95332419Q0069_0_US_CO_Signed.pdf

SOLICITATION/CONTRACT/ORDER FOR COMMERCIAL ITEMS

OFFEROR TO COMPLETE BLOCKS 12, 17, 23, 24, & 30

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UNIT

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25. ACCOUNTING AND APPROPRIATION DATA 26. TOTAL AWARD AMOUNT (For Govt. Use Only)

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95332419Q0069

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Listing of Incorporated Purchase Requisitions Section B - Supplies or Services and Prices/Costs Section C - Description/Specifications/Work Statement Section D - Packaging and Marking Section E - Inspection and Acceptance Terms Section F - Delivery or Performance Section G - Contract Administration Data Section H - Special Contract Requirements Section I - Contract Clauses Section J - List of Documents, Exhibits, and other Attachments Section K - Representations, Certifications, and Other Statements of Offerors Section L - Instructions, Conditions and Notices to Offerors Section M - Evaluation Factors for Award

Listing of Incorporated Purchase Requisitions

Incorporated Purchase Requisition Numbers:

DCO-PR-19-0237

Section B - Supplies or Services and Prices/Costs

Item Number Base Item Number

Supplies/Services Quantity Unit

0001 BASE PERIOD Task 1 - State of Practice

1 EA

Contract Type:Firm Fixed Price Unit Price

Extended Price

Description:

FIRM FIXED PRICE

Purchase Requisitions DCO-PR-19-0237

IDC Type: Not Applicable FSC Codes: R799 SUPPORT- MANAGEMENT: OTHER

Supplies/Services Quantity Unit

0002 BASE PERIOD OPTIONAL, Task 2

- Assessment and Design Toolkit

1 EA

Contract Type:Firm Fixed Price Unit Price

Extended Price

Description:

FIRM FIXED PRICE

Purchase Requisitions

Supplies/Services Quantity Unit

1001 OPTION PERIOD ONE -

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

Contract Type:Time and Materials Unit Price

Other Direct Costs Extended Price

Description:

LABOR AND OTHER DIRECT COSTS

Purchase Requisitions

Option: 1 Option Time Date: 9/17/20 Option Time Duration: 364 Option Time Units: Days

Clauses incorporated by reference

None

Clauses incorporated by full text

SECTION B - SUPPLIES OR SERVICES AND PRICE/COSTS

SECTION B - SUPPLIES OR SERVICES AND PRICE/COSTS

NOTE: The following document has been automatically generated by an electronic system. Some errors in spacing, formatting and punctuation may have occurred throughout the document.

This is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items prepared in accordance with Subpart 12.6, as supplemented with additional information included. The solicitation document and incorporated provisions and clauses are those in effect through Federal Acquisition Circular 2019-2. This requirement is procured in accordance with FAR Parts 12 Acquisition of Commercial Items and 13 Simplified Acquisition Procedures.

B.1 PURPOSE

The purpose of this requirement is to procure services for the "Land Administration Information and Transaction Systems: State of Practice and Decision Tools for Future Investment."

The Contractor shall furnish all personnel, facilities, equipment, supplies, transportation, and other services required to provide services to the MCC in accordance with Section C, Statement of Work, and the terms and conditions contained herein. The Total Contract Price includes labor and other direct costs to perform all required services.

B.2 CONTRACT TYPE

The Government anticipates awarding one firm-fixed price (FFP) and time-and-materials (T&M) hybrid contract.

B.3 SCHEDULE OF SERVICES AND PAYMENT

CLINS 0001 AND 0002 are Firm Fixed Price.

CLIN 0002 – Optional Task – Task 2 Assessment and Design Toolkit, this task requires written authorization to proceed by the Contracting Officer and/or the Contracting Officer Representative.

The Contractor shall furnish all personnel, facilities, equipment, supplies, transportation, and other services required to provide services to the MCC in accordance with Section C, Statement of Work, and the terms and conditions contained herein. The Grand Total includes labor and other direct costs to perform all required services for Firm Fixed Price CLINs 0001 and 0002 and T&M CLIN 1001.

