National Consultant to Conduct a Scoping Study for IDPoor Complaint Mechanism

Background

Established in 2006 within the Ministry of Planning (MoP) with technical support from GIZ, the IDpoor Programme is the official poverty targeting mechanism of the Royal Government of Cambodia in an effort to reduce poverty and promote socio-economic development in the country. Poor and vulnerable households are identified, registered, and are given an Equity Card (alas IDPoor Card) based on a proxy means testing questionnaire. Presently, the programme covers nearly 700,000 households (around 2.7 million people) or nearly 20 percent of the population. The registry is regularly updated and thanked to the recently administered “On-Demand IDpoor” component, the programme has enabled those who recently fall into poverty, including because of the Covid-19, to apply for financial assessment via their commune councils, village chief or a local NGO representative to determine eligibility for cash transfer without having to wait for the regular three-year poverty listing circle. Currently, the flagship IDpoor registry is used by numerous pro-poor targeting programmes of the government and development partners to access free healthcare and other social assistance benefits such as the Cash Transfer Programme for Poor and Vulnerable Households, Cash Transfer Programme for Pregnant Women and Children under 2, school scholarship, the Family Package Programme, and a UNDP’s Graduation-based Social Protection Pilot.

Given the increasing perceived benefits and a point of reference for various social protection programmes, the IDpoor registry also comes with some complaints especially from the citizens who did not receive an IDpoor card upon their request. Despite considerable complaints being lodged, there is neither systematic conflict resolution mechanism nor complaint recording system in place. Currently, a small group of MOP officials are responsible for answering complaints via phone, and on an ad hoc basis investigate the cases via site visit of local communities or verbally refer the complainers to relevant bodies in charge, most frequently, the commune/Sangkat officials. For this reason, the Ministry of Planning, with technical support of GIZ and UNDP, is planning to develop a digital infrastructure to strengthen the IDPoor monitoring and complaint resolution mechanism.  And in order to gather inputs to support MoP/GIZ with designing and developing an effective, citizen-centric complaint mechanism, UNDP is recruiting a national consultant to conduct a scoping study by reviewing existing complaint mechanisms at sub-national administration, conducting need assessment, and documenting perceptions and experience of the citizens concerning the IDPoor Programme and complaint handling procedures.

Duties and Responsibilities

The consultant is expected to carry out the below tasks:

• Conduct an institutional, legal and policy review to map out all existing complaints mechanisms at sub-national levels including their scope, type, how they are managed, the volume of complaints to establish a good understanding of how complaints are currently handled.

• Conduct a literature review on key components of an effective, right-based complaint mechanism including protection of whistle-blower, confidentiality, accountability, fairness and independence of complaint handling procedures.

• Document perceptions, experiences and challenges experienced by IDPoor recipients and non-recipients when filing complaints (capture experiences faced by groups of different genders, age, disability status, and other vulnerabilities) and suggestions on how the experiences can be improved.

• Conduct a need assessment of local people based on participatory approaches and consult on some possible options of user-friendly and effective complaint mechanisms with consideration of differences between gender groups, age, disability status and other vulnerabilities.

• Provide the Ministry of Planning, in consultation with key stakeholders, with recommendations on how to improve complaints

Competencies

Functional competencies:

• Excellent qualitative research ability

• Excellent report writing ability

• Ability to work collaboratively with team members by sharing information openly and displaying cultural awareness and sensitivity.

• Excellent communication skill is an advantage

• Positive and results-oriented attitude, able to meet targets/deadline

Corporate competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards. 

• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

• Treats all people fairly without favoritism.

• Fulfils all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment.

Required Skills and Experience

Education: 

• A minimum of a Master’s degree in law, economics, development studies, public policy or a similar field

Experience:

• At least 5 years of experience in legal analysis, and social protection research and coordination

• Proven experience in performing assessment related to participatory governance, with focus on voice and complaints/grievance mechanisms in similar contexts;

• Proven research/ analytical skills – Ability to write policy papers and working documents (reports/ assessments/ reviews);

• Experience in engaging with senior decision/ policymakers

• Decent knowledge of the Cambodian development context.

Language Requirement:

• Fluency in English and Khmer is required

Interested offeror must read the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice, which can be viewed at https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=83723 more detail information about term of references, instructions to offeror, and to download the documents to be submitted in the offer through online.

UNDP reserves right to reject any applications that is incomplete.

Please be informed that we don’t accept application submitted via email.

Interested Offerors are required to submit application via UNDP jobsite system as the application screening and evaluation will be done through UNDP jobsite system. Please note that UNDP jobsite system allows only one uploading of application document, so please make sure that you merge all your documents into a single file. Your online applications submission will be acknowledged where an email address has been provided. If you do not receive an email acknowledgement within 24 hours of submission, your application may not have been received. In such cases, please resubmit the application, if necessary. Please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows to upload maximum one document.

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

1. Proposal:

(i) Letter of intertest explaining why they are the most suitable for the work

(ii) A sample of work to prove excellent report writing skills

2. Financial proposal (Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP)

3. Personal CV including past experience in similar projects and at least 3 references

Any request for clarification/additional information on this procurement notice shall be communicated in writing to UNDP office or send to email pheara.lek@undp.org and cc procurement.kh@undp.org . While the Procurement Unit would endeavor to provide information expeditiously, only requests receiving at least 5 working days prior to the submission deadline will be entertained. Any delay in providing such information will not be considered as a reason for extending the submission deadline. The UNDP's response (including an explanation of the query but without identifying the source of inquiry) will be posted in Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice page as provided above. Therefore, all prospective Offerors are advised to visit the page regularly to make obtain update related to this Individual Consultant (IC).