Short Term Technical Assistance
(STTA)

TITLE:                         Short Term Technical Assistance (STTA)

PROJECT:                  USAID Punjab Enabling Environment Project (PEEP)

Assignment:        Short Term Consultant for Capacity Assessment of Local Organizations Receiving USG- Supported Capacity Building End Line OCA Evaluation

Classification: Local Short-Term Technical Assistance (STTA)

General Summary and Background

USAID Punjab Enabling Environment Project (PEEP) is a $19.98 million, seven-year effort to assist the Government of Punjab in improving the business environment for the horticulture, livestock, and dairy subsectors. PEEP’s interventions are designed to improve the business environment by supporting policy and regulatory reforms through private sector-led advocacy. These reforms are expected to spur new investments and employment opportunities in the targeted sub-sectors. The objective of the project is to leverage private sector investment through business enabling environment reforms and institutional capacity building of relevant stakeholders.

PEEP is assisting the Government of Punjab’s (GoPb) initiatives for policy and regulatory reforms through technical assistance and engaging the private sector for industry-led advocacy for policy reforms and implementation to ensure an improved business enabling environment. PEEP is also providing technical assistance to strengthen capacity of institutions serving the private sector, and working in partnership with the public sector, private sector, civil society organizations and academia to create an environment that is more conducive to the growth of target sub-sectors.

To develop a business enabling environment, policy and institutional reforms are one of the pre-requisite. Such reforms are unlikely to be either successful or sustainable without private sector, public sector and academia’s active participation. They can facilitate the development and implementation of policy work by data collection / information gathering, creating new knowledge through research that could serve as input to policy and advocacy work as well as to facilitate investment in the sector.

With this objective, USAID PEEP aimed to develop the capacity of selected private, public, academic institutions, sector associations and business organizations through technical assistance and/or grants. PEEP provided in-kind grants to Dera Ghazi Khan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DGKCCI) and Mundri Sheep Breeders Welfare Society (MSBWS) in Dear Ghazi Khan. A pre-assessment was conducted for these organizations using Organizational Capacity Assessment (OCA) tool in March 2020 before the start of the grant. PEEP aims to conduct post-assessment of these organizations using the same OCA tool to find out any improvements made in these organizations. For this purpose, the services of a consultant are required to undertake the post-assessment of the capacity of these organizations, to identify the current status of their performance with respect to their mandate and best practices using the parameters of OCA tools.

Scope of Work Summary and Objectives

The overall objective of this assignment is to carry out the post-assessment for two PEEP assisted organizations to assess their current OCA score as a measure in their service delivery and outreach. The required consultant will conduct a post-assessment of their capacities in human resources, physical resources, management system, and delivery system of each organization to calculate the OCA score of these organizations.

The other objective is to measure whether USG-funded capacity development efforts have led to improved organizational performance in organizations receiving organizational capacity development support.

The results of the post assessment will be used towards following two indicators:

Indicator # 7: Percent of local organizations receiving USG-supported capacity building assistance that have improved their score for organizational capacity using the Organizational Capacity Assessment (OCA) Tool and

Indicator #12: PPR CBLD-9. Percent of USG-assisted organizations with improved performance

Principal Tasks and Responsibilities

The consultant will undertake the following specific tasks:

• Conduct a background review of PEEP documents relevant to the target organizations including but not limited to the project scope document, relevant sections of annual work plan, issued RFA, and concept note of the grants etc. to gauge the nature of work of the organizations.
• Review the ongoing and completed projects/papers, especially related to policy issues, to have a fair idea of the nature of the work, undertaken by the organizations.
• Meet with PEEP project’s COP, respective professionals of PEEP including Human and Institutional Capacity Development (HICD) Specialist, Grants and M&E teams. The Consultant is also desired to meet with respective members of the organizations, relevant public sector officials and other concerned stakeholders to understand the type of work the organization is performing.
• Work in close coordination with organizations for post-assessment of their organizational capacity, for effective service delivery to their members and to assume roles in line with the best practices.
• Fill the capacity assessment structured tool already developed by PEEP, with a quantifiable scale, and submit a report comprised of current capacity assessment results.
• Establish the performance scorecard in the perspective of employees and organizational capacity, internal processes, customer, constituents and stakeholders.

Specific Tasks of the Consultant

The assignment will be carried out in four major steps:

1. Desk work, for reviewing the relevant documents and literature of PEEP and target organizations as well as meeting with PEEP personnel.
2. Meetings with office bearers of the organizations and review of their systems and processes to assess their management and service delivery system.
3. Field visit for data collection from the organizations using OCA tool and to meet members of organizations, beneficiaries of the organizations (if any) and other stakeholders, and physically observing the ongoing and completed activities of the organizations.
4. Report writing.

OCA Tool for use to assess organizations

Keeping in view international best practices of the role and performance of organizations, PEEP developed an assessment tool, with quantifiable scale under USAID guidelines of HICD, to assess the capacity of the organizations. The consultant is required to go through the capacity assessment tool to develop its understanding in consultation with HICD Specialist and M&E Specialist of PEEP.

The tool encompasses the following areas:

• Knowledge, skills, professional experience, competency, motives and capability of leadership and management of organizations.
• System and processes in place, for information collection, information dissemination, and service delivery.
• Local, regional or national level advocacy system and mechanism for watching members’ interest and conveying members’ voice to various relevant forums involved in policy and decision making.
• Current physical and human resources, and gaps therein for effective performance.
• Local and international linkages available that can provide technical inputs/ backstopping for its regular operations.
• Capacity to write funding proposals, to get funding from development agencies / donors.
• Potential for generating revenue for sustainable operations, by members’ fee or by offering scalable / commercial services.
• Capacity of project management, human resource management, financial management, procurement system, and monitoring and evaluation of interventions.

PEEP requires that the consultant to use the above-mentioned OCA tool to assess the organizations for their post assessment to measure the score for organizational capacity. The consultant is required to fill the above capacity assessment tool, after physically examining the various systems / processes of the target organizations, and meeting with executives and stakeholders of the organizations.

Apart from the OCA tool for indicator #7, the consultant will also measure the results using the following formula for indicator # 12:
Numerator = number of organizations with improved performance
Denominator = number of USG-assisted organizations receiving organizational capacity development support

Consultant is also required to write a report comprising the following parts:

• Analyze the findings of the post-assessment results and measure the OCA score of the organizations.
• Compare the pre and post-assessment and identify the capacity improvements made considering the national and international best practices.
• In consideration of findings of pre and post capacity assessment, suggest performance improvement packages for each organization.

Deliverables and Timetable

Deliver the following under this assignment as per schedule of deliverables below:

Qualifications:

• Master’s degree from a recognized university in a related field, preferably in Economics, Public Policy, or Development Studies.
• Experience working for USAID-funded programs.
• Demonstrated knowledge of USAID’s OCA tools.
• Demonstrated knowledge of USAID management systems, regulations and reporting requirements.
• Be creative and flexible.
• Strong coordination skills and interpersonal/communications skills.
• Familiarity with capacity building on an individual and institutional level.
• Fluency in written and spoken English and Urdu.
• At least eight years of professional experience with institutional capacity development and capacity needs assessment at the national and international levels.

Working Conditions/Duration of Assignment

The consultant will report to M&E Specialist USAID-PEEP for his work. All the deliverables will be approved by M&E Specialist PEEP as well as HICD Specialist PEEP.

This assignment term is on/about October 1^st – 31^st 2020, with an LOE of 10 person days. The duty station for this consultancy is Lahore, but travelling to various districts of Punjab is required.