Deliverable Task Payment Percentage Payment Amount

CLIN 0001 – State of Practice

Task 1A - Contract Kick off and Updated Work Plan

D1 Detailed Work Plan 5%

Task 1B – State of Practice White Paper Preparation

D2 Table of Contents for Draft State of practice White Paper

10%

D3 Draft State of practice White Paper

25%

Task 1C – Consultation Event

D4 Draft Detailed Agenda for Consultation Event

10%

D5 Consultation Event Materials –including discussion questions for each session, PowerPoint materials to introduce topics and sessions, and other materials

10% that may be requested by

MCC

6 Report on Consultation Support and Facilitation – This deliverable reports on the consultant's work to provide strategic, technically-oriented facilitation of the discussion, and any additional organizational support that may be requested by MCC (such as preparing email invitations and transmitting informational materials to invited participants, managing arrivals on the day(s) of the event, etc.)

5%

D7 Document that summarizes the conclusions and detailed notes from each discussion session

5%

Task 1D - Draft Final State of Practice White Paper

D8 Draft Final White Paper 20%

Task 1E -Final State of Practice White Paper

D9 Final White Paper 10%

Total CLIN 0001 Amount 100%

CLIN 0002 - Optional Task

– Assessment and Design

Toolkit

D10 Outline and Structure for Assessment and Design

Toolkit

10%

D11 Draft Assessment and Design Toolkit

50%

D12 Final Assessment and Design Toolkit

40%

Total CLIN 0002 Amount 100%

Quoters may propose alternative percentage amounts for CLINs 0001 and 0002.

LABOR RATES – OPTION PERIOD ONE –TIME AND MATERIALS

LABOR RATES CLIN 1001 – Time and Materials

Labor Category Seniority Level

Commercial Rate Proposed Commercial

Rate Discount

Net Rate after Discount

Expert - Land Information and Transactions System Technology

Senior

Expert - Land Administration Senior

Consultation Facilitator/Specialist- Land Information and Transactions Systems

Mid-level

Labor Category Estimated Number of Hours

Expert - Land Information and Transactions System Technology

Senior 300

Expert - Land Administration Senior 300

Consultation Facilitator/Specialist- Land Information and Transactions Systems

Mid-level 50

Total 650

The Contractor may increase or decrease level of effort by labor category but shall not exceed the total estimated hours. The contractor may add additional labor categories but the total level of effort shall remain unchanged.

B.4 OTHER DIRECT COSTS – OPTION PERIOD ONE

Other Direct Costs Total Other Direct Costs

Optional Task CLIN 1001 Period

Total Other Direct Costs

The contractor shall estimate other direct costs – travel as estimated in Section F. Cost shall be inclusive of all costs to travel (ie, DBA and Medex, transportation, lodging, per diem, visas, etc)

Section C - Description/Specifications/Work Statement

SECTION C - DESCRIPTION/SPECIFICATIONS/STATEMENT OF WORK

SECTION C - DESCRIPTION/SPECIFICATIONS/STATEMENT OF WORK

Land Administration Information and Transaction Systems:

State of Practice and Decision Tools for Future Investment

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

Acronym, Abbreviation Definition

CA Constraints Analysis

CAP Constraints Analysis Panel

COR Contracting Officer Representative

CPARS Contractor Performance Assessment Rating System

CT Country Team

GDP Gross Domestic Product

IEA Implementing Entity Agreements

IM Investment Memo

IMC Investment Management Committee

MCA Millennium Challenge Account, the accountable entity

MCC Millennium Challenge Corporation

PII Personally Identifiable Information

PM Project Monitor

PPAM Project Proposal Assessment Memo

QCP Quality Control Plan

RFQ Request for Quotations

SAM System for Award Management

TBD To Be Determined

C.1 SUMMARY OF ASSIGNMENT

MCC has identified a range of lessons from our land administration information and transaction system investments to date, and seeks to develop a set of analytical tools that can guide MCC investment decision-making and investment scoping in the future. The outputs of the assignment will help define how MCC makes decisions about investments in land information and transaction systems as part of future projects related to land sector strengthening and reform. The outputs will incorporate MCC's own lessons learned, the learning of other institutions, the views of key industry players, as well as recent technology changes and emerging technology trends. The outputs will reflect state of the art thinking on how and when to address the opportunities and challenges of designing, implementing, and sustaining the performance of land administration information and transaction systems. Finally, the outputs should reflect the specific characteristics of MCC's funding model that influence MCC investments in land information and transaction systems, in comparison with other donors and financing institutions.

