SayPro Digital Research and Evaluation Tracker

Plan International Asia-Pacific Regional Hub

Terms of Reference (ToR)

Establishment of a Digital Research and Evaluation Tracker

Introduction

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian organization that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. As an independent development and humanitarian organisation, we work alongside children, young people, our supporters and partners to tackle

the root causes of the challenges facing girls and all vulnerable children. We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood and enable children to prepare for and respond to crises and adversity. We drive changes in practice and policy at local, national and global levels using our reach, experience and knowledge. For over 80 years we have been building powerful partnerships for children, and we are active in over 75 countries.

Background

Asia Pacific (APAC) Regional Hub of Plan International has been working as a catalyst to bring meaningful impact in the lives of children, adolescents and youth, with a special focus on girls and young women. In order to design quality programmes, understand the baseline situation, assess impact of the interventions, etc. every year the countries under APAC Regional Hub conduct numerous researches and evaluations. Usually, the countries develop their annual research and evaluation plan in their own way. No standard template is used across the countries in APAC Hub. At regional level, we find difficulties to compile information and compilation of information manually is not efficient as well. We also face challenges to track progress in research and evaluation activities and provide timely support to the country offices (CO).

Eventually, a need has been emerged to have a system in place which will provide real-time information on the research and evaluation plan and progress in activities at COs.

Establishment of a digital research and evaluation (R&E) tracker at COs as well as at APAC Hub will help us to know the plan, track the progress and extend support accordingly to get quality deliverables. It will also support to create synergy between R&E initiatives undertaken by CO and APAC Hub.

Therefore, to mitigate the challenges and obtain real-time data we propose to establish a digital R&E tracker. For this purpose, a service provider will be engaged behalf of Plan APAC Regional Hub as per this Terms of Reference (TOR).

Scope of the Assignment

The scope of the assignment includes design, development and deployment of the digital research and evaluation (R&E) tracker. The R&E tracker will serve different types of users, and the dashboard will include various analysis. The assignment will preferably include, but not limited to:

· To develop and introduce a web and mobile browser based1 R&E tracker.

· To create a platform that will assist the staff members at country offices as well as regional hub to ensure uniformity in reporting

· To generate real-time and consistent data regarding research and evaluation activities in the countries and APAC Hub.

· To ensure minimum effort for data compilation to create report.

· To create a dashboard to make the information available to the information- users/decision makers as and when required.

The detailed scope of the assignment is given in Annex 1.

Key Deliverables and Timeframe

Total duration of the assignment is 20 calendar days after signing of the agreement. By the 23rd June 2022, the system should be in place and ready to roll out across the countries and APAC Hub. Expected deliverables of the assignments are given in the following.

1. An inception report not more than 15 pages by the 30th May 2022.

2. A fully functional server-side application along with architectural design document.

3. API specification and documentation of the server-side application.

4. A fully functional Android based mobile app to perform as client of web-system.

5. An HTML user manual integrated with the server-side application.

6. A pdf user manual for the users.

7. Full source code with database ER diagram of the server-side application as well as Android mobile app with adequate inline documentation.

8. After rolling out the system in July first few months will be considered as pilot and assistance will be needed in piloting and adjustment in system based on findings in the pilot.

9. Hosting of the platform. Plan APAC Hub will not maintain any server for this. Therefore, the hosting of the platform will be done by the service provider.

Ownership of Source Code, Warranty and Maintenance and Support and Server Hosting

The service provider is required to hand over the final product within stipulated time. The final product, source code, intellectual property, documentation and all items specific to this product will be under the Plan APAC Hub’s exclusive ownership.

The service provider will render all support activities related to the followings until the warranty period expires. Warranty period will be one year starting from the final acceptance of the final product by Plan APAC Hub.

· Troubleshooting at the application/database level

· Query resolution to assist focal staff in APAC Hub in day-to-day operation

· Fixation of bugs, incorporation of minor changes, performance optimization etc.

After the warranty period, there will be Service Level Agreement (SLA) signed by Plan APAC Hub with the service provider.

