Jobs and Careers

COMPETITION TYPE : 

Call For Proposals

DETAIL DESCRIPTION : 

GIZ intends to award a contract to a local company for Rapid Functional Review of Two Departments of MTAI in the scope of Integrated Municipal Development project. The detailed Terms of Reference (ToR) of the assignment and the relevant Annexes are attached to this Call for Proposals.

If you are awarded the contract, you are not excluded from bidding for the implementation of the following project phase. However, a prerequisite for participation in a subsequent tender is that you do not benefit from your involvement in the previous contract and that the equal treatment of all bidders is ensured.

Context
The “Integrated Municipal Development in Armenia” (IMD) project aims to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and citizen-orientation of local self-governments. By advising and supporting partner organizations, the project seeks to improve the framework for local development while closely collaborating with selected municipalities known as transformation partners. These efforts focus on implementing reforms to enhance service quality and accessibility, foster local economic growth, optimise local self-governance, and empower citizens in municipal decision-making. Throughout the project duration from April 2024 to March 2027, success stories and lessons learned from transformation partners will be shared through various exchange platforms, ensuring the replication of successful models for integrated municipal development across Armenian local self-governments.
The projected is implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and in partnership with the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure (MTAI).


Background
In recent years, GIZ has been extensively involved in modernisation and improvement of human resources (HR), national training systems (NTS), municipal service, formal training formats, and capacity building for municipal servants (including those on discretionary posts). As part of its efforts towards strengthening the Armenian municipalities to become viable structures after consolidation in the framework of the territorial and administrative reform (TARA), since 2016 the Programme has supported the MTAI and consolidated multi- settlement municipalities to improve municipal service with the emphasis on national training systems and enhancement of capacities of municipal servants. To this end, a need is arisen to support the reforms in the municipal service through revisiting the institutional arrangements within the structure of the state authorised agency, namely, the MTAI, with the aim to understand how best it can organise itself in policy making in the area of municipal service, in line with the principles of good governance in local self-governments (LSGs) and provisions of European Charter of Local Self Government.
As it currently stands, the municipal service is governed primarily by two departments of the MTAI, the Department for Territorial Administration and the Department for Local-Self Government Policy. The former is involved in a broad variety of activities with the main emphasis on territorial, i.e. regional (marz) development, including balanced or proportional territorial development, conceptualisation of marz development planning, design of operational plans, interaction with the Armenia Territorial Development Fund (currently within the structure of the MTAI), etc.
Nevertheless, the structural unit responsible for municipal service, including national training systems for municipal servants, is placed in this Department as a division with functions requiring more clarity, and the roles and responsibilities of the staff to be streamlined. This is an essential issue in light of ever-growing role of municipal service, human capital and organisational capacities of municipalities in advancing good local governance and decentralisation reforms in Armenia.
Discussions with the MTAI management revealed a need to scrutinise the functions, roles and responsibilities of the Municipal Service Division and appraise the structural affiliation thereof from the perspective of improving its performance and impact on overall LSGs and national reform priorities, effectiveness and efficiency thereof. This should be done in the context of rapid functional review of the two said departments to identify the most efficient and performance-oriented operations of the Division of Municipal Service within the organigram of the MTAI.
In the broader context of GIZ support to MTAI in the area of HR and NTS, this rapid functional review will have implications for the national training system of municipal servants, as well as improved institutional positioning of the municipal HR and NTS within the structural organisation of the MTAI as the state authorised government agency for local self-governance.
Against this background, the overall objective of the assignment is to rationalise and streamline the policy, strategy and operational frameworks deployed by the MTAI in the area of municipal HR and NTS. In bunch with other support elements provided by the GIZ (NTS Concept Paper, training of secretaries, training needs assessment, review of sub-legislative framework documents, etc.), this assignment is aimed at possibly thorough covering of the municipal service related issues (both from local and national perspectives) and enabling the MTAI to increase its efficiency and regulating the sector and identifying more effective measures to support, strategically and methodologically, the LSGs in discharging their legally prescribed functions.
This assignment should be implemented in close collaboration with the Department of Territorial Administration of the MTAI, which is responsible for handling the municipal service and NTS, including staffing, staff-lists, organigrams and functional settings of the local self- government bodies in particular, and the MTAI being the state authorised government agency for the sphere. Another key actor, in addition to the GIZ IMD, is the MTAI Department of Local Government Policy.
Among the documents to be scrutinised is the Concept Paper on National Training System for the municipal servants designed and submitted to the MTAI with the support of GIZ.

