Conducting an End of Term Evaluation project evaluation TORs

TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR CONDUCTING AN END OF TERM EVALUATION FOR THE PROJECT IMPROVING SOCIAL SERVICE DELIVERY TO CITIZENS THROUGH OPEN CONTRACTING IN UGANDA

1.0: Introduction

1.1: About AFIC

Africa Freedom of Information Centre is a pan-African membership civil society organization registered in 2007 in Nigeria and established in 2009 in Uganda. It strives to become reliable, dependable and all-round freedom of information support center on the African continent. AFIC is comprised of 40 civil society organizations and Think Tank across 21 African countries (Botswana, Cameroon, DR. Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe).

AFIC promotes access to information in Africa through comparative research, coordinating regional advocacy, facilitating information-sharing and capacity building. It promotes democratic rule and socio-economic justice for African citizens through fostering a culture of increased transparency, integrity, and accountability among governments, regional and international bodies.

1.2: About the Project.

With support from the Democratic Governance Faculty (DGF), AFIC has been implementing a project titled, Improving social service delivery to citizens through open contracting in Uganda. The project seeks to promote disclosure of public procurement information and increase citizens ‘participation in Public Procurement so as to improve social service delivery.  The project is being implemented in 6 districts of Kabale, Kanungu, Ntungamo, Mbarara, Nebbi, and Pakwatch for 18 months starting August 2018- March 2020.

The project’s overall objective: Improving social service delivery to citizens through open contracting in Uganda

Project’s outcomes

• Improved government responsiveness to citizens’ demand for public procurement information.
• Improved citizens and CSOs demand for public procurement information
• Enhanced government responsiveness towards citizens’ feedbacks on public procurement accountability issues

2.1       Purpose of the End Term Evaluation

The End Term Evaluation of the project ‘’Improving social service delivery to citizens through open contracting in Uganda ‘’is to assess and document the following;

1. Relevance: The extent to which the objectives of the project were consistent with beneficiaries’ need

1. Effectiveness: This will entail how far the project’s results have been attained, the strategies used to achieve sustainable economic empowerment of the target communities, assessment of systems and processes that enabled the organizations to contribute to the achievement of results

• Efficiency: How well the various activities have transformed the available resources into the intended results, in terms of quantity, quality and timeline Comparison should be made against what was planned.

1. Sustainability: whether positive outcomes of the program and the flow of benefits are likely to continue after external funding ends or non-funding support intervention The evaluation will make an assessment of the prospects of sustainability of benefits on the basis of the following issues: ownership of achievements; policy support and the responsibility of beneficiary institutions; institutional capacity; local government collaboration, adequacy of budgets for purpose of future phasing out prospects; and financial sustainability.

1. Lessons learned: The evaluation should also draw lessons from the experiences gained to inform future programming interventions formulations; especially areas where reorientation or change of approaches is required. Both positive and negative lessons will be equally important.

1. Documentation of Impact: This will focus on the socio-economic improvement of the lives of the target beneficiaries and will be guided by the project outcomes. The documentation should as much as possible be able to link improvements to this project.

2.2: Evaluation Questions

The evaluation will aim to answer the following questions.

• What impact has the project made regarding the improvement of social service delivery to citizens through open contracting in Uganda?
• To what extent has the project improved government responsiveness to citizens’ demand for public procurement information?
• To what extent are the civil servants proactively and reactively disclosing public procurement information in their respective governments?
• Is there increased compliance by procuring entities on the mandatory requirements for proactive disclosure of public procurement data?
• To what extent are government’s implementing recommendations for better disclosure of public procurement information
• To what extent can observed changes be attributed to the Project?
• Are there unintended impacts? If yes, what are they and to what extent can they be attributed to the project?
• What mechanisms delivered the impact? What are the key contextual features for these mechanisms?
• What lessons do we learn from the implementation of this project?
• Provide guidance and recommendations on building sustainability of the impact created.

3.0: Scope of work.

The evaluation is expected to determine the progress made towards achieving the expected results, relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of the project. The consultant is expected to capture the Key achievements and outstanding challenges during the implementation of the project, document impact and lessons learned.

3.1: Methodology.

The consultant should provide details of the methodology including details of data collection, tools for data collection, analysis and reporting that will be used for this assignment.  The study will focus primarily on the project target districts while also providing an overall view of the national situation.

A mixed methods approach integrating quantitative and qualitative methods is preferred in order to maximize the reliability of the data and quality. Sampling should be representative and data collection tools should be clear and able to capture all the areas of interest including cross-cutting areas like gender, youth, and geographical aspects.

4.0: Deliverables.

The Consultant is expected to deliver the following within the time frame agreed upon.

1. Inception report
2. Draft End of term report
3. The final end of term report
4. MS PowerPoint presentation on key findings
5. Data scripts.

5.0:  Skills and qualifications of the consultant

• The Consultant should have at least a Master’s Degree in a relevant field, with a minimum of 5 years’ experience in carrying out social impact assessments, mapping, and research.
• Demonstrable expertise on governance issues, preferably on Uganda with a track record in developing and conducting project evaluation studies.
• Previous experience working with communities using participatory methodologies
• Ability to write high quality, clear, concise study reports

6.0: Application Process.

A technical and financial proposal based on the Terms of Reference outlined above must be submitted by March 6^{th 2020} at 5pm addressed to Executive Director of AFIC.

All applications should be submitted by email to;  info@africafoicentre.org and cc to charity@africafoicentre.org , elone@africafoicentre.org and mathius@africafoicentre.org.