Seeking consultancy firm to conduct following assignment: An impact study of Community Score Card (CSC) in Rwanda’’

The main objective of this assignment is to examine the citizen participation impact (intended and unintended, direct and or indirect) created by the CSC over the last 14 years of implementation. The idea here is to not only determine whether and how the CSC has unambiguously improved the citizen participation outcomes for the different participants who experienced but also to determine if it delivered what it was designed to improve or whether and it improved other outcomes and how.

More specifically, the assignment seeks to:

1. Examine, retroactively, the long-term changes in terms of enhancing citizen participation along the state-citizens’ relations that were created and or contributed to by the CSC across the 19 districts whereby it has been implemented;
2. Quantify and determine what it takes in terms of costs but also in terms of time, human, financial and logistical resources to impactfully implement the CSC per roll-out at the most basic level of engagement, i.e. the Cell, and beyond;
3. In light of the emerging outstanding impacts observed, determine any major observable differences (if any) in terms of quality citizen participation dynamics along the state-citizens’ relations amongst the districts whereby the CSC has been implemented versus to where it is not implemented yet;
4. Document the lessons learnt along the way about what works versus what does not to deliver an impactful citizen participation experience through the CSC model and formulate recommendations for its potential scalability to districts whereby it is yet to be implemented.

Relevance of the assignment and potential use of the findings

The impact study findings and ensuing recommendations will be used in many ways, amongst which:

• To sufficiently document the citizen participation impacts that the CSC has created and or contributed to;
• To inform possible decisions about future scale-up of the CSC to the remaining 11 districts of Rwanda where it has not been implemented so far;
• To inform learnings about what is working versus what is not amongst relevant actors, state like non-state, implementing or seeking to implement models of citizen participation at the community level in Rwanda and beyond;
• To back-up NPA and partners’ ongoing advocacy efforts towards the institutionalization of the CSC as one way of ensuring its long-lasting sustainability in future;
• To inform efforts by the Government and other relevant stakeholders towards adopting and institutionalising a model of citizen participation that better enhances the quality of state-citizens’ relations given the history and governance context of Rwanda, particularly at this time when the need for institutionalisation of a working model of citizen participation practice is gaining more ground amongst the governance and decentralisation sector stakeholders.

Scope of work

The scope of work will include but is not limited to:

• Set up, mobilise and manage a relevant team (core team and support team) that will deliver the assignment;
• Identify and review relevant secondary data available on the impact of the CSC, including but not limited to NPA programmatic reports, partners’ reports, etc.;
• Define the overriding impact study questions;
• Clearly define the impact study design;
• Design relevant data collection instruments against which the desired data will be collected;
• Define the study population and sample size in accordance with the best industry standards;
• Develop a comprehensive matrix for recruiting relevant study participants;
• Develop an inception report of not more than 10 pages (annexes not included), outlining in full details the methodology to be applied along with the work plan and composition of the team assigned to different tasks together with their different roles;
• Develop relevant data collection instruments, ensuring that they meet high quality standards;
• Prepare the necessary documentation to support the application for the study pre-authorisation by the Rwanda Governance Board (RGB) and the research visa by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) respectively;
• Hire and manage a team of capable field-research assistants and facilitators and ensure that they are adequately briefed about the assignment as well as trained on ethical and high-quality data collection;
• Collect primary data relevant for the study in at least 5 CSC-covered districts and 5 non-CSC covered districts;
• Manage, process and analyse the data collected with the support of a dedicated software;
• Transcribe all primary data, including the audio/visually recorded data, into textual data format and avail soft copies to NPA;
• Sort-out, process and analyse data collected from the field;
• Produce the draft zero, first draft and final draft reports, ensuring they are written in a practical language rather than hard-to-grasp academic language;
• Edit and proofread the study findings report;
• Present the impact study findings to the client (NPA) and partner CSOs and at least to one multi-stakeholders’ learning event;
• Closely coordinate with the documentary film production team on the outstanding impact of the CSC and ensure that it not only matches with the key findings meets but also that it meets high quality standards for such nature of analytical works.
• Prepare a detailed work breakdown plan and timeframe for each key deliverable;
• Identify the key skillsets needed for each key deliverable and accordingly match the team of experts;

To get a full overview over the assignment, please check out the link: https://www.jobinrwanda.com/job/terms-reference-hiring-international-or-national-consultancy-firm-conduct-impact-study