Procurement Notices

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus or COVID-19 as a global pandemic. In the Philippines, many parts of the country were placed under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) five days after WHO’s announcement, with several regions still under modified versions of restriction. What began as a health crisis quickly cascaded into a socioeconomic crisis, as productivity and livelihoods, particularly those of the most vulnerable, underwent unprecedented rates of decline. The good progress the Philippines had made toward the SDGs is now at risk of regression.

In response to this situation, the UNDP Philippine Country Office launched the Pintig Lab – a multi-stakeholder network of physicians, economists, and data scientists tasked with providing the government with data-driven systems and policy insights to help inform COVID-19 response and recovery strategy. With the country entering the ‘new normal’, the national and local governments alike need data-driven guidance to balance health and socioeconomic risks until the crisis is abated and monitor closely recovery trends to ensure swift and sustainable pathways are followed. It is also critical that businesses are aware of the most likely strategies to be adopted by National Government (NG) and Local Government Units (LGUs) to develop their business continuity plans. The Pintig Lab is providing support on two major fronts:

Response: With vaccine deployment underway, the National Task Force has requested assistance from the UN to accelerate the development of an interim IT infrastructure to facilitate vaccine registrants, stock management, as well as alpha dashboards.

Recovery: One platform that has been central to providing epidemiological projections to the national government is FASSSTER (Feasibility Analysis of Syndromic Surveillance Using Spatio-Temporal Epidemiological Modeler For Early Detection of Diseases), developed by a consortium of academics and data scientists working with the Department of Health (DOH) and the Department of Science and Technology - Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (DOST-PCHRD). While it was originally used for creating disease models and visualizing surveillance reports for ailments such as Dengue Fever, Typhoid Fever, and Measles, it has been customized for COVID-19 and has since been accredited and used by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases.

While FASSSTER represents a valuable epidemiological modelling tool, there is now a need to complement it with socioeconomic modelling for the national and local governments. The platform currently has the following dashboard categories: (a) Health, (b) Time-series Projections (i.e., COVID-19 cases, hospital requirements, testing requirements, and community system requirements), (c) Health Capacity, (d) Socioeconomic Risk Classifications, and (e) Security Index. The first three categories are the most developed, containing ten (10), six (6), and two (2) dashboards with key metrics, charts, and map visualizations based on real-time information and modeling results. It is envisioned that a rich set of dashboards will also be developed for the socioeconomic category, containing key metrics, projections, and visualizations that will provide the national government and LGUs with the ability to diagnose and anticipate issues and guide their response and recovery plans.

In order to support greater evidence-based policies and programming for socioeconomic recovery at all government levels, there is a need to further enrich the socioeconomic data available on the FASSSTER platform by adding existing datasets from various government offices and also non-traditional datasets from the private sector. There is also a need to ensure that datasets are integrated well and that the platform design is useable for both NGAs and LGUs. Moreover, it must be ensured that data standards and data privacy rules are met. These efforts will lead to better program and policy design, monitoring and evaluation, and tracking progress towards the SDGs at national and local government.

This Terms of Reference (TOR) calls for an Individual Consultant (IC) who will I) support the design and engineering of an interim architecture for vaccine information system, as well as design and engineer the addition and integration of relevant traditional and non-traditional datasets that would be crucial in planning and monitoring socioeconomic recovery.

Institutional Arrangement

1. The Consultant shall directly report to the Pintig Lab Project Manager but is expected to collaborate closely with the key members of the IAT and Pintig Lab, Ateneo de Manila University FASSSTER team, and other UNDP consultants.
2. UNDP Philippines shall be entitled to intellectual property and other proprietary rights over all materials that have direct relation to the project.
3. The Consultant is expected to have its own working premises, ICT equipment, internet connectivity, and cloud hosting, among others. This work shall be done on a work from home basis and should be within the COVID-19 national and local quarantine guidelines and protocols. As such, logistical support will not be provided by the UNDP. If needed, UNDP may provide coordination support in terms of introductory meetings with key partners.

Expected Duration of the Contract

The Consultant shall perform the above works within 106 working days spread over a period of 7 months beginning May 2021 until 30 November 2021.

Submission of accomplishment reports and all required documentation should be submitted at least 10 working days before the due date for the review, approval and acceptance of reports. The estimated lead time for UNDP or Project Implementing Partners to review outputs, give comments, and certify approval/acceptance of outputs, etc. is 10 working days.

