National Consultant on Project Design – YEREVAN

UNDP Armenia office is announcing a vacancy for the job of  National Consultant on Project Design.  

For detailed information about the job and application procedure, please refer to the Procurement Notice site at https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_negotiation.cfm?nego_id=465

Important Note:

Please note that interested applicants should apply trough the Procurement  Notice site https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_negotiation.cfm?nego_id=465

Project Background 

The “Modern Parliament for a Modern Armenia” Project is designed to strengthen the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia (RA NA) in its new and fundamentally enhanced role within the governance system in carrying out its key functions – legislation, oversight, and representation. With a long-term goal of enhancing the overall effectiveness of the NA as a policy-making institution, the Project is designed to support the NA in taking advantage of modern governance tools and mechanisms with a focus on improved operational quality, transparency, and inclusiveness of parliament and enhanced parliamentary capacity for gender-responsive policymaking.

UNDP MAP Project is supporting the NA to enhance its role and functions in law-making, policymaking, and oversight, in particular:

–       Enhancing capacity in law-making, policymaking, and oversight

–       Increasing the transparency and inclusiveness of the legislature

–       Responding to the needs of constituents and strengthening interaction with them.

Within its scope of activities, the UNDP MAP Project is collaborating with the Standing Committees (SC) and the Staff of the National Assembly and supports those with analytical and research capacities, enhances their capacities through various interventions based on an approved needs analysis, which provide for improved and informed policy making with independent research expertise. Facilitation of activities identified by the SCs and the Staff through technical expertise, workshops, CSO involvement are within the context of the approved MAP Project Action Plan. Due to several extraordinary situations and contingencies, grave epidemiological, socio-economic, and tense political situation in the country during the Project implementation period from 2019 through 2022, the Project used adaptive strategies of management and adjustments in its activities. The project has received approval of extension through October 2023 and kind contribution of the missing budget portion by the Swedish donor partner – the Sida.

UNDP will further develop a concept note and a fully-fledged project proposal on supporting the National Assembly and relevant independent parliamentary bodies in Armenia, building on the success and lessons learned through the implementation of the MAP project

To ensure effective preparation of the relevant documents, UNDP will mobilize a short-term consultancy to support project design activities

Objective of the Assignment

The engagement of a consultant with sound expertise in project design, capacity building, socio-economic development, and parliament support is expected to reinforce the efforts of the UNDP Armenia Country Office to support transformative changes in the Armenian governance sector and resilience to the crisis by the development of a project proposal for UNDP interventions. This will allow for more strategic and coherent support to the Government of Armenia in line with the country’s long-term development objectives, peacebuilding, and parliamentary democracy strengthening strategies. The expected result is improved operational quality, transparency, and inclusiveness of the Armenian parliament and enhanced parliamentary capacity for gender-responsive policymaking leading to the enhanced role of the National Assembly in the governance system and effective implementation of the key functions of the parliament (legislation, oversight, representation, and debate).

Scope of Work:

1.Strategic guidance and advice for the implementation of the initiatives on strengthening parliamentary democracy and relevant institutional capacities.

• Advise UNDP CO on strategies and response to ongoing parliamentary reforms and challenges in business continuation provision, proper change management and capacity building initiatives, as well as structural, functional, and procedural reform. The initiatives shall be in line with the overall mainstream of reforms towards transformative and modern parliament through digital transformation, inclusion, and more effective and efficient management of resources, as well as potential public-private partnership opportunities.
• Develop and shape programming approach with specific focus on the role of oversight and independent bodies reporting to the parliament. Conduct assessment of gaps hindering effective utilization of the reports delivered by these bodies to the parliament for fulfilling its oversight function. Develop strategies and interventions aimed at improving the reporting to the parliament and enhancing checks and balances across the government in Armenia.
• Develop strategies and interventions for strengthening capacities of the National Assembly of RA, the Audit Chamber of RA and other independent bodies to enhance accountability, public finance management and budgeting, programme and gender budgeting processes and expenditure reporting vis-à-vis policy commitments and approved budgets.
• Develop strategies and interventions to further sensitize the National Assembly in gender equality and social inclusion as a law-making institution, and to enhance gender-responsiveness of the parliament and independent bodies reporting to the parliament.
• Develop strategies and interventions to strengthen the outreach and civic education and training aimed at wider public engagement and participation in parliamentary democracy processes.
• Consolidate more strategic and sustainable support to the National Assembly of RA in line with the country’s long-term development objectives and the further waves of development of parliamentary democracy in Armenia.
• Identify entry points to achieve short, medium, and long- term results to produce tangible improvements in operational quality, transparency, and inclusiveness of the Armenian parliament and enhanced parliamentary capacity for gender-responsive policymaking, as well as enhanced role of the parliament in the governance system and effective implementation of its key functions with UNDP support.
• Develop a strong basis for widening the scope of UNDP support in the field of strengthening parliamentary democracy and independent bodies, oversight functions and constituency relations and develop strategies to ensure that UNDP interventions are achieving impact.