Tasks to be performed by the contractor
The contractor is responsible for providing the following services:

Task 1: Desk review of the relevant policy and legal framework
The Contractor conducts a desk review of relevant policies and documents, including legal and sub-legislative framework, as well as holds meetings and consultations with the respective officials and responsible officers of the MTAI and selected municipalities, predominantly staff secretaries in order to approach the Task from the standpoint of reconciliating the actual needs with the best practices. The intent is to shape the desired
state of affairs, which subsequently will lead to development of recommendations on functional and organisational streamlining within the MTAI with regard to municipal service.

Task 2: Design of the Rapid Functional Review
The Contractor undertakes the rapid functional review of the two departments of MTAI, which will include scrutiny of the ministry organigram, statutory functions thereof, as well as descriptions, staffing and roles and responsibilities assigned to the positions on the staff-list. The Review requires extensive exchange with the MTAI Departments of Territorial Administration and the LSG Policy and close collaboration with GIZ. The intent is to gather more detailed data and information on functions and structures within the MTAI concerning municipal service and come up with respective recommendations that best fit the current priorities of the ministry and the desired state of affairs, in line with best management practices.

Task 3: Presentation of the draft Rapid Functional Review to the MTAI and GIZ
The contractor will make a presentation to the MTAI and GIZ on the results of the assignment in order to obtain final comments and recommendations of the parties for incorporation into the drafts and/or the report.
Any further task arising during the implementation of the assignment needs prior agreement between the Contractor and GIZ.

APPLICATION PROCEDURES : 

If you are interested in performing this work, please submit a bid in accordance with the GIZ bidding conditions described below till 15 August 2024, 17:00 (date of receipt at GIZ). Proposals received after the deadline will not be considered.

Your bid shall be submitted electronically.

Electronical offer
Your bid, comprising the technical offer (company’s background, relevant experience, CVs of involved experts, rough concept with a workplan and timetable, etc.) and the price offer (signed document, calculation based on expert days must be clearly marked as such, and submitted as two separate emails. The technical offer should be in English language. Please send your bid to: ************@***.**  with the following subject line: 

For technical offer with the subject line: 83470524 Technical Offer 
For financial offer with the subject line: 83470524 Financial Offer 

All documents must be submitted in PDF format. Please do not put any other recipient in copy.

Price offer
The payment will be done in local currency.
Tax and customs privileges shall apply to this procurement. Please take this into consideration while preparing your company’s offer.
The Tax Identification Number of GIZ is 02898241

Procedural questions
Please address any commercial, technical and procedural questions at an early stage. Questions will be answered if they are received at the latest two working days before the closing of the tender. Questions must be raised in writing by email only to:
Mrs. Liana Nikoghosyan
email: *****.***********@***.**
Non-compliance may result if your bid is not being considered.

Evaluation of Offer
GIZ will evaluate the technical and price information in the received bids (see Annex).
After the technical evaluation, only the price offers of bids with more than 500 points will be opened and evaluated. Technical offers below 500 points will be considered as technical not acceptable. The technical offer has a weighting of T: 70%, the price offer F: 30%.
The final result is an overall ranking, headed by the most cost-effective bid. Contract negotiations will be initiated on the basis of this overall ranking.

Please clearly mention in your application letter that you learned of this job opportunity through Career Center and mention the URL of its website - www.careercenter.am. Thanks.

ATTACHMENTS:

83470524AssessmentGrid.pdf - Assessment Grid 83470524GeneralTermsOfContractARM.pdf - Contract in Armenian 83470524GeneralTermsOfContractENG.pdf - Contract in English 83470524CallforProposals.docx - Call for Proposals 83470524ToR.docx - ToR