International Consultant on Modelling Secondary Impacts of Health Crises

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Background

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a global organization with 17,000 staff working in approximately 170 offices globally towards supporting governments in developing strong policies, institutions, and partnerships to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

UNDP is the knowledge frontier organization for sustainable development in the UN Development System and serves as the integrator for collective action to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNDP’s policy work carried out at HQ, Regional and Country Office levels forms a contiguous spectrum of deep local knowledge to cutting-edge global perspectives and advocacy. In this context, UNDP invests in the Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of field-based and global technical expertise across a wide range of knowledge domains and in support of the signature solutions and organizational capabilities envisioned in the Strategic Plan.

Within the GPN, the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP’s Strategic Plan. BPPS’s staff provides technical advice to Country Offices; advocates for UNDP corporate messages, represents UNDP at multi-stakeholder fora including public-private dialogues, government and civil society dialogues, and engages in UN inter-agency coordination in specific thematic areas. BPPS works closely with UNDP’s Crisis Bureau (CB) to support emergency and crisis response. BPPS ensures that issues of risk are fully integrated into UNDP’s development programmes. BPPS assists UNDP and partners to achieve higher quality development results through an integrated approach that links results-based management and performance monitoring with more effective and new ways of working. BPPS supports UNDP and partners to be more innovative, knowledge and data driven including in its programme support efforts.

Finance Sector Hub

In order to streamline its financial and investment engagement, UNDP launched the Finance Sector Hub, a finance and innovation platform, that draws on a critical mass of UNDP expertise, initiatives, and partnerships to support the mobilization and leveraging of resources for the SDGs and lead the implementation of the new UNDP private sector strategy and other initiatives. The Hub is an integral part of both the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) and the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy (BERA), as well as part of the GPN. The Hub serves as a connector, broker and global coordinator among internal and external actors; curates and manages UNDP’s catalogue of service offers on SDG financing to governments, investors and companies, via the COs, to significantly enhance the scale and

UNDP’s Work on Insurance and Risk Financing

The collaboration between the insurance industry and the development sector has grown significantly over the last five years. Key initiatives, such as the Insurance Development Forum, InsuResilience Global Partnership and the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance, have evolved into significant policy and standard setting partnerships, bringing together countries, the development sector, and the private and mutual/cooperative sectors of industry. Increasingly, these partnerships are moving beyond policy to programming, with a strong focus on not only delivering insurance and risk financing solutions to countries and communities, but also on long-term transformational change of insurance markets.

UNDP’s growing work in this space has led to the creation of the Insurance and Risk Finance Facility (IRRF), a flagship initiative dedicated to supporting UNDP Country Offices and country partners worldwide, within the newly created Finance Sector Hub. This work covers a range of critical areas where insurance and risk transfer solutions and collaboration with the industry can add significantly to achieving and delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs.)

Covering inclusive insurance, sovereign risk financing, insurance investments, natural capital, health, SME development and more, UNDP’s work will look to not only develop and deliver insurance solutions together with countries and communities, it will also look to work with partners to transform insurance markets, working on legislation, regulation and institutional capacity.

The Objective of this Research

Context

As part of UNDP’s growing work in risk finance and in partnership with the insurance industry, UNDP is committed to helping member governments better analyze climate and disaster risk so that they can put in place risk-informed development financing. In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, the IRFF has accelerated its focus on leveraging the same techniques to model the secondary impact of viral outbreaks.

To advance this work and set the scene for a potential programmatic intervention at the country level, UNDP is undertaking dedicated research into modelling the secondary impacts of health crises, and how the modelled outputs can inform policy development. This research will examine how, through science, data and the insurance industry’s techniques to analyse risk, UNDP can help countries plan better, respond better, reduce risk better. The research brief will explore how modelling the secondary impacts of future health crises in developing countries can help them to improve their financial planning, risk management strategies and preparedness for future health crises.

The brief will build upon a preliminary scoping analysis conducted by an economics consultancy. This initial work explores how risk quantification can elevate the value of investing in public health, improve crisis response and preparedness, and minimize social and economic disruptions in the event of health emergencies.

The brief will also consider how developing countries can leverage the insurance industry’s expertise in modelling risk, developing and articulating likely scenarios, and outlining recommendations to decision-makers. In examining the practicality of designing and implementing technical assistance to deliver such support to countries, the research will support UNDP’s deepening work in developing the technical capacity of countries to manage risk.

Draft Report Areas of Examination

The research brief will examine the following elements.

1. Rationale Narrative: Explain how strengthening institutions and communities against future health crises can be built upon modelling the likely impact of such risks. The brief will discuss how integrating scenario analyses and risk models into government financial plans, supported by capacity building efforts, can enable governments to better prepare for and respond to health crises.

