Republic of Moldova

National Consultant to offer IT support to the Policy Analysis Projects’ Implementing Unit (PIU)

Vacancy Number: Pr15/00833

Location:	Chisinau, Moldova
Application Deadline:	23 Feb 2015, 23:59 (GMT+2:00)
Application Extended deadline:	08 Mar 2015, 23:59 (GMT+2:00)
Type of Contract:	Individual Contract
Starting date:	05 Mar 2015
Reference to the project:	Innovative Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Employment
Expected Duration of Assignment:	up to 63 working days during March – December 2015
Submission Instructions: Proposals should be submitted by by pressing the "Apply Now" button no later than February 23, 2015. Requests for clarification only must be sent by standard electronic communication to the following e-mail: dumitru.vasilescu@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.
Supporting Documents: Terms of Reference Individual Consultant Procurement Notice Personal History Form (P11) UNDP General Conditions of Individual Contract

Background

Over the last decade or so, the Republic of Moldova has made significant positive progress towards poverty alleviation. However, the progress is far from uniform, with growing disparities between rural and urban settlements. Recent developments indicate that the country will be meeting some of its MDG commitments, particularly in terms of poverty reduction, while will have to make additional efforts for meeting its targets in other areas, in particular health, environment, among others.

The Government of the Republic of Moldova, under its Moldova 2020 Strategy, committed to further promote economic development, support infrastructure improvements, support education sector, and improve access to finance, among others.

Under the current UNPF  (2013-2017), the United Nations committed to support the Government and people of the Republic of Moldova in the set priority areas, also pillars of the partnership framework: (a) Democratic Governance, Justice, Equality and Human Rights; (b) Human Development and Social Inclusion and (c) Environment, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management. Support is directed towards tackling major development challenges currently affecting the development of the country. However, how to prioritize such challenges? How to address such challenges in an effective and efficient manner, given the existing developmental constraints? What innovative policy and programmatic responses are there available to generate new sustainable jobs, promote employability and entrepreneurship, re-channel remittances towards productive sectors?

To provide evidence-based answers to the above and pilot interventions addressing sustainable human development and inclusive growth, UNDP Moldova aims at developing a dedicated Projects Implementing Unit that would focus on: (a) policy analysis, (b) implementation of various joint interventions that would promote entrepreneurship and employability at local level, and (c) promotion of innovations throughout joint interventions for poverty reduction and inclusive growth.

The Implementing Unit will now be structured on three interlinked components, i.e. policy analysis, employability and innovative entrepreneurship. Each component will be having specific interventions and sub-components that may be activated or deactivated depending on the corporate decision and needs of the national counterpart(s).

The policy analysis component will be in charge of: producing regular policy briefs on critical areas where evidence-based analysis is needed to identify options and policy alternatives; development of the National Human Development Reports and related analytical background papers or summaries of in-depth interviews of FG interviews; coordination of the development of national MDG reports and related analytical papers; other analytical tasks for other components in the Unit;

The employability component will contain interventions that target skilled unemployed in search for relevant employment of local market and improvement of their soft skills to search for a decent job. Such component will be also dealing with promotion of new jobs created in the entrepreneurship component and work with LPAs willing to start-up small-scale career advisory centers or connect to the existing ones.

The innovative entrepreneurship component contains interventions for the creation of Business Innovations Lab, of an Innovations fund to support business start-up and business development, financial support instruments to be managed based on UNDP rules and regulations, creation of a Innovations Matching Forum, support to selected LPAs for the revision of the local economic development plans and scaling-up of a seed-money fund to support innovative start-ups at local level.

Scope of work

The national consultant is expected to provide IT support to various interventions in PIU through:

• IT maintenance for the equipment of PIU and SYSLAB Centres in Chisinau and regions; maintenance would include IT services for installation and maintenance of hardware and software, monitoring of the functionality and update of software, functionality of networks of PCs in all SYSLAB centers (the total number of PCs to be maintained is 130 units connected in 6 networks of PCs)
• Maintenance of the www.syslab.md platform;
• Implementation of a basic training on the usage/up-date of the www.syslab.md platform for staff in PIU; the existing platform requires regular update and staff in PIU requires basic knowledge of handling the input/up-date of data on the page;
• Development of a new Web platform for the Business Innovations Lab and its regular maintenance; the new platform shall contain (a) a survey tool to collect online feedback from SMEs which will log into the platform, (b) an application tool for SMEs to apply to matching funding and (c) a matching online forum for SMEs to interact with potential investors.

Requirements for experience

Education:

• University Degree in programming or other IT related disciplines.

Experience:

• At least five (5) years of progressively responsible experience in IT area is required at the national levels (in particular network administration, maintenance hardware and software);
• Complex knowledge of WordPress/Joomla and proficiency in HTML5 and CSS3, in-depth experience with PHP programming language or similar; experience in applying MySQL or other database management system and proven experience in developing Web platforms;
• Good teamwork and communication skills.

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in both oral and written Romanian and Russian. Knowledge of English is an asset.

Documents to be included

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

1. Cover Letter: explaining why they are the most suitable for this position;
2. Provide a detailed technical proposal on how they will create and manage a web page/platform.
3. Financial proposal: in (USD, specifying a total lump sum amount and the number of anticipated working days).
4. Personal CV including past experience in similar projects and the contact details of at least 3 reference persons;

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). 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 shall include a breakdown of this lump sum amount (including fee, taxes, travel, per diems, and number of anticipated working days).

Travel

All envisaged travel costs must be included in the financial proposal. 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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