The consultant will generate an Assessment and Design toolkit that can aid MCC (and ideally other donors and financial and industry partners) in decision-making regarding investments in computerized land information and transaction systems for land administration as part of compact or threshold programs. The toolkit will aid identification and assessment of the risks, mitigants, and rewards associated with investing in such systems in a given country; the costs and LOE associated with implementation and risk mitigation; and the benefits and risks of investing in new technology to strengthen and modernize land rights administration in developing country environments overall, particularly when conditions for ensuring successful systems operations may still be sub-optimal.

Development of the toolkit will require external engagement with a variety of institutions and experts with deep knowledge, experience and know-how on the state of practice related to these systems. Bidders should also note that this assignment focuses on development and implementation of systems for partner government land institutions to manage land rights information and transactions over the long term, and not on technology choices for tools more narrowly used to collect and integrate rights and boundary information as part of a systematic rights formalization or rights regularization operation.

The Consultant will be required to mobilize its team quickly upon award and the contractor is encourages to propose a team that will be well suited to complete the SOW.

C.2 BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

MCC has invested in nationally-reaching land information and transaction systems as well as well as local level systems in many of its partner countries. Funding of such systems has typically been part of broader investments targeting improved quality of land governance and increased tenure security in targeted geographic areas. Results have been mixed in terms of sustainability of these investments. Some of the systems continue to be used in daily operations while other systems are not being used to their full potential or have issues with functionality that may require development and implementation of a new system in the coming years. An internal review of lessons from these investments by the MCC land practice group has allowed the team to conclude that a more comprehensive decision making framework is needed for consideration of land sector IT system investments in the future. Applying such a framework when considering such investments can help ensure that operability, sustainability, political and institutional benefit and risk dimensions are comprehensively and systematically considered in the decision making process. The key questions that the toolkit will address are:

• What should be MCC's decision making process as it considers investments in land information and transaction systems?

• How will an investment in IT systems solve the principal problem(s) identified confronting the land sector in the target country? The toolkit should help identify the problem(s) and the range of alternatives for resolution of the problem(s), leading to a decision that balances risks and benefits of a proposed MCC investment and produces the desired result and expected outcomes.

• How does MCC proceed under less-than-optimal conditions, or when sustainability is not guaranteed? The toolkit should identify the risks and other factors that could impact MCC's investment and may require mitigation, additional support over a period of time, or alternative financing approaches. The toolkit should also help identify the most appropriate mechanisms for MCC to use in addressing these issues given industry best practices.

• What is the appropriate investment in land IT systems in the given context? Here the toolkit should help identify the level of technology that is most appropriate for the environment considering human capacity (existing or that which can be realistically achieved via training), infrastructure, and risks to sustainability. The toolkit should also aid consideration regarding whether investment should be national, regional, or local in scope.

• What is the appropriate future system operations and upkeep model? The toolkit will enable analysis of both the assumption that the partner government will directly finance future system upkeep and operations, as well as the approach of longer-term service contracts for a build-operate relationship, whereby a private partner both develops/installs and operates the system..

• What conditions or conditions precedent should MCC place on its investment in land IT systems? The toolkit should help identify the most critical issues that should be resolved in a manner that promotes sustainability of its investment and the timeframe in which these issues must be resolved to allow for timely and effective implementation of the solutions financed by MCC.

C.3 SCOPE OF WORK

A. BASIC PRINCIPLES

Basic principles for decision-making, design, and implementation of land information and transaction systems are relatively long-established and are widely shared by practitioners, including MCC. However, these principles do not go far enough for purposes of MCC investment decision-making and design-planning.. We list the principles here, to ensure that the outputs of the assignment will capture these principles, but ensure to go well beyond them in terms of detailed assessment dimensions:

• Sufficient demand by users and the market for the services the system provides – This is critical to long term system use and sustainability. Does demand for these services exist, how can it be harnessed, will it be induced? Is demand sufficient to establish an incentive for government institutions to maintain systems and keep records up to date? Do users see the value of using formal land administration services over conducting informal transactions?

Are system use fees affordable and do they enable self-funding to the maximum extent possible?