2. Areas of Secondary Impact: Using the initial scoping analysis, the brief will discuss the core dimensions of secondary impacts that can be successfully modelled: secondary health, social, economic, and political impacts.

3. Methodological Considerations: Relying on the scoping analysis, the brief will explain the possible methodologies for generating a secondary impact model. In discussing the different modelling approaches surfaced during the scoping exercise, the brief will discuss the relevant trade-offs, such as robustness, useability, and relevance.

4. Potential Practical Outputs: The brief will articulate how frameworks can be adapted across countries, how probabilistic standardised models can be replicated to put real data in the hands of decision-makers, and what a template for understanding risk and taking financial decisions could look like.

5. Making the Case: The brief will build the case for the future, explaining why secondary impact modelling merits further investment and how governments can use these models to take appropriate policy and financial decisions, before, during and after a health crisis. Potential benefits include: risk-knowledge to decision-makers; an understanding of the most critical sectors to direct resources towards; better financial planning, prevention, response, and, ultimately, recovery; community risk reduction and resilience; potentially new public and private sector risk transfer tools; and an integration of complex risks into wider development work. Critically, this area should indicate how countries can measure different initiatives financially, in order to better understand and make financial policy choices.

Report Details

The length of the brief is expected to be between around 16 pages of content, including graphics; 20 pages in total with cover. Expected word count is 5,000-7,500 words. While technical in nature, it should wherever possible look beyond the technical to articulate the broad vision for this work, which will potentially be turned into a component of UNDP’s work in 2022. The report will be graphics heavy. The individual consultant is not expected to produce the graphics, but the consultant’s support in the conceptualization and visualization of key concepts into graphical form will be important. Many of the graphics can be adapted from those already articulated in the economics consultancy scoping report.

Much of the of key themes and analysis of the economics and secondary impacts of pandemics has been captured by an economics consultancy but the consultant is responsible for taking this data and building it into a narrative through the research brief. Areas 1 to 4 in the ‘Draft Areas of Examination’ are already well articulated within the existing research, whereas Area 5 will need more analysis from the consultant. The consultant will be asked to largely follow the elements of the current research, drafting the narrative that follows that research, but also critiquing, where appropriate, and building on this work as they draft the brief. In the final section, the consultant will be expected to take more of a leading role.

Duties and Responsibilities

With overall supervision from the Team Lead of the IRRF, and in consultation with the team of advisors, the consultant will convert the existing scoping analysis report into a research brief accessible for wider audiences.

The following are the component parts of this research.

1. Provide an outline of the report including a table of contents, building out of the notes articulated in ‘The Objective of this Research’ section above and out of the existing scoping review done by an economics consultancy.

2. Research, develop and write the research brief. This will include the following:

a) Broadly following the existing research, the consultant will prepare a full research brief, and make edits following feedback from the IRFF team and external reviewers. This should include the research-backed draft of the report, complete with citations and references, which should be frequently supported using graphical exhibits, and conceptualization of 8-10 graphic images that visually convey they key themes of the brief.

b) Responding to comments from at least two full rounds of peer review, one with the IRFF team, the second with internal UNDP reviewers and external experts. (See below in deliverables for more details.)

c) Note that final design and layout will be prepared by UNDP, including the finalised graphics.

Expected Outputs and Deliverables

Report Details

1) Type of Product: Technical Paper/Report, running to about 16 pages of content, 20 pages including cover. (Wordcount approximately 5,000-7,500 words.)

2) Target Audience: Policy decisionmakers and technical experts in government ministries and agencies that look at issues of financing risk and development, as well as the wider development and insurance communities.???

Desired Impact

To outline the potential role and value of modelling the secondary impacts of future health crises at the country level, as well as the practical requirements for such work to be delivered.

No.

Deliverables

Estimated Duration to Complete

Target Due Date

Review and Approvals Required

1

Proposed table of contents for the report and a one-page narrative outlining the report structure

One page workplan outlining methodology and timeline

2 days

Within 5 days of signing of the contract

IRFF Team lead

2

Technical paper (maximum 7,500 words excluding annexes) following a structure similar to the one proposed above (final outline to be approved during the first deliverable phase in agreement with the UNDP Project Manager and institution)

Please consider the following stages when proposing the work:

  • The report will feature an initial draft for the Insurance and Risk Finance Facility team to review and provide commentary
  • Following revisions to the commentary, a revised version of the report will then be presented to a wider breadth of internal UNDP and external colleagues from relevant institutions for a formal review process
  • Following the formal review process, the research group will address the comments in a final version of the report which will then be sent for copyediting. There will be 2 rounds of revisions following comments, in total.
  • Included with the technical paper should be a conceptualization of 10 graphic images that could help better illustrate key points in the text

Note: Final report to be prepared in a word document. Copyediting, layout, graphic design and printing will be covered by UNDP separately.

