Consultancy to Develop National Research Repository for Zambia

UNICEF has now issued a Request for Proposals in order to select a supplier for the provision of consultancy services to Develop National Research Repository BACKGROUND The Government of the Republic of Zambia is placing increasing emphasis on data and evidence for use in planning, resource allocation and implementation of national development policies and programmes. This was evident in the development of the 8th National Development Plan and other downstream line ministry planning processes. The Ministry of National Development and Planning (MoFNP) uses evidence to set development priorities by identifying effective financing and implementation modalities to ensure achievement of intended development results. Analysis of the country’s research and evaluation ecosystem, however, reveals significant data gaps. Ministry of Finance and National Planning, with support by UNICEF, hosted a stakeholder workshop in 2022 to identify and agree on gaps and solutions. One of the biggest gaps identified in the data and research ecosystem is non-accessibility of data and research outputs for decision making by policy makers and advocacy institutions. There is a lack of coordination and linkage among key research stakeholders as demonstrated by fragmentation in the flow of data and research and evaluation outputs in the knowledge ecosystem. Stakeholders work in silos in the production and dissemination of evidence, which leads to both the underutilisation of already existing research and evaluation evidence, and the duplication of work. Further, while a few institutions have repositories that are open, there is currently no online platform to coordinate open access research outputs at national level, hence limiting accessibility of both data and research and evaluation products to users. As a result, we are recruiting an institutional contractor to conduct a data and evidence workflow, culminating in a research repository. Objective of Consultancy The overall objective of the consultancy is to design and develop a web-based knowledge sharing platform that will leverage on existing institutional repositories to upload and share research outputs to enhance knowledge dissemination and evidence-based decision-making in Zambia. To develop ZaRR, the institution will undertake a scoping exercise of the research environment in the country to ascertain key stakeholders in the research ecosystem, assess the types of research outputs and how they are disseminated, establish which institutions have existing repositories and make recommendations on how they can be coordinated to enhance research access and utilisation through a national research repository. The institution will also recommend administrative roles and responsibilities of key institutions in ZaRR, and conduct capacity building of the administrative staff identified NOTE This tender will be run through the UNICEF e-submissions system. By clicking on the blue ‘Express Interest’ button in the UNGM tender notice, the full UNICEF e-submission system instructions to bidders document (including instructions on how to access the tender documents and submit an Offer) will be automatically emailed to the ‘contact persons’ included in your UNGM registration. Alternatively, the full UNICEF e-submission system instructions to bidders document is publicly available on the UNICEF supply internet pages here: https://www.unicef.org/supply/index_procurement_policies.html . In the tender management site, if you navigate to the documents tab and opt in to confirm your intention to submit a Bid – you will then see the mandatory placeholders for documents that must be attached prior to submitting your Offer (you will also see if there are any mandatory questionnaires to complete). As such, you are recommended to `opt in` well before the submission deadline so you are clear exactly what documents are required to be uploaded prior to completing your submission. Please note that in order to access the tender documentation through UNICEF’s e-submissions system, vendors must: (i) be registered with UNICEF in UNGM as a company/NGO; (ii) have successfully completed all mandatory information currently required by UNGM when registering. Please ensure that any files submitted as part of your Bid are not corrupt or damaged in any way. Please exercise particular caution when using compressed files. Any corrupt or damaged files may lead to your Bid being invalidated. All vendors are strongly recommended to regularly log in to the UNICEF e-submissions system to check for any deadline extensions, new clarifications, new correspondence or updated tender documents relating to this tender.