Republic of Moldova

SCBM/INTERNATIONAL CONSULTANT to guide and coordinate the development of statistical toolkit and methodology for household budget survey on the left bank of the Nistru River

Vacancy Number: Pr17/01616

Location:	Chisinau, Moldova
Application Deadline:	04 Sep 2017, 23:59 (GMT+2:00)
Application Extended deadline:	12 Sep 2017, 16:00 (GMT+2:00)
Type of Contract:	Individual Contract
Starting date:	18 Sep 2017
Reference to the project:	Support to Confidence Building Measures
Expected Duration of Assignment:	September 2017-March 2018, estimated workload: up to 35 working days
Submission Instructions: Proposals should be submitted online by pressing the "Apply Now" button no later than 04 September 2017. Requests for clarification only must be sent by standard electronic communication to the following e-mail: aurelia.spataru@undp.org. UNDP will respond by standard electronic mail and will send written copies of the response, including an explanation of the query without identifying the source of inquiry, to all applicants. This vacancy announcement can also be found here.
Supporting Documents: Terms of Reference Individual Consultant Procurement Notice Offeror's Letter confirming Interest and Availability Personal History Form (P11) UNDP General Conditions of Individual Contract

Background

The SCBM Programme aims to support the skills development and improve capacity of statisticians from both banks of the Nistru River to produce accurate and reliable statistical data, complying with international standards and best practices. Also, it contributes to enhancing of data users’ abilities to make best use of available statistical information, fostering the dialogue and future partnerships between the communities of data experts on both banks. An additional incentive for such an effort would be the growing demand of qualitative data on behalf of local and international data users which are necessary to describe the current status of affairs in different fields of activity and sectors, to identify the occurring shortcomings and prevent potential factors of risk, to design the needed measures and governance decisions.

Under the current assignment, the Programme aims to respond to the request of statisticians from the left bank of the Nistru River regarding the launch of preparatory works for developing the tools and methodological materials compliant with international standards, necessary for gradual implementation of the household budget survey on the left bank of the Nistru River.

One of the topics of cooperation and development support by the SCBM Programme in the statistics area represents the statistical Household Budget Survey (HBS) which is lacking on the left bank of the Nistru River (HBS has not been conducted there since 2002) and is well-functioning on the right bank on a

continuous basis.

On the right bank of the Nistru, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of the Republic of Moldova is conducting two continuous surveys - Labour Force and Household Budget Surveys[1] – which are regularly funded from the annual public budget of the institution. The HBS conducted since 1997, currently suffers from high level of non-response^[2] and continuous efforts are made to reduce this problem.

As it regards the left bank of Nistru, all the official statistics produced by the region’s specialised statistical service (with the involvement of its 7 territorial statistical units) is based on the administrative and business reporting[3]. The regular statistical surveys involving the population and the households are totally missing from the local statistical system. Nevertheless, the Transnisrian region[4] has first ever participated in the fourth round of MICS[5] (data collected during September-November 2013) which has been carried out through a local NGO and with the participation of the specialists from the statistical service. Also, the latest Population Census has been carried out on the left bank in 2015 and the preliminary results were recently disseminated[6]. Its results might serve as a solid basis for future sampling activities.

With this status of affairs in the area of statistics, the stringent need for a Household Budget Survey is acknowledged by the local specialists on the left bank of Nistru as a distinct data source on the wellbeing of the population and a solid evidence for region’s policies on social-economic development. It would help to collect monetary data and the qualitative perception of the household. Besides the expenses per se, the survey might also collect information about non-monetary consumption (such as food produced for own consumption), household resources which include individual income (wages, independent earned income, etc.) and revenue received by the household as a whole (benefits, transfers between households, etc.).

The work on this topic has been started with a capacity building activity for the statisticians from Tiraspol and other towns on the left bank was undertaken by the SCBM Programme in December 2016 including the familiarisation with the concept and methodology of the Household Budget Survey, its advantages, as well as international best practice and experience on production of social statistics. Also, a roadmap has been drafted to guide the follow-up actions on design, development and implementation of HBS on the left bank of Nistru.

 

Scope of work

Under the current assignment, the EU-UNDP Support to Confidence Building Programme is to hire an International Consultant to provide overall guidance and expert support to UNDP Moldova and its implementing partners (especially the statistical service in Tiraspol, national technical consultant/s, sampling and other experts) for the methodological set-up and organisation of a household budget survey on the left bank of the Nistru river.

