TERMS OF REFERENCE – SCOPING REVIEW OF THE LEGISLATIVE AND POLICY ENVIRONMENT ON SUB-NATIONAL AND NATIONAL DATA SYSTEMS AND DATA USE

DEADLINE: November 25, 2020
CLOSED JOB

Countries of Focus: Kenya, Uganda, Senegal, and Zambia

The African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) is an African-led and Africa-based international research institute committed to conducting high quality and policy-relevant multidisciplinary research. Our researchers address critical development issues and challenges facing sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in areas such as education, population, health, aging, urbanization, and wellbeing. Our goal is to generate evidence for meaningful action, engage with policymakers in the region to disseminate our research findings, influence policy decisions, and improve the quality of life in Africa

Rationale of the assignment

Sub-national levels of governance are important layers to consider in the achievement of national level development targets particularly in Africa. In most countries, service delivery of critical social sectors is devolved to sub-national administrative units, where budget and program implementation decisions are made, including recruitment of personnel, purchase of goods and services, and actual service delivery, with the national level providing policy direction and financial resources. Therefore, monitoring progress and tracking performance for evidence-based decision making, particularly at sub-national levels, which automatically has similar effects at national levels is important

This requires existence, and utility of strengthened data systems that address the data demand and supply needs, including novel approaches to the description, collection, storage, integration, and analysis of large, heterogeneous, structured and unstructured data sets, – both at the sub- national and national levels. Understanding of the available efforts to catalyze strengthened data systems that are more adapted to local contexts is important. Although most of the enabling factors for a catalytic data supply side are already in place in most African countries, including data production and reporting, government support, budding private sector engagement, and increasing interest from academic and research institutions, efforts to facilitate learning across different sectors and levels at country level are unknown. For instance, data flow between sub-national and national governments is not efficient in both directions, with most national sectoral data systems such as District Health Information Systems 2 (DHIS2) and the Ministry of Education’s Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) considered useful for monitoring purposes by national governments and development partners, are not integrated, and are rarely used by sub-national level staff. This may be due to access limitations by number of officials, lack of human capital, limited knowledge or a lack of legal framework to support evidence informed decision making at across different national levels

Scope and Approach.

This will be a scoping review of the current status of the policy landscape for national data systems in four countries. The proposed activity aims to fill gaps that are evident in the legislative and policy environment for sub-national and national data systems and evidence-based decision making in the focal countries

We will seek to understand the following aspects:

  1. National and sub-national legislation, policies, guidelines and frameworks that mandate and guide data collection, analysis and use at sub-national and national levels, if any
  2. How data demand and supply advocacy takes place, how data production and use are mainstreamed at national and sub-national levels
  3. Data generation and use of the data as a crosscutting practice in the development process at all levels, including data dissemination, evidence-informed decision making and policy processes
  4. Presence or absence of partnerships for strengthened data systems at national and sub-national level, development of human capital and prioritization of user needs, as well as ability to attract sustained sector funding and investments
  5. The national data ecosystem, key actors, strengths and gaps
  6. Presence of multisectoral platforms at subnational level for data generation and use. How are multiple sectors engaging together at subnational level on this
  7. Availability of tools and materials for capacity strengthening across the data value chain

In all contexts, the APHRC team will support the consultant to assess the capacities of national and sub-national government structures to enable governments to deliver on their mandate. This scope of work will include working or interacting with national structures to assess and understand;

  • Institutional capacity
  • Regulatory capacity
  • Technical capacity and
  • Financial capacity with respect to data use and evidence informed decision making
  • Understand the national data ecosystems, especially on existing systems for evidence informed decision making at the subnational levels

Requirements

We are looking to engage country-level individual consultants, to work with the APHRC team to conduct the scoping review of sub-national and national data systems in each of the countries above. The engaged consultants should;

  1. Have an understanding of the governance structures of the preferred country of choice
  2. Have the ability to obtain or retrieve and understand needed documents to inform the scoping review. This includes ability to read and understand policy documents written in the official and national language of the country of interest. The consultant will work with the project team to develop country-specific reports
  3. Evidence of similar or related work, in the country or countries of interest, to determine capacity to undertake the assignment
  4. The consultant is, during application, to provide the Level of Effort, and costing of the expected effort in days. This costing should be all inclusive. Any expenses expected that are likely to be outside the scope of the consultant should be indicated as such, for APHRC to separately budget for. Any costs not indicated will be considered to be absorbed by the consultant

Deliverables:

  1. A completed scoping protocol complete with data collection tools, guides, resources and a listing to targeted country-specific departments or persons to contribute to the review process. This will include a softcopy and virtual presentation
  2. A scoping review report (softcopy and presentation)
  3. Data, resources and materials obtained during the scoping review process

Period of Engagement: We expect the scoping review to last no longer than 15 working days starting January 2021 and no longer than March 2021

How to Apply: Submit financial and technical proposals to consultancies@aphrc.org and copy procurement@aphrc.org . The technical proposal should highlight the Consultant’s approach to the assignment, with a listing of the key resources and/or sources of data that will inform the scoping review process. Include an annex with your CV and a listing of examples of similar works. Deadline for submission of proposals: November 25th 2020

 

APHRC is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to the protection of persons at risk.