INTERNATIONAL CONSULTANT Terms of Reference. Development of the United Nations Public Service Awards Database. September 2013

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1 INTERNATIONAL CONSULTANT Terms of Reference Development of the United Nations Public Service Awards Database September 2013 Background The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) Division for Public Administration and Development Management (DPADM) manages the annual United Nations Public Service Awards (UNPSA) as part of its public administration capacity development mandate. DPADM has conducted the UNPSA for ten (10) years and it is the most prestigious international recognition of excellence in public service. It rewards the creative achievements and contributions of public service institutions to a more effective and responsive public administration in countries worldwide. Through the annual competition, the UNPSA promotes the role, professionalism and visibility of public service. It encourages exemplary public service and recognizes that democracy and successful governance are built on a competent civil service. In brief, the Awards aim to discover innovations in governance; reward excellence in the public sector; motivate public servants to further promote innovation; enhance professionalism in the public service; raise the image of public service; enhance trust in government; and collect and disseminate successful practices for possible replication. The UNPSA takes into consideration a geographical distribution of five regions. In order to level the playing field for nominations received from countries with varying levels of development and income, the following five regions have been established, including: Africa; Asia and the Pacific; Europe and North America; Latin America and the Caribbean; and Western Asia. Although the UNPSA has made tremendous achievements and has consistently uncovered best practices and innovative approaches in public administration, it has also experienced administrative challenges. The UNPSA is administered through a database, which is used for the submission of nominations for five categories from all over the world, used as an evaluation tool for evaluators of the nominations in a threelayered evaluation process, communicating results of the evaluation at the various stages to nominees and is used as a portal for keeping records of all the nominations made for UNPSA every year. The programme has faced a number of operational and administrative challenges due to several limitations on the database which has not been upgraded since its inception. Objective of the TOR The overall objective of the consultancy is to develop a new UNPSA database with improved functionalities and migrate existing information to the new database. The following operational aspects will be added to the existing functionalities:

2 2.1. General improvements Submission of Nominations Make compulsory completion of questionnaire to avoid blank submissions in future Ensure that the submission forms takes only the required number of words per question (at the moment the database is unable to enforce this limitation and certain nominations have had over 900-word answers to questions that have a limit of 500 words Enable nominees who forgot their passwords to set new passwords through an authenticated resetting process e.g. links to change passwords to go to their s or security questions to be answered Language capabilities The database is not compatible with Arabic style of writing although the UNPSA takes nominations in all official languages of the UN and this function has to be enabled Access to Database by different people The database is used for many tasks that include administering the UNPSA, evaluating the nominations, research by academics and in-house analysis by DPADM/DESA staff. Different levels of access to the information on record are necessary to enable different types of searches. Two types of access exist at the moment i.e. reviewer, administrator another layer of users needed only to access case documents and not full database without having to create reviewer accounts for research purposes. Where possible, CEPA UNPSA Subcommittee members should be enabled to make comments directly on a case and other CEPA UNPSA Sub-committee members should be able to add on the comments, making the database an interactive tool for evaluation prior to the CEPA meeting Search Functions Enable search on the following: Language in which cases were submitted Nominating Agency or Person Cases assigned reviewers, active reviewers, status of review Search for cases allocated to reviewer in previous rounds to avoid checking manually on each case which evaluators have already evaluated it Work out discrepancies between reviewers score on a nomination, provide alerts for discrepancies higher than 0.3 Total number of cases to be reflected automatically for each search instead of counting manually

3 Search for cases that have supporting documents online per category and overall. Currently the administrator has to click on each document individually to check if the supporting documents are submitted Pre-screening and Evaluations Database should allow searching for case similarities based on certain variables e.g. institution names; addresses etc. Enable Administrator to change nomination to another category where it may be more relevant or a nominator has made a mistake in the category chosen The administrator has to be able to allocate many cases at a time to one or more reviewers, instead of having to allocate each case to one reviewer individually each time. The increasing number of nominations will result in a significant workload on allocating cases as each case has to be allocated twice e.g. 450 nominations to be evaluated require the administrator to allocate the cases to two reviewers with 900 clicks. Comparisons with existing projects across different UNPSA cycles, to avoid awarding a project two times e.g. search based on initiative s or institution s name, or nominating agency. Activate and Deactivate questions according to Phase 1 and Phase 2 or, create different and separate pages for questions in Phase 1 and questions in Phase 2 and just activate or deactivate function for the whole page that is not being used during the current phase. Automatic numbering of questions should automatically be adjusted as per activation, deactivation, addition or deletion of questions. Enable choosing the specific reasons for each case when the administrator updates their progress to inform nominees of the generic reasons their nomination did not progress to the next round i.e. self-nomination; incomplete form/insufficient information for evaluation; not relevant to UNPSA categories, no submission of supporting documents Retain manager and reviewer comments made during the evaluation and have an option for the administrator to enable access or withhold access to comments for different users. The comments should be available for future reference. Enable the administrator to change some of the scores that reviewers need to change without resetting the whole evaluation Submission of Supporting Documents i) There is a need to have options of type of documents to be submitted e.g. PDF, RAR, Word, Powerpoint etc.