The scope of the Consultant’s work is to:

1. provide expert advice in drafting of HBS methodological framework and survey’s toolkit, as well as their quality assurance in compliance with international and EU requirements in the respective field;
2. contribute with own inputs for the required materials and outputs required for the successful preparation and organisation of the HBS survey (by the envisaged stages – planning, organisation of field work and preparations for data collection) on the left bank of Nistru river;
3. guide the work of other resource specialists (on methodology and on sampling) involved in the HBS preparation process and ensure expert re/view on appropriateness of preparation activities undertaken by the implementing partners;
4. significantly contribute to raising the public awareness (through communication, lobbing, debriefing, etc.) on the importance and utility of the HBS and information resulted from it, its applicability for the policy-making and general society needs.

The Consultant will provide expertise and support, throughout the survey planning and methodological set-up, based on his/her deep knowledge of international/EU standards and best practices, own practical experience on their application, as well as documents and resources made available by the Programme’s counterparts.

The International Consultant will perform a team work together with a national consultant (to second the development of HBS toolkit and its testing) and one international consultant, to be hired by WHO, who will develop only health module to be included in the future HBS on the left bank of Nistru.

For detailed information, please refer to Annex 1 – Terms of Reference.

Requirements for experience

 Academic Qualifications:

• Advanced university degree (Master’s or equivalent) in statistics, economics, social science and/or other science related to areas relevant for the assignment;
• Other formal education relevant for the assignment (confirmed by certificates);

 Years of experience:

• At least 10 years of relevant professional experience (expertise, management position, consultancy, advising, etc.) in statistics (preferably official/Government statistics system), with candidate/s country/ies to join the European Union community;
• At least 5 records of practical experience in organisation and implementation of statistical surveys on social and economic phenomena for the purpose of official statistics (design of statistical concepts, definitions, methodologies, sampling, questionnaires, statistical analysis); [confirming documents will be mandatory provided with clear specification of the topics of surveys and description of applicant’s involvement]
• At least 5 records of practical experience in conducting training of statisticians in the social sector and public presentation skills (having regard to the participation in numerous national and international meetings);
• Experience of work with international organizations/projects, including UN and/or European ones;
• Proven experience in collaboration with public institutions and service providers (incl. multi-stakeholders), in particular in the areas relevant to the assignment, in Central and Eastern Europe and CIS;

Competencies:

• Deep knowledge of international/European standards, legislation and best practices, terminology and definitions used in the European Statistical System in the field of social, welfare and living conditions statistics (confirmed by experience records in EU member, candidate or potential candidate countries);
• Knowledge of the development context in the Republic of Moldova and/or the left bank of the Nistru River;
• Strong analytical, writing and training skills;
• Excellent written and spoken English;
• Knowledge of Russian and/or Romanian will be an asset;

Personal Qualities and other requirements:

• Good interpersonal skills, solid judgment/decision making, initiative and creativity;
• Ability to analyse, plan, communicate effectively orally and in writing, draft reports, organize and meet expected results, adapt to different environments (cultural, economic, political and social);
• Proven commitment to the core values of the United Nations, in particular, respecting differences of culture, gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, language, age, HIV status, disability, and sexual orientation, or other status.

The UN Moldova is committed to workforce diversity. Women and men, persons with different types of disabilities, LGBT, Roma and other ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities, persons living with HIV, as well as refugees and other non‐citizens legally entitled to work in the Republic of Moldova, are particularly encouraged to apply.

Documents to be included

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

1. Proposal explaining how applicant responds to each of the qualification requirements and why he/she is the most suitable for the work.Provide a brief methodology on how they will approach and conduct the work.

2. Financial proposal - in USD, specifying a total lump sum amount and the number of anticipated working days.

3. Personal information (as a detailed CV or as a Personal History Form /P11) including records on past experience in similar projects/assignments and concrete outputs obtained, and at least 3 references.

4. Documents that confirm Applicant’s records of practical experience in organisation and implementation of statistical surveys for defining and measuring social and economic phenomena (copies or links to documents with statistical concepts, definitions, methodologies, sampling, questionnaires, statistical analysis – developed by the Applicant).

Financial proposal

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). The payment for services provided by the Contractor under the SCBM Programme will be made post factum on a lump-sum deliverables basis, as per contract, after the work has been accepted by the SCBM Programme Manager. In order to assist the requesting unit in the comparison of offers, the financial proposal will include a breakdown of this lump sum amount (including fee per day, travel, per diem, mobile phone costs, number of anticipated working days, etc.).

Travel

The consultant is expected to carry out field research, training activities and discussions with Programme’s stakeholders that would involve travel across the river, and should budget for it accordingly. At least 3 missions (5 days each) to Moldova are envisaged (by airplane), including round trips to Tiraspol (about 70 km distance from Chisinau to Tiraspol).

All envisaged travel costs must be included in the financial proposal. This includes all travel to join duty station/repatriation travel. In general, UNDP should not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources.

In the case of unforeseeable travel, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between the respective business unit and Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed.

 

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