Request for Proposal (RFP) at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), is a United Nations agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide. The agency is among the most widespread and recognizable social welfare organizations in the world, with a presence in 192 countries and territories.

Applications are invited for:

Title: Request for Proposal (RFP) - Development of Learner Unit Record Information Tracking System (LURITS) in Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara States, Nigeria

Reference No: RFP 9173844

Background
UNICEF Nigeria is implementing "More out of school children in school in Nigeria" a multi-year Educate A Child (EAC), education project funded by the Qatar Foundation.

The goal of the EAC project is to contribute to the reduction of the number of children out of school in Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara States in Northern Nigeria. One of the project results areas is to strengthen evidence generation for planning and decision making, including the development of Learner Unit Record Information Tracking System (LURITS).

The EAC funded project has three main objectives:

• Objective 1: Increase access for out-of-school children
• Objective 2: Improve quality of teaching and learning environment
• Objective 3: Strengthened evidence generation

EAC objective 3 is aligned with UNICEF Nigeria workplan outcomes and outputs as follows:

• Outcome 5: All children access and complete quality education, within a safe learning environment, with skills and knowledge for lifelong learning.
• Output 5.1: The education system at all level/federal and state levels has strengthened capacities to deliver quality basic education.
• The development of Learner Unit Record Information Tracking System (LURITS) falls under EAC Objective 3 and UNICEF workplan Output 5.1.
• The LURITS data collection component of the specific intervention aims to capture data on pupils’ Unique ID, admission number, date of birth, date of enrollment, daily attendance etc. from hand-written school records to track student admission, attendance, movement, progress etc.
• As part of the system, the development of a web-based dashboard is expected to integrate disaggregated data by sex, grade, school, etc. from different sources to display the number of children enrolled, promoted, repeated, dropped out, moved out to another school, or moved into the school from another school, and transition between cycles, etc. for the purpose of monitoring and decision-making support at different levels. Additionally, through the dashboard a feedback loop mechanism is built to provide feedback on agreed key indicators for school and local government area officials to take corrective and timely actions.
• In addition, by including auto-conversion process of handwritten school records teachers can continue recording attendance data on pen and paper without disruption to the data collection system at school level. The auto-conversion capability is then automatically digitized when a teacher or school support officer takes a picture with the app on an Android smartphone. This will enable both recording and digitizing to be implemented smoothly at school level where the data is sourced. The schoolteachers and government officials at different levels will have better knowledge about the attendance situation of each student, and teachers and/or community members can execute timely and targeted follow-ups on absentees to improve the attendance rate using inbuilt feedback mechanism to the dashboard.

Purpose of the assignment
The purpose of the consultancy service is to strengthen the project data collection, processing, and visualization system by developing a functional and effective Learner Unit Record Information Tracking System (LURITS) at school level including a web-based dashboard integrating different data sources and with overall Education Informationmanagement System (EMIS) at State and National level and develop capacity of the national ministry of education project teams to rollout and maintain the system for sustainability.

Reporting to UNICEF Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Specialist in Sokoto Field Office, under the overall supervision of Sokoto Field Office Education Manager, the consultancy firm will be responsible for the development and deployment of a web-based dashboard and mobile based data collection system including software and any required tools to capture handwritten school records to auto-transcribe to digital data. The contracted firm will also support the development of the capacity of the national ministry of education project teams to rollout and maintain the system for sustainability.

Scope of work
Required services to be rendered for this consultancy are outlined below. The deployment of the service is to 2,000 schools in Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara States in North West.

Major tasks to be accomplished and process workflow:

• Design and development of an application to convert handwritten school records to electronic form and provision of required tools.
• Gather iterative feedback for the design process and test the prototype registers at school level.
• Data Quality Checks and Refinement
• Data Portal - Deploy the data portal to host the captured data and maintenance.
• Development of web based dashboard
• Training - Develop project-specific training materials with the team, and train specified local staff to serve as trainers in the field in the use of the data collection tools and managing the web-based dashboard.
• Tech Support, Project Communications and Data Portal Hosting

Responsibilities
The bidder:

• Unless otherwise negotiated on a case-by-case basis, is fully responsible to procure any equipment or software license that is required for fulfilling the specified duties, there will be no provision of equipment or development tools from UNICEF.
• Will organize a regular status update online meeting to monitor and evaluate the progress agreed deliverables.
• Will provide training and capacity building to UNICEF team and partners on the use of the system, management, troubleshooting, maintenance, and source code administration of web-based dashboards.

UNICEF, upon request, will provide the vendor with access to all the sample datasets that help for the development of web-based dashboard.

Qualifications or Specialized Knowledge / Experience Required
The institution must have:

• Experience with development and deployment of an application to auto-digitize handwritten records; concrete examples of working products are mandatory to present.
• Proven experience in developing web-based and mobile application and develop interactive dashboards for data visualization and program monitoring
• A team of experts with MSc or above in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Management System or related field with 5 years of experience and qualification in areas of data science and/or statistics degree is desirable.
• At least 5 years institutional experience with development of Information Management Systems.
• Competency in relational database design particularly with PostgreSQL and/or MySQL databases.
• Extensive knowledge and skills of computer programs applications, particularly in development of web-based business intelligence services using open source.
• Desirable experience with some of the following framework and/or programming languages: Python/Django, PHP/Larva etc.
• Solid knowledge of front-end technologies such as JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3 and proficient experience in using one or more advanced JavaScript libraries and frameworks such as AngularJS, Vue JS, ReactJS, etc.
• Demonstrated experience in developing innovative information technology solutions for developing countries.
• Communicates effectively, both orally and in writing, to varied audiences,
• Able to work effectively in a multicultural environment, sets high standards for quality of work and consistently achieves project goals.

Language:

• Fluency in English

Application Closing Date
11th April, 2022.

Acknowledgement of Receipt of RFPS
Proposers are requested to inform UNICEF as soon as possible by email to Amarachi Eboh at: aeboh@unicef.org that they have received this RFPS.

Proposers are required to submit any questions in respect of this RFPS by email to Amarachi Eboh at the email stated above. The deadline for receipt of any questions is 31st March 2022 by 5:00pm (Nig. time).

Important: Proposals are not to be sent to the individual stated above. Any proposals sent to the above named individual will be disqualified.

Related Documents

• RFP 9173844 Annex B development of LURITS (PDF).
• RFP 9173844 Development of LURITS (PDF).