National Consultant (Lao Nationality) for UXO Lao Website Design and Development

Contract

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

Background

Lao PDR is, per capita, the most heavily bombed country in the world. More than forty years after the end of the 1964-1973 Indochina Conflict, unexploded ordnance (UXO) remains a major humanitarian and socio-economic challenge to the country, causing deaths and injuries, limiting access to potentially productive land and adding substantial costs to processes of development. The Government of Lao PDR has been active in the process of clearance since shortly after the conflict. Lao PDR has advocated for the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) and hosted the first Meeting of States Parties in 2010. It also embraced the UXO issue as a key development matter by locally establishing the Sustainable Development Goal 18 (SDG18), “Remove the UXO obstacle to national development”. The current National Strategic Plan for the UXO Sector in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic 2011 – 2020, “The Safe Path Forward II” (SPFII), details that the goal of the Government and its development partners over the 2011 -2020 period is to reduce the humanitarian and socio-economic threats posed by UXO to the point where the residual contamination and challenges can be adequately addressed by a sustainable national capacity fully integrated into the regular institutional set-up of the Government.

In 1996 the Government of Lao PDR established UXO Lao, the Lao national UXO programme, with support from UNDP, UNICEF, and other partners. The organization undertakes surveys to identify UXO contamination, facilitates clearance of land, assigns roving tasks to respond to UXO discovery by the public, and provides risk education activities in affected areas. UXO Lao’s national office is in Vientiane and serves provincial offices in the nine most heavily impacted provinces – Attapeu, Champasak, Huaphanh, Khammuane, Luang Prabang, Saravan, Savannakhet, Sekong, and Xiengkouang.

The National Regulatory Authority for UXO/Mine Action in Lao PDR (NRA) was established by the Government of Lao PDR in 2005 (becoming operational in 2006), with the task of coordinating, facilitating and regulating the overall management of the UXO sector in Lao PDR, including national, commercial, and humanitarian operators. The NRA leads the country’s policy formulation with regards to the UXO Sector, accredits operators, coordinates operational activities, manages information and data on UXO and manages the quality of operations in the sector. The NRA has the lead responsibility for the regulation, coordination, facilitation and oversight of all work in the UXO Sector and for ensuring that Lao PDR fulfils its legal obligations as a State Party to the CCM.

The exact extent and location of contamination in the country is currently unknown. Survey activities are underway to find UXO contamination for clearance and to establish a national baseline. Such a national baseline of contamination will allow the prioritization and management of all remaining clearance tasks. The Government of Lao PDR has, with the support of UNDP, developed the ‘From Survey to Safety’ strategy, which is a detailed plan for the completion of the first national survey of known cluster munitions contamination by the end of 2021. In 2018 alone, 218,606,241m2 of Confirmed Hazardous Areas (CHAs) were established. Between 2015 and 2018, an aggregate of more than 747,684,677 m2 of CHAs had been established, which needed to be cleared in accordance with Article IV of the CCM. The UNDP/ Government of Lao PDR UXO project “Moving towards achieving SDG 18 - Removing the UXO obstacle to Development in Lao PDR” has been designed based on the recommendations of the 2015 evaluation of UNDP’s ongoing support to the UXO sector, as well as the decision by the Government of Lao and UNDP to utilize a project modality in lieu of the Trust Fund. SGD 18 is also aligned with the Government of Lao’s 8th National Socio-Economic Development Plan (8th NSEDP), UXO Sector SPF II 2011-2020, UXO Sector 5-year plan 2016-2020 as well as national gender equality strategies and relevant international conventions and norms. All are designed to contribute to progress towards achieving the national SDG18. This project provides the programmatic and technical support necessary for the national institutions within the UXO Sector (NRA and UXO Lao), to pursue the targets set out in the UXO Sector Five Year Work Plan 2016-2020, as well as the NRA’s strategy for accelerated survey and clearance, Mine Risk Education (MRE) and Victim’s Assistance (VA) activities. Hence, it provides a sector overview of what is required to support the NRA and UXO Lao for the coming five years, irrespective of whether the support will be provided via UNDP or directly to these two institutions.

UNDP is committed to providing sector-level technical support and leadership to the NRA and UXO Lao, focusing on assisting national regulation, UXO clearance prioritization, coordination & facilitation, information management, quality management, programme management, work planning, financial management, as well as programmatic oversight and management. This is designed to assist in the developing of national capacities to oversee and steer the sector and strengthen the integration of gender-sensitive approaches. UNDP is also committed to providing resource mobilization support as requested from the Government of Lao PDR. The year 2020 will be the critical period for the UXO sector where the realization of the way forward in achieving SDG 18 will be articulated and agreed in the development of a new long-term strategy. There is also the development of the Lao PDR next NSEDP (9th), and 2020 will be the tenth anniversary of the CCM, as well as the development and finalization of the next National Strategic Plan (2021 – 2030).

The Government of Lao PDR established the Lao National UXO Organization (UXO Lao) in 1996, with support from UNDP, UNICEF and other key partners under the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare. From 2013, UXO Lao was rearranged under the Prime Minister’s Office (Office of Rural Development and Poverty Eradication) however, in November 2016, UXO Lao was transferred back to the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare. The organization undertakes surveys to identify UXO contamination, clears contaminated land, roving tasks to respond to UXO discovery by the public and essential mine risk education activities in affected areas. UXO Lao’s national office is located in Vientiane and coordinates and serves the provincial offices in nine of the most heavily impacted provinces. UXO Lao is by far the largest operator in the UXO sector in Lao PDR in terms of clearance outputs, survey activities, budget, education beneficiaries reached, and institutional size. As such, it is an influential part of the sector, and has been at the forefront of implementing a new operational concepts and methodologies. UXO Lao conducts the following key activities: • Mine Risk Education (MRE) – MRE activities aims to increase UXO awareness for people living in UXO-affected areas. MRE teams communicate the danger of UXO through various educational activities.