• Fit for purpose – Complexity of systems needs to be aligned with demand, needs, human capacity and conditions (users, resources, electricity/internet, etc.)

• Designed for today's and future purposes – Systems should have the ability to grow and expand into new uses and new locations, with information able to be inter-operable, transferable.

• Human capacity to use systems – Training alone is insufficient to ensure sustained system use.

• Sustainability, security, and scalability (https://landportal.org/library/resources/lis-201512-001/reframing-investments-land-information-systems-land-administration) o Sustainability – The total cost of ownership (properly estimated) should be calculated and provisions for long term funding should be covered at installation and for the long term (e.g., for management, human resources, technology and related licenses or user fees).

o Security – Physical security, cyber security, active protection from viruses is critical to maintaining the integrity of land rights and spatial information. The costs of ongoing security need to be considered and included in O&M budgets. For example, lack of anti-virus software often leaves systems unused and obsolete.

o Scalability – The system should be able to accommodate expansion over time and allow integration of more records, more users over a wider geography, and increased transaction volume.

B. MCC LESSONS

MCC lessons from investing in land information and transaction systems are summarized below. As such, the consultant is expected to build from these lessons; as the assignment focuses on the future, MCC is not asking the consultant to do a further analysis of MCC's past experience.

• Risk - Land information systems investments are higher-risk in implementation than we have typically planned and budgeted for. In fact, MCC could consider treating land IT investments as it does infrastructure works in terms of contingency multipliers for budgets to address uncertainties; inclusion of costs for oversight by technical experts;

required adherence to certain technical, operational, or financial standards; and systematic inclusion of assumptions around post-Compact O&M in related CBA modeling.

• Tension between country ownership and better/best practice – Country ownership of the design and implementation of land information systems can yield design approaches or technology choices that are not optimal or not aligned with the latest technological developments or trends,which has the potential to negatively affect sustainability of the system.

Designs are also sometimes developed by central authorities and needs of local users are not fully met, a sign that not all levels of government are involved in the design of the system or have bought in to same goals. When this occurs, the sustainability of the system suffers. The complexity of interests of multiple institutional stakeholders can make it challenging to reach optimal system design and functionality.

• Human capacity - We may underestimate the human capacity required to use, maintain, troubleshoot and upgrade even relatively simple land information systems post-Compact. We assume that decision-makers in land agencies know what resources are necessary to maintain and trouble-shoot systems, and are able to mobilize those resources.

• Behavior change – MCC designs its projects with ample time for training and behavior change, but project implementation in every sector is often delayed, due to slowly fulfilled CPs, delay cascades from preparatory activities, https://landportal.org/library/resources/lis-201512-001/reframing-investments-land-information-systems-land-administration https://landportal.org/library/resources/lis-201512-001/reframing-investments-land-information-systems-land-administration or other reasons. This means we run out of time for users to become comfortable with system use or to correct bugs which persist and create frustration for users. Behavior change often takes more time than MCC has available under a compact, especially when implementation delays occur.

• New technology and innovation – Technology is changing rapidly, and will continue to render traditional approaches to systems more obsolete or inefficient. It would be wise for MCC to be firmer with partners and their contractors going forward to ensure adoption of context appropriate and forward-looking tools, standards and approaches. A variety of interests and incentives influences decision-making on innovation, risk, and technology and design choices.

• Rural Issues – Rural areas have genuine need for locally-available rights and boundary information. However, IT capabilities in many of MCC's localized contexts are hard to find, requiring training of local personnel. However, trained capacity often departs for better paying jobs using IT skills when projects end and follow-on resourcing becomes more uncertain. In addition to human capacity issues, conditions to operate even basic systems are often limited in terms of secure office space, electricity, systems supplies, etc.

• Oversight – MCC projects in certain cases can require more oversight of implementation by niche land IT professionals.

Similar to supervisory engineers that accompany MCC infrastructure projects, MCC/MCA might consider models to secure resources to help ensure that systems are being designed appropriately, to oversee implementation, and to advise MCC/MCA when systems providers are not meeting expectations or design or operations standards and to recommend concrete technical remedies.

