International Parliamentary Development Consultant

Contract

This is a International Consultant contract. More about International Consultant contracts.

Background

With the entry into force of the constitutional amendments in 2018, which has completed Georgia’s evolution from a semi-presidential system to a parliamentary republic, the Parliament is now at the heart of the democratic governance in the country. In combination with the Parliament’s newly-reformed Rules of Procedure (RoP), the role of the legislature is substantially increased. New mechanisms introduced by the RoP grant the Parliament stronger powers to effectively exercise its law-making and oversight functions and increase citizen engagement in legislative processes.

With the enhanced mandate and reformed RoP in place, the Parliament of Georgia now requires strengthening its institutional capacities in order to ensure that the newly introduced principles and mechanisms of strong parliamentary system are set in motion.

Over the last three years the new instruments and provisions of the RoP have been applied in practice. However, some of the initiatives have been sporadic and often implemented through the external (donor) support. This is mostly due to a lack of institutional capacity of the parliament to effectively exercise the expanded functions, which requires more, effective, dynamic and high-quality parliamentary performance with enhanced analytical capabilities. Since the Parliament cannot rely permanently on donor support, the organization needs to reform its institutional set-up - translating it into a modern and strong institution capable of implementing its functions in a more effective and efficient manner. For doing that, the parliamentary leadership has committed to elaborate a medium-term Strategic Development Plan of the Parliament of Georgia.

This is not the first instance when the Parliament of Georgia is embarking on the path toward developing its institutional strategy. There have been previous efforts in the past years when through the support of the European Union and UNDP the Parliament elaborated its first ever Institutional Reform Plan (IRP) for 2016-2018. After a very positive mid-term review of the IRP, the new action plan for 2019-2020 has been also designed; however, failed to be officially adopted by the Parliament due to onset of political developments in the country at that time suspending the process. Hence, the reforms outlined in the document, had not been materialized in practice to full extent.

To support the Parliament of Georgia in resuming the process and realizing its commitment for setting up a new development strategic plan for the Parliament, the UNDP Project is seeking the services of a pool of international and national consultants to facilitate the strategic planning process in the Parliament. The present Terms of Reference (ToR) specifically relates to the services to be provided by the International Parliamentary Development Consultant.

Duties and Responsibilities

The overarching goal of the current exercise is to elaborate a Strategic Development Plan of the Parliament of Georgia for 2022-2024, more particularly:

• Conduct needs assessment/baseline study of the Parliament of Georgia
• Provide a mini-institutional review of the Parliament of Georgia
• Make an inventory of ongoing scattered reform activities and feed them into the larger picture
• Develop a results framework for the improvement of the performance of the Parliament of Georgia
• Elaborate respective monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework for the Plan.

The exercise shall ensure strong sense of ownership over the process by the Parliament. For that purpose, participatory process must be ensured through conducting intensive consultations with both internal and external stakeholders. This will include Members and staff of the Parliament, civil society and donor/international organizations.

In that regard, the Parliament will designate a Task Force that will be coordinating all the related works at the technical level; while, at the political level the process will be guided by the Speaker of the Parliament. The consultancy should be carried out in coordination with the Task Force and ensure that all the draft deliverables are shared, discussed, and agreed upon.

All documents shall be developed in English.

Payment Schedule :

Deliverable 1 - 30% of the consultancy fee

• Methodology of the Needs Assessment and Activity Plan
• Needs Assessment Report, including the Institutional Design

Deliverable 2 - 30% of the consultancy fee

• Results Framework of the Parliament of Georgia

Deliverable 3 - 40% of the consultancy fee

• Strategic Development Plan of the Parliament of Georgia
• Final report on performed activities and recommendations

Management Arrangements:

The Consultant will work closely with the national consultants and under the direct supervision of the UNDP Project Team,

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:

• Excellent intercultural, moderation, facilitation and negotiation skills
• Builds strong relationships with stakeholders, focuses on impact and result and responds positively to feedback
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities
• Ability to lead effectively, mentoring as well as conflict resolution skills
• Demonstrates strong oral communication skills
• Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure
• Proven networking, team-building, organizational and communication skills.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• Master’s Degree in law, public policy/administration, political science, business administration or related field (minimum requirement) – 8 points .

Experience:

• Ten years of experience as a policy advisor in the democratic governance field with particular focus on parliamentary development (minimum requirement) - 10 years – 10 points, from 10 to 15 yrs – additional 3 points, more than 15 yrs – additional 4 points
• Demonstrated experience (at least three assignments) in conducting needs assessment/institutional analysis of the public agencies and elaboration of the strategic development plans for the parliaments (minimum requirement) - Three assignments – 10 points , More than three assignments – additional 5 points

Language requirements:

• Excellent knowledge of English

Evaluation:

Offerors will be evaluated against a combination of technical and financial criteria provided in the below table. Technical criteria consist of a desk review and an interview. Maximum obtainable score is 100, out of which the total score for technical criteria equals to 70 points (70%) and for financial criteria 30 (30%). Technical criteria compose of desk review (40 points) and interview (30 points). Offerors not meeting any of minimum technical qualification requirements will be automatically excluded from the list of candidates for further technical evaluation. Offerors obtaining minimum 28 points as a result of the desk review (criteria 1, 2 and 3) will be short listed and invited for an interview. Offerors obtaining minimum of 21 points as a result of the interview (i.e. minimum of 49 points in the technical criteria) will be considered qualified and requested to provide financial proposal for the assignment.

Financial Proposal:

Lump sum contracts. The financial proposal shall specify a total lump sum amount, and payment terms around specific and measurable (qualitative and quantitative) deliverables (i.e. whether payments fall in installments or upon completion of the entire contract). Payments are based upon output, i.e. upon delivery of the services specified in the TOR. In order to assist the requesting unit in the comparison of financial proposals, the financial proposal will include a breakdown of this lump sum amount.