4 ii) iii) Enable uploading of different types of files as supporting documents for the second round, including videos Capacity of documents that can be taken by the system to be indicated. Increase the capacity of documents to be uploaded and limit this for each nomination 2.4. Communication Database should allow enquiries to be loaded by applicants directly to enhance responsiveness; - responses to be loaded on specific nomination. This should also alert the administrator who can then respond directly to the enquiry on the nomination without having to copy the address to Lotus Blank messages sent to applicants when status of cases is changed Wording on updating status of cases versus messages sent out, the Administrator should be allowed to adjust and update messages that go out automatically to nominees when the status of the projects is changed Reporting The consultancy should provide two reporting modules: 1. UNPSA Administrator Reports (see section 2.5.1) 2. UNPSA Generic Reports Module (see section 2.5.2) UNPSA Administrator Reports Database should be able to generate reports graphs for each phase across different indicators e.g. number of nominations that passed or failed an evaluation per category and region and overall numbers. Reports of incoming nominations to be made possible on a period basis e.g. month of October, November etc. The database should generate reports per specific searches e.g. number of nominations for a specific country for each year and what levels those nominations reached e.g. first, second round or winner. The print function should enable reviewers or other users to print the whole nomination form and not different pages individually.

5 Examples of past graphs Graph 1: Total Number of Nominations for each year Graph 2: Geographic Representation of Nominations WESTERN ASIA 22% LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEA N 11% EUROPE & NORTH AMERICA 12% AFRICA 18% ASIA & THE PACIFIC 37%

6 Graph 3: Total Nominations Received per Category Graph 4: Results of the First Round of Evaluation UNPSA Generic Reports Module Summary This module will allow administrators to add dataset that can later be used by users (internet users) to generate bar or line graphs. The data sets can be added as excel, csv or from SQL query.

7 Functionality Adding Dataset 1. Administrator adding dataset: a. If excel or csv file i. First row represent column names. ii. All columns to take only numeric data type (integer or decimal {max 4 decimal places}) except first column which should be word. See Appendix A: Suggested Interface for more details. b. If using SQL Query, administrator to specify connecting string to the database and have query window to write his or her query. 2. The administrator, to have option of previewing the data before importing the dataset into the database. Each dataset should have a Title (Name) and an optional description and database should record date dataset created. 3. Administrator have option to mark database public (accessible to all site users) or private accessible to only registered users. 4. Administrator to have option of deleting datasets that are in database and as well making dataset available to the public or vice versa e.g. change status from public to private. Users Generating Graph 1. User to be able to select dataset from available list of datasets based on access level (Private dataset (s) accessible to only registered/ authenticated users). 2. First column of dataset by default to be selected. 3. User selects other columns (the numerical ones) that should be used when drawing the graph. The column names to be always on X-axis. 4. User have option of adding: Graph Title. 5. User to have option of indicating whether to generate: pie, clustered column (bar) or line (Trend) graph and once generate be able to toggle between the options. 6. Internet user to have Option of Exporting or Viewing the dataset. 7. We should also have a way where all the reports (Queries) that were previously run to generate the graphs are kept in the system so that each dataset can have list of most generated graphs. Note: - Values that are null in imported data to be written as zero to dataset. - Dataset always sorted alphabetically on first column. - If using SQL query, it will be nice to have option to parse the query before running it. - Column names can have at least one character and could be either be: a word, numbers or hyphenated words e.g. The following are valid column names: Years, 2010, Post-Conflict or Post Imported excel file to be at least Excel 2003 file format (.xls or.xlsx) - The legend or Key on graph to be automatically generated.

8 Appendix A: Suggested Interface: Step 1: Import Dataset Upload Excel or csv file: Or Data from SQL Query SQL Server: undesa\dpadmserver SQL Login Name: admin SQL Login Password:admin2013 Query: SELECT DISTINCT [CountryName], Count(id) As Nominations FROM unpsa.dbo.tbl_nominations WHERE [Year] = 2012 Group BY [CountryName] Above Query when previewed should CountryName Nominations Brazil 20 China 30 Germany 10 Libya 5 Sudan 10 Step 2: Preview dataset and add name and description Name Africa Asia Europe Name of Dataset*: Projected Growth Dataset Description (max 100 characters): This is a sample dataset Dataset Private or Public: Yes/ No Step 3: User Generating Graph Select Dataset from list of datasets (Use either drop down list or select one list) Select numeric columns (check boxes from list of available columns from this dataset) Add Chart Title: Development Progress Click generate Graph: Trend (Line), Clustered Column or Pie (Only if 1 numeric column selected)

9 Case 1: User had selected numeric columns: 2008, 2010, 2012 & 2014 Case 2: User had selected numeric columns: 2008, 2010, 2012 & 2014 Case 3: Use had selected 1 Numeric Column (e.g. 2008)

10 Qualifications The consultant should have over 10 years of experience in IT and database development. He/she should be fluent in the English language. Supervisor/Project Manager Sirkka Nghilundilua UNPSA Coordinator Public Administration Capacity Branch (PACB) DPADM UNDESA Tel Fax nghilundilua@un.org