• Enabling environment reform – Legal and regulatory changes are often necessary to enable system efficiencies to be realized. For example, a legal change may be required to permit the use of digital signatures, to allow systematic registration of rights, or the mass issuance of land titles. The installation of land information/transaction systems can help to force such reforms, which may be useful. Such reforms often take time to achieve and move through the political process, leaving little time to implement IT systems properly in an already tight MCC compact schedule. Any reform-related CPs should be carefully designed to ensure that ample time remains to implement the new system even if fulfillment of the CP slips.

• Follow-on maintenance funding and transaction demand – MCC has long done work ex ante to study sustainability scenarios, future income streams, and worked with relevant institutions to ensure creation of budget lines for future funding. However, we have not always undertaken a "total cost of operations" analysis, and have relied on government commitments to sector reform to ensure sustainability. However, increases in transaction demand sufficient to cover costs of maintaining systems will be farther in the future than at compact close. Developing new revenue sources, such as sale of additional services, also takes time, and may not be possible to do until a system is fully functioning.

Maintenance of municipal systems or municipal portions of inter-connected systems is particularly challenging where new mayors are elected and may not see value in allocating long term resources to sustainability.

• Donor coordination – "Better coordination among donors to ensure follow-on funding" is often cited as an important tool to increase sustainability. However, achieving synchronization among donors with respect to country, timing of flow of funds, and interest and focus on IT system priorities is extraordinary difficult, owing to genuine and understandable differences among institutions related to mandate, countries of interest, priority land-related topics, and timing of funds: success related to immediate follow-on funding is only ever likely to be exceptional, rather than the norm. More significantly, systems are unlikely to be optimally performing if donor funding is necessary over the long term: more important is working to identify the financing model, revenue sources, and government political and financial commitments necessary. More and better donor coordination will always add value and should be built into project design and implementation approaches, however the role or likelihood of donor coordination in achieving system sustainability should not be overestimated.

• Discrete steps may be sufficient, or all we have time for – In Sri Lanka for example, the MCC investment is narrowly focused on increasing the availability and reliability of information to be included in digital systems, even if these systems have some deficiencies. Often MCC does not have time to revise a currently used system to meet international best practices and/or to develop a new system or components. In these cases we can make efforts to support the improvement of system data or the performance of an existing system.

• Not always needed – At times MCC makes purposeful decisions not to invest in land information and transaction systems, following formal study (Burkina Faso). In other contexts, country governments already have systems (Morocco) – and MCC focuses on other land objectives unrelated to systems per se.

• Simple approaches may be enough - Sometimes very simple systems are sufficient (Senegal, Niger), though even these can have risks of being too complex to ensure full functioning post-compact.

• Risks are sometimes worth taking - Sometimes calculated IT risks – in non-optimal conditions – are worth taking. For example, in Mozambique, a new MCC-funded system was deployed at the end of the compact to the four originally targeted provinces. There were concerns about longer-term support to sustain the system, particularly if the system was viewed as a pilot in just a few places. MCC thus agreed to expand installation of the system in the remaining 6 provinces, even though there was not time for full training and absorption. MCC's rationale was that sustainability of the system would be more likely if it was operating country-wide.

• Ex-post follow-up –MCC's mission and mandate challenges operational monitoring of the sustainability of land IT system investments post-Compact, beyond the formal independent evaluation process. This imposes some limits on learning.

C.4 TASKS

TASK 1 – STATE OF PRACTICE

TASK 1A - Contract Kick off and Work Plan

MCC will schedule a (half-day) contract kick off meeting for the consultant. This meeting will provide MCC the opportunity to share additional information on MCC land projects, lessons learned, and practice group experiences with implementation issues related to design and development of land IT systems as part of its past land projects. As stated, MCC is not looking for the consultant to review our past projects, but rather to take into account our lessons learned and experience as the Assessment and Design toolkit for future investment is developed.

The consultant will deliver a detailed workplan, updating the workplan submitted as part of the offer. The detailed workplan will provide the timeline for completion of all deliverables and include periods for MCC to review each deliverable and for the consultant to revise each deliverable based on MCC feedback and comments.

Deliverables:

D1 – Detailed Work Plan

TASK 1B – STATE OF PRACTICE WHITE PAPER PREPARATION

Draft State of Practice White Paper

In this task, the consultant will first produce a Table of Contents for the state of practice white paper to be reviewed and approved by MCC. The Table of Contents will give MCC insight into the organization and content of the white paper.