19 days

As agreed, and set forth in the inception report

IRFF Team lead

3

Preparation of a PowerPoint (max 15 slides) with key messages from the study

1 days

IRFF Team lead

Intellectual Property

All information and production of report to the assignments as well as outputs produced under this contract shall remain the property of the UNDP, who shall have exclusive rights over their use. The products shall not be disclosed to the public nor used in whatever format without written permission of UNDP in line with the National and International Copyright Laws applicable.

Institutional Arrangements

The consultant will work under the overall guidance of the Insurance and Risk Finance Deputy Team Lead, UNDP Geneva. Fortnightly reporting will be required, and each deliverable shall be presented to the IRFF Team Lead for review and approval.

Duration of Assignment,

Duration: The assignment is estimated to commence on 15 July 2021 and completed by 30 September 2021.

Duty Station

The successful consultant will be home-based and shall set-up a schedule to engage with the project team through video conference or other remote communication tools.

Competencies

Required Skills and Experience

The consultant shall have demonstrated a successful completion of similar project. The minimum professional qualifications are described below:

Education and Experience

  • Master’s degree or higher in any fields relevant to the topics below:
  1. Economics and risk modelling, especially of health crises
  2. Disaster Risk Financing, including financial planning and management
  3. Secondary impact modelling, especially of health crises
  • At least 10 years of relevant experience in areas such as economics, risk modelling, health, disaster risk financing, insurance, financial planning and preparedness, especially concerning developing countries etc.
  • Strong understanding of health crises and their long-term economic impacts is required, experience writing reports on the subject is desirable
  • Excellent analysis and synthesis skills; experience in health economics is a must
  • Experience conceptualizing key themes into visual graphics (graphic design will be outsourced to a specialist firm; this is solely for concept development) is desirable
  • Documented track record of delivering high-quality research and reports on time is a must

Languages

  • Excellent writing skills in English.

Competencies

In addition to the required skills and experience above, expert must possess the following competencies:

  • Strong analytical skills, including ability to quickly assess a diverse range of information with a discerning sense for quality of data; and
  • Good mastery of information technology required for organized presentation of information.
  • Development and Operational Effectiveness
  • Ability to work under pressure, multi-tasking skills; and
  • Availability to conduct required analysis within the agreed timelines.
  • Ability to work in multicultural and multidisciplinary teams, acting with professionalism, diplomacy, tact and courtesy.

Required Skills and Experience

Evaluation

The proposal will be evaluated using the following criteria:

Cumulative analysis:

When using this 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:

  • Technical criteria weight; [70]
  • Financial criteria weight; [30]

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% (49 points) in Technical score would be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

Technical Criteria for Evaluation:

Criterion 1: Relevance of education – (Max 5 points);

Criterion 2: At least 10 years of relevant experience (Max 25 points)

Criterion 3: Understanding of health crises and their economic impacts and experience writing reports on the subject (Max 15 points)

Criterion 4: Analysis and synthesis skills; experience in health economics (Max 15 points)

Criterion 5: Experience conceptualizing key themes into visual graphics (Max 5 points)

Criterion 6: Track record of delivering high-quality research and reports (Max 5 Points)

Financial/Price Proposal evaluation:

The financial proposal of candidates who meet the technical assessment threshold will be evaluated. The total number of points allocated for the financial proposal is 30. In this methodology, the maximum number of points assigned to the financial proposal is allocated to the lowest price proposal. All other price proposals receive points in inverse proportion.

A 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-priced proposal

z = price of the proposal being evaluated

Application procedure:

Interested applicants are requested to submit their applications the deadline by using the Apply now button. The application should contain CV or P11 and Financial Proposal .

P11 can be downloaded at https://www.me.undp.org/content/montenegro/en/home/jobs.html.

The Financial Proposal must indicate an all-inclusive fixed total contract price in US Dollars as per template attached here: https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fprocurement-notices.undp.org%2Fview_file.cfm%3Fdoc_id%3D45780&data=04%7C01%7Cjayati.das%40undp.org%7C25d869e63a8e465b54ec08d92f343550%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C0%7C637592723533914037%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=yxtswROiodQuDfPp%2BkuFxwdP73ktatEn2LB2Mbr%2FiGk%3D&reserved=0

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Added 2 years ago - Updated 2 years ago - Source: jobs.undp.org