2.Strategic planning and results framework of the new MAP Project:

• Provide advice and guidance for the strategic planning of the new parliamentary development support project, relevant interventions, ensuring integration with the country programme priorities.
• Support the work of the UNDP Democratic Governance Programme Analyst / Team Leader and their team in responsibility.
• Develop and validate a project proposal in parliamentary development (using relevant concept note and project document formats). The project proposal should largely consider the strategic documents and ongoing reforms in the National Assembly, and the independent oversight bodies such as the Audit Chamber of RA, Commission on TV and Radio of RA, Corruption Prevention Commission of RA and other independent bodies affiliated with the parliamentary oversight and be based on the human rights and gender equality principles.
• The project concept note should include the at least following components:
  • Summary of the project (title of the project, objectives of the project, target groups, final beneficiaries, project outcome and outputs, main activities, location, total duration, requested donor contribution).
  • Description of the project (should describe the process of preparation of the project proposal, objectives, detailed results at outcome and output levels with performance indicators, key assumptions and risks, key activities, project implementation mechanisms, cross-cutting issues.
  • Relevance of the project to SDGs and the objectives/sectors/themes/specific priorities of the relevant donors’ strategies (e.g., EU’s Multiannual Indicative Programme 2021-2027 for Armenia).
  • Relevance to the particular needs and constraints of the country and relevant sectors (including major strategies for reforms in target area, government’s program, complementarity with other initiatives supported by other donors).
  • Relevance to the needs and constraints of target groups (the National Assembly of RA, independent bodies, CSOs, etc.) and final beneficiaries (citizens, women and men, youth), as well as the project approach to addresses these needs.
  • Added value elements.
• The project proposal should further include at least the following:
  • Executive summary (brief rationale, objectives and key results, main activities and methodology, target groups, final beneficiaries, total duration, total budget).
  • Development challenge (vis-à-vis the relevance as described in the project concept note).
  • Strategy (pillars: how the project addresses the development challenge, guiding principles, capacity development, coordination and cooperation, strategic partnerships, national ownership, UNDP as an expert organization, description of the multilateral landscape in which the action will take place (i.e. who are the main multilateral actors and their involvement in the country/context), alignment with multilateral frameworks (i.e. the policies, strategies and resolutions etc. of multilateral institutions), cooperation/synergies with other multilateral institutions, partner(s), conflict sensitivity and do no harm approach, gender, age and diversity, gender mainstreaming, climate responsiveness, synergy with UNDPs other interventions, ongoing and planned activities in the area, promoting innovation, fundraising, communicating and raising visibility of donors).
  • Results (theory of change, results framework (including alignment with UNSDCF and UNDP CPD, results chain, performance indicators with baselines and targets, data sources, key assumptions, and critical risks), activities and methodologies).
  • Governance and management arrangements (project management board, project organizational structure, project implementation plan (including activities, responsible parties, milestones), project location and team, costing, monitoring and evaluation methods and detailed plan, and project risk register.
• The project main target groups shall include the National Assembly of RA and intra-parliament institutions, as well independent parliamentary oversight bodies (Audit Chamber of RA, Commission on TV and Radio of RA, Corruption Prevention Commission of RA, Prosecutor General’s Office, Human Right Defender’s office, Central Bank of Armenia, Central Electoral Commission of RA, Constitutional Court of RA, Cassation Court of RA, and Supreme Judicial Council of RA). The project framework should indicate how UNDP will strengthen the parliamentary oversight supporting the above-mentioned institutions directly (through the new project) or through other projects under UNDP Democratic Governance Programme (e.g., the support to Judicial Reforms and HRDO is delivered through an ongoing project, the support to CEC is delivered through UNDP’s electoral assistance projects, etc.).
• Develop detailed project budget including at least the following: expected outcomes, expected outputs, key activities, planned total budget and budget for the first 12 months with detailed budget description (including units, number of units, and unit costs with justifications).

3.Resource mobilization and partnerships across parliamentary democracy:

• Engage in a dialogue with development partners and donors, identify funding opportunities and endeavor to ensure sufficient resource mobilization for the new parliamentary development project.
• Support UNDP efforts for resource mobilization for parliamentary reforms.
• Coordinate programme activities with other UNDP initiatives, as well as other United Nations agencies, donors, and other international partners, to develop inter-agency synergies and build complementarities with other programs.