After approval of the Table of Contents, the consultant will then produce a draft state of practice white paper, which will:

• Summarize the new developments in land IT systems design, systems architecture, systems software and hardware, systems connectivity, and systems operations and maintenance requirements and management models, particularly but not exclusively in developing country contexts;

• Describe the main developments in terms of conceptual approach to design and implementation of such systems;

• Characterize the main strategic approaches being taken by funders and system developers in terms of technology choice and designing and rolling out investments going forward.

• Address anticipated trends related to hardware, software, information storage, mobile communications, and geographic positioning.

• Address the topics, issue areas and questions listed in Task 1C, below

In describing the state of practice, the consultant will pay particular attention to evolutions that impact – positively or negatively – the likelihood of sustained use and operations of systems in developing country contexts. The consultant should also assume that future donor funds will be – like MCC's have always been – time limited, for example MCC's timeline is 5 years, and that systems investments will not be accompanied by decades of donor support or donor subsidy.

The work will account for MCC's lessons (and lessons of other donors or implementers), but MCC is not asking the consultant to do a retrospective review of successes and challenges with past MCC investments; the focus of work should be on generating forward thinking conclusions regarding the future of decision-making, design, and implementation of land IT systems investments in sub-optimal environments.

Deliverables:

D2 - Table of Contents for draft state of practice white paper

D3 - Draft state of practice white paper

TASK 1C -- Consultation Event

The consultant will organize and conduct a Consultation Event that will convene a select group of practitioners to offer input on the state of practice white paper and provide further insight into the state of practice related to investing in land IT systems.

The Consultation Event will serve to gather expert perspectives on the core components of the draft state of practice white paper, which should be used to inform the development of the rules of the road for technology choice, system design, and system investment in sub-optimal sustainability environments. The Consultation Event will help to answer questions such as:

• What are the new or emerging rules of the road regarding investments in land information and transaction systems?

• What are core pre-conditions that recipient governments should have in place before making investments in land IT systems?

• What are the core system design attributes that should be considered in land IT system investments?

• Are specific systems/technologies more promising than others?

• How should donors make decisions on whether risks are worth taking, and when should donors take risks to invest in new systems?

• How are the various distinct industry, implementer, and donor stakeholders proceeding to make decisions and assess sustainability risk today, despite the challenges?

• What are the main alternative models for financing ongoing operations and maintenance of donor-funded systems, and the pros, cons, and required commitments of partner land agencies for them to function?

The consultant will also address during the draft white paper stage the discussion topics listed below for the consultation event. The event will be convened by MCC, and held at MCC headquarters, with about 20-30 invited participants, excluding MCC and consultant staff. The consultant's role will be to prepare all supporting discussion materials, draft the invitation, draft the agenda, prepare all supporting materials for the event (documents for distribution, power points, etc.), lead facilitation of the discussion(s), take notes on discussion, and integrate results of the discussion into the deliverables of the follow-on Tasks 2C and 3, as listed below. MCC will participate actively in the design and facilitation of the event. The duration and format of the event will be agreed with the consultant depending on the content to be discussed. MCC assumes that the event is likely to be 1 to 2 days maximum, with multiple simultaneous smaller group discussions.

The discussion should be tightly organized around a series of core themes proposed by the consultant and agreed with MCC.

Discussion of each theme will be oriented around a series of key questions that the consultant will prepare and which will be distributed in advance to participants. It is important that the consultant attempt to focus discussion on specific examples of these issues that can help define strong decision making models for donor use when making their land IT system investment decisions. The draft white paper developed under Task 2A should serve as an input or foundation for the event and the framing of the discussion issues. MCC may choose to distribute the draft white paper to consultation participants prior to the event. Illustrative discussion topics are listed below.

Illustrative Strategic Event Topics or Sessions

• What dimensions of system design approaches need more community of practice consensus or a clearer roadmap?

• What technology trends do donors and the community of practice need to account for better than we have? Any other trends we've "missed," even if not technology-related?

• How should donors proceed with land tenure investments that are information- and documentation-oriented, when the environment or conditions are not optimal (electricity, IT capacity, insufficient revenue streams/transaction volumes, low expectations/confidence on partner government ability to sustain afterwards?)? Under what conditions should donors proceed to invest or instead walk away?

