
US$ 18,000 Upon satisfactory receipt of deliverable number 2
US$ 12,000 Upon satisfactory receipt of deliverable number 3, satisfactory completion, and certification of work
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
Skills and Competencies expected from the individual:
- Understanding of data privacy standards; integrity; honesty; customer-service skills.
- Solid communication skills, both written and verbal.
- Organisational skills; planning skills; problem-solving skills; analytical skills; critical thinking skills.
- Software design Skills
- Ability to organize effectively, work under pressure with attention to detail, precision, and accuracy.
- Demonstrated ability to work harmoniously with persons of different national background.
Minimum qualifications and experience required:
a. Education
- Advanced university degree (master’s or equivalent) in Computer Applications/science or similar academic discipline in combination with 5 years of relevant experience.
- Or a first level university degree (bachelor’s or equivalent) in combination with 7 years of relevant experience may be accepted in lieu of an advanced university degree.
b. Work Experience
- A minimum of five to seven years of experience of designing and/or supporting the development of cloud-based data and workflow management systems using appropriate software application development approaches.
- Experience of designing applications in healthcare or in sectors that have demanding customer care requirements requiring scalability and elasticity would be a definite advantage.
- Experience of applications that have variety of end user requirements and satisfactory delivery of software design work in different work cultures would also be an advantage.
c. Languages
Fluency in oral and written English is required.
REMARKS:
General conditions of contracts for the service of consultants apply.
Consultants are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local laws. UNITAR does not reimburse Consultants for any taxes, duty, or other contribution payable by the Consultants on payments made under the Consultancy Contract.
The Institute does not provide or arrange life or health insurance coverage for consultants, and Consultants are not eligible to participate in the life and health insurance schemes provided by the UN for its staff members.
The assignment requires the consultant to be self-sufficient and arrange to be equipped with the requisite professional tools and equipment to conduct this assignment such as laptop with standard Adobe reader and a mobile phone.
Travel might be required during the contract, travel costs will be covered by UNITAR.
How to apply
UNITAR shall place no restrictions on the eligibility of people to participate in any capacity and under conditions of equality in its principal and subsidiary organs (Charter of the United Nations – Chapter 3, article 8).
All applicants are strongly encouraged to apply as soon as possible after the vacancy has been posted and well before the deadline stated in the vacancy announcement.
Due to high number of expected applications, only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.