The specific SLA covering maintenance support activities, query resolution time, and proposed penalties for noncompliance will be designed by the service provider and submitted along with proposal.

As hosting of the platform will be done by the service provider, the maintenance cost/annual cost should be provided in the proposal. In addition, the applicant should mention how data privacy will be maintained and support will be provided for data retention/restoration.

Ethics and Child Protection

Plan International is committed to actively safeguarding children and youth from harm and ensuring children’s rights to protection are fully realized. Plan takes seriously the commitment to promote child safe practices and protect children from harm, abuse, neglect and any form of exploitation as they come into contact with Plan International supported interventions. In addition, we will take positive action to prevent child abusers from becoming involved with Plan International in any way and take stringent measures against any Plan International staff and/or associate who abuses a child. Decisions and actions in response to child protection concerns will be guided by the principle of ‘the best interests of the child.’

Therefore, the service provider should abide by our safeguarding policy and during assignment must take into consideration that their activities are not doing any harm to children, adolescents and youth.

Qualification and Competency of the service provider

The service provider should have the following competencies at the minimum:

· At least 7 years’ demonstrated experiences in developing similar system involving server-side application and Android based apps together in limited resources setup preferably in Asia Pacific region.

· Experienced to work with development organizations.

· Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to quickly incorporate feedback from different individuals.

Training and Capacity building

Training on the functional as well as technical aspects of the application developed will be an integral component of the assignment. The service provider will train all the aspects of the application to selected staff members in APAC Hub. A training manual has to be delivered by the service provider for cascading the training to country offices.

Evaluation Criteria

The evaluation criteria are in the following.

Criteria / Weighted Score

Track record, general reliability including experience and capacity on technical analysis and financial capability / 20%

Qualifications and competence in the combination of personnel proposed are suitable to develop the system / 20%

Experience in development and implementation of similar system involving web application and Android based mobile app for development organisations in Asia Pacific region. /30%

Detailed methodology, installation and execution plan / 10%

Financial proposal / 20%
Annex 1

Detailed Scope of the Assignment

The assignment is to design, develop and deploy a research and evaluation tracker for the APAC Hub and the countries in Asia and Pacific. This will eventually act as a database for research and evaluation activities in APAC Hub. The system has to be easily accessible to the users from Plan International. The details of the assignment are given in the following.

Context of the System

The system will work in different shared modules on the server-side. Shared modules include different functionalities across the system including access control, maintenance of supporting information, maintenance of information on research and evaluations, reporting etc. The web and mobile browser based system provides the project staff/MERL staff with the functionalities for entering required information regarding research and evaluation.

The project staff/MERL staff make the data entry on panel/their mobile device according to their plan and progress in activities. They will be able to view information and relevant reports (their project/thematic area only).

The data-approver, a role who will be basically MERL focal in the country and regional office, approves the data entered by project staff/MERL staff.

Manager, a role at regional office and country office level, who will view necessary information.

Administrator, a role at regional office level, administrates the application. This role controls the access of users, creates and maintains different master data.

System Requirement Specification Functional Requirements

This will be an interactive web-based application with a mobile browser based client system. The purpose of the system is to store, track and generate reports on research evaluation activities. It will include fields like financial year, programme, area of global distinctiveness (AoGD) of Plan International, R&E title, R&E activities, ethics approval, management response, executive summary, etc. The purposes of the system are:

· To capture the R&E plan of the financial year and track progress in activities.

· To aggregate the numeric progress reports according to the need of Plan APAC Hub.

· To compile qualitative information as per need of Plan APAC Hub.

· To sum-up the numeric progresses reports according to the area of global distinctiveness (AoGD) of Plan International and programmes in country offices. Also, compile qualitative information in the same areas.

· To create a dashboard through compiling information from the R&E tracker for the viewers.

In the application the wireframes/designs should be as per Plan Brand guidelines (we will share the guideline once the consultant is on board). The application should have audit trails component to check the users’ actions and document upload in the view component to make it easy for accessing.