Duty Station

The contactor should be based in Luzon and may report to UNDP Country Office in Mandaluyong for meetings, but considering the COVID-19 pandemic and declaration of State of Public Health Emergency in the Philippines, all work of the Individual Consultant shall be on a work from home arrangement and should be within the guidelines and protocols set by the local and national government. This work shall be performed remotely. Once the community quarantine restrictions are eased, UNDP and the Individual Consultant shall assess if it is safe and necessary to have in-person meetings and activities.

The contractor is required to be available daily while on a ‘Work from Home’ arrangement but should  report to UNDP office thrice a  week when situation gets normal. All travels and visits to government’s agencies and project partners for exploratory consultations and data gathering should be approved  by UNDP.

Scope of Price Proposal and Schedule of Payment

1. The Consultant should send the financial proposal based on a lump-sum amount for the delivery of the outputs identified below. The total amount quoted shall be “all inclusive” all costs (professional fees, medical insurance, communications, etc.) that could possibly be incurred by the Consultant should be factored into the final amount submitted in the proposal. Travel, as deemed relevant by UNDP, will be arranged by UNDP, following UNDP Financial Rules and Regulations.
2. Medical/health insurance must be purchased by the individual at his/her own expense, and upon award of contract, the consultant must be ready to submit proof of insurance valid during contract duration.
3. The contract price will be fixed output-based price. Any deviations from the output and timelines will be agreed upon between the Consultant and the Pintig Lab Project Manager.
4. Payments will be done upon satisfactory completion of the delivery by target due dates. Outputs will be certified by the Pintig Lab Project Manager, prior to release of payments.

Scope of Work and Outputs

1. The IC will be responsible for exploration and identification of datasets that should be included in the FASSSTER platform. This would involve coordination with DICT, DILG, DOH, NEDA, IATF, DSWD, NDRRMC, PSA, and other government offices.
2. The IC will ensure that all datasets are integrated into a common data platform accessible by FASSSTER and ensure that all data links needed are present and working. Data integration between different government offices, especially at the local level, should be checked as well.
3. The IC will develop and maintain data pipelines that connect the data sources to the data warehouse. He/she will also be responsible for technical documentation of the data pipeline-- including data sources, ingestion and transformation scripts, and databases.
4. The IC will do quality assurance assessments of the socioeconomic platform. He/she will ensure that data standards are followed and data privacy rules are upheld.
5. The IC will also support the design of the platform to guarantee its usability among different government offices and different levels of programming knowledge. The goal is to make the platform usable even for those who do not know code.
6. The IC will be responsible for the coordination and relationship management to acquire buy-in from government partners to integrate and share data, adopt good data governance practices, and foster data-driven decision making.
7. The IC will perform other tasks and responsibilities assigned by the Pintig Lab team, including those pertaining to vaccine deployment and internal Country Office tasks related to data engineering.

Expected Outputs and Deliverables

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 and technical competencies

• Ability to work in a diverse and multi-cultural environment;
• Self-motivated and ability to work under pressure and to meet strict and competing deadlines;
• Displays analytical judgment and demonstrated ability to handle confidential and politically sensitive issues in a responsible and mature manner;
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities

Offers will be evaluated based on the combined scoring method :

• Technical qualifications = 70%
• Financial Proposal = 30%

Interviews may be conducted for the validation of the candidate’s technical “know-how”.

If interviews will be done, the Technical evaluation will be based on the following criteria:

The review of the per CV and sample work will be based on the following criteria:

If interviews would be deemed necessary, only Offerors that will get a total of 70% from the review of CV+sample work and interview will qualify for review of financial offer.

Recommended Presentation of Offer

Interested applicants must submit at https://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_job.cfm?cur_job_id=98627 the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications. Please group them into one (1) single PDF document as the application only allows to upload of a maximum of one document.

1. Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP;
2. UNDP Personal History Form (P11) or Curriculum Vitae (following the template attached) indicating all past experiences from similar projects or requirements, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references;
3. Financial Proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided. If an Offeror is employed by an organization/company/institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate at this point and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP.

Note: The above documents need to be scanned in one file and uploaded to the online application as one document.

Interested applicants to note that personal Medical/health insurance (to be purchased by the individual at his/her own expense) is mandatory for the issuance of contracts. Upon award of the contract, the consultant must be ready to submit proof of insurance valid during the contract duration.

The following templates / Annexes and IC General Terms & Conditions can be downloaded from http://gofile.me/6xdJm/bE9TCw8fU:

• General Terms and Conditions for Individual Contract
• Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability
• P-11 form

In view of the volume of applications, UNDP receives, only shortlisted offerors will be notified.