• Non-Technical Survey (NTS) - NTS entails reviewing all data on a village-by-village basis and consulting with as many households as possible to locate all known contamination in a specific village. • Technical Survey (TS) - TS involves operators investigating each evidence point entered into the national database using detector equipment. By surveying the land around the evidence point, the TS teams find the full extent of cluster munitions contamination in that area. When a contaminated area is confirmed, it is marked as a Confirmed Hazardous Area (CHA) and entered into the national database to be subsequently cleared. • Area Clearance (AC) - Once a CHA has been entered into the system, it is prioritized by UXO Lao for clearance. Clearance involves dedicated teams returning to the sites and ensuring all UXOs are found and destroyed to a depth usually of 25 centimeters. • Roving Clearance (RV) - roving or spot tasks involve the on-demand removal and destruction of UXOs when they are reported by villagers or survey teams.

Duties and Responsibilities

The UXO Lao Website Design and Development will need to encompass many different skills and disciplines in both the production and maintenance of the website. The diverse areas of the UXO Lao Website design will include web graphic design, interface design, authoring, user experience design and search engine optimization. Detailed research and design of the UXO Lao’s Website will have to be conducted in order to identify what works best for UXO Lao’s target audience, as the design considerations should be aligned to an informative user-type website. It should also be noted that the level of user understanding of the content of the UXO Lao Website will depend on the users understanding of how the UXO Lao Website actually works, therefore this is a fundamental component of the user experience design; it relates to layout, instructions and labeling on a website. When developing the UXO Lao Website, the approach to the design should be from a feature rich and informative point of view. Detailed below are the Website Design and Development technical requirements:

Web Design Technical Requirements

Custom web design and development with main and sub-menus (unlimited) including menu items, CMS (Word press) PHP, MYSQL CSS and JAVA Script, desktop, mobile and tablet friendly website, CMS system to support multi-language menu LAO/EN, Google Analytics setup (visitor statistics), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), contact & feedback form with captcha to prevent bot spamming, Social Network Integration, add auto-sharing the new posts’ link from website to social media (Facebook Page), add event calendar and news archive, Donation platform from website (BCEL online payment platform), Content and Menu, base form, provide website management training for UXO Lao staff, Extra Web pages; and develop a function to perform backup a whole website to local drive, with the possibility to restore when something goes wrong.

Activities / Tasks

The development of the UXO Lao Web Design will be conducted by an external contractor over a 2-month period. Included within the development, will be the training of a Nationally recruited UXO Lao Public Information Website Technician who will manage the day to day running of the site once the system is up and running. Additionally, the drafting for approval of the UXO Lao Website Manual and basic Update Procedures. The development and design of the UXO Lao Website will require a detailed stakeholder analysis to identify the full requirements, will be participatory and exploratory in terms of ensuring that there is a full understanding the UXO Lao and the Lao PDR UXO Sector, and be specifically aligned with defined deliverables of UXO Lao.

Final Deliverables

The UXO Lao Website Design and Development Deliverables • Inception report • Development of the UXO Lao website, including the built-in UXO Lao donation portal. • Formal training of the UXO Lao Web Technician in website management on how to perform content upload, website backup, version upgrade, security update, system maintenance and administration, etc. • Drafting and approval of the UXO Lao Website Manual and Operational Procedures; (Note: these being guided by the Lao PDR Ministry

Competencies

• Demonstrate the ability to create innovative and visually appealing designs
• Ability to understand users’ needs and to customize services and products accordingly, in order to provide user friendly solutions that meet user requirements
• Experience in conducting UNDP contracts is considered a strong asset;

Required Skills and Experience

? University Degree in IT, Computer Science or other related disciplines in accordance with the skills required for the position. ? Minimum of five years of practical experience in Website Design and Development, producing high-quality web-based products and services in line with the stated technical requirements. ? Proven relevant skills in website development, programming, application development and information technology.

Recommended Presentation of Offer

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualification:

1. Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided in Annex III
2. Personal CV or P11 Form, indicating all experience from similar assignments as well as personal information including age.
3. Technical proposal (maximum 3 pages), including a) a brief description of why the individual considers her/himself as the most suitable for the assignment; and b) methodology on how s/he will approach and complete the assignment.
4. Financial proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided in Annex III

OFFEROR’S LETTER

Price proposal could be quoted in LAK or US Dollar.

Incomplete proposals may not be considered.

Instructions for on-line submissions

Step 1: Please prepare all required documents electronically;

Step 2: Combine all documents in ONE SINGLE FILE (preferably in PDF, but Word format can be also accepted) and upload it to the UNDP Jobs links

Step 3: After that you will receive an auto reply from the UNDP jobs if your offer is received successfully.

Relevant Documents for Individual Contract

IC contract template & IC General Terms and Conditions _ Annex II

Female candidates and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

For more information, please visit our website under the link below

https://www.la.undp.org/content/lao_pdr/en/home/jobs.html