Server-side application

To fulfil the purposes of the desired system, it is required to have the following functionalities:

· Dynamic access control

o Create new/view/update an existing role

o Activate/de-activate a role

o Grant/revoke permissions

o Create new/view/update and existing user

o Activating/de-activate a user

o Assign/retain a role to/from a user

o Reset password of a user (for administrator role only)

o Reset own password

o Reset lost/forgotten own password

· Management of Thematic work areas

o Create new/view/update an existing thematic area (AOGD/Programme)

o Search existing thematic areas with relevant criteria

o Activate/de-activate a thematic area

· Management of location units (country)

o Create new/view/update a location

o Search location units with relevant criteria

o Activate/de-activate a location unit

· Management of reportable R&E activities

o Create new/view/update an existing activity

o Activate/de-activate an activity

o Search activities with relevant criteria

o Manage relationship among the activities

· Dashboard for summary tabular as well as graphical report at a glance (data and graphs have been downloadable for further use)

· Layered report approval

· Pre-defined aggregated reporting according to R&E segregated by financial year, countries, AOGD, programmes, etc.

· And html user-manual has to be integrated within the system.

· Full API set to integrate android based client app.

Mobile browser based application

This will be used as a client of the server-side application. The sole responsibility of this application will be making data entries at the front-level in the project areas. Considering the nature of the reporting, infrastructure of the intervention areas, and level of project staff/MERL staff, the application is required to have the following features:

· User authentication is required. This is going to be a close door app. Meaning that only valid users only allowed to login and enter the system.

· Online as well as offline data handling capability is required. Some places in the intervention area may suffer from week/absent network of mobile operator which may lead to inconsistent/no data-connection. To address this situation, the app, while the records are submitted, should check if the data connectivity is available; if not, it will store the records within the device for later submission when the connection is available, otherwise the records will be submitted at once; The application should be able to store any number of records in the device memory.

· All the supporting data required to prepare and submit a record have to be pulled from server-side.

· Any data related to the plan or the progress entered by the project/MERL staff has to be approved by the appropriate approver.

· The project/MERL staff members have to be able to edit, rectify, and resubmit the record if the approver declines.

· The sync que has to be visible to the project/MERL staff, to avoid any confusion and to give the user a way to be confirm on what is happening to the submitted records. Once the sync is success, the records should not be visible anymore in the que.

· The project/MERL staff members have to be able to save the half-done record for later completion and submission.

· On logout from the application, all data have to be cleared from the device; it is noteworthy that if there is any record in the sync-que, the users have to be strongly notified that the records will be lost from the device if logged out before data sync.

· Appropriate validation checks have to be implemented in the app to prevent the spurious data to be entered.

· A pdf user manual has to be available to the countries. The app has to pull the user- manual file from the server-side and keep it in the device for later reading/reference. The file has to be accessible from within the app.

Non-functional Requirements

Server-side application

· The application has to be deployable both in Linux or Windows platform.

· The application must support the latest version of major browsers like Microsoft EDGE, Firefox, and Chrome.

· The application will be available to the users 24/7. The data can be synced by the client- app at any time of the day and the client-app should get a confirmation if the record synced successfully.

· The application has to be easy to use. The interfaces have to be consistent, self- explanatory and intuitive.

· All error and warning messages have to be relevant and understandable.

· All the icons that would be used in the application has to be standard and familiar to the users; no surprise is expected.

· The application must keep the log of user login, record writing, report generation so that it can be retrieved at later point of time if requires.

· The application coding must be maintainable for later upgradation and improvement.

Mobile browser based application

· The application must not be built on the hybrid platforms.

· The look and feel of the app have to be eye catching and inspiring allowing the users to be able to connect with the interface elements (icons, buttons…) easily and quickly.

· The application is expected to be developed according to Google’s material design guideline.

· The application has to be responsive meaning that if interrupted by a call or a change in orientation, it has to be able to return to the same state.

· All data should be secured and be encrypted with minimum needs so that its protected from outside environment and also from internal attack.

· The application should be able to render its layouts in different screen sizes along with automatic adjustments of font size and image rendering