• Is it too much for donors to expect government institutions to have the technology know-how to manage and maintain their IT systems themselves? If so, how should donors and governments address this?

• Should donors realistically expect their land IT system investments to be optimally sustained and sustainable? Can market demand be stimulated to yield increases in the volume of transactions? In developing countries can service fees truly cover costs of maintaining land IT systems or should government subsidies be expected in perpetuity? Will fees set at an affordable level spur greater transaction volume? Where in fact in the developing world have fees been able to cover costs of systems? Alternatively, how can governments be more explicit about establishing and formally allocating subsidies over the long term to maintain such systems?

• Are there examples of land IT systems that are sustained and are working, despite in conditions that may be considered sub-optimal? What were the success factors in these cases?

• When should donors be willing to take a risk, and when should donors walk away from these investments? Can criteria be developed to help better define the decision making process?

• Local level record keeping and information management is often a sought-after goal; what technology is adequate to enable local information and local record keeping? What is best practice to avoid the loss of human capacity, IT skills, and financial resources to rely on computer-based information post-project?

• How should donors walk away from investments? What types of interventions, short of full scale investment in land IT systems, can keep partners on the path to more technology later? Can donors describe a concept of scalability and phasing over the long term, whereby when a more comprehensive IT investment might not be a good one for MCC in a given context, MCC can instead focus on investments in interim outputs that will prepare partner institutions for more complex systems in the future, for example, focus early on information and records, identity, ensuring on information formats that are easily inter-operable.

Illustrative Narrower Topics for Discussion, Conclusions

Discussion on these critical but narrower and more technical topics should focus on the state of play and future orientation, in order to avoid discussion focusing on aspects of these topics that are already familiar.

• Changes in technical design parameters over the last 5 years. What constitutes a future-looking system design?

• Human capacity within institutions, among leadership/decision-makers. What are successful models for maintenance of capacity?

• Behavior change among users. What is the best way to incentivize, achieve and maintain such change?

• Cyber security. How much of a threat is data security in our partner countries? How should our investments address these risks?

• Data privacy. What are the biggest issues related to privacy in developing countries? Do these issues need to be addressed proactively due to active threats?

• Identity challenges. Do citizens have birth certificates, identification documents, digital identity prints?

• Financing land IT systems over the long term. – How should donors deal with government budgetary commitments, service fee setting, retention of services fees by the providers vs. funneling fees into the general government budget?

• Custom systems vs. off-the-shelf vs. off the shelf adaptation. What are the conditions or circumstances that makes one more appropriate than the other?

• Future of open source systems and solutions. The pros and cons of open source vs proprietary systems are well understood. Are trends moving clearly in one direction or another? What does this mean for effectiveness and sustainability?

• Systems on the market. Is there consensus on which systems perform best, or are best adapted to certain circumstances?

• Other topics to be determined, meriting "state of practice" discussion among practitioners.

With MCC's input, the consultant should identify and recommend participants for the Consultation Event who would provide meaningful input and assist in answering all of the questions posed above and other questions that come up as the white paper is prepared. MCC will review and approve the list of proposed invitees to the Consultation Event with the consultant, focusing on inviting participants who will add value to the discussions and have experience with these issues in their projects and work. Deliverables:

D4 – Draft Detailed Agenda for Consultation with description and objectives of each session.

D5 – Materials – This deliverable includes discussion questions for each session, powerpoint materials to introduce topics and sessions, and other materials that may be requested by MCC.

D6 – Report on Consultation Support and Facilitation – This deliverable reports on the consultant's work to provide strategic, technically-oriented facilitation of the discussion, and any additional organizational support that may be requested by MCC (such as preparing email invitations and transmitting informational materials to invited participants, managing arrivals on the day(s) of the event, etc.).

D7 - Document that summarizes the conclusions of the Consultation Event and provides detailed notes from each discussion session.

TASK 1D -- Draft Final State of Practice White Paper

The consultant will produce a final draft of the white paper and provide it to MCC for review and comment. This version of the document will reflect salient results of the Consultation Event on all topics discussed, with further development focused on those aspects judged, in coordination with MCC, as the most pertinent and most relevant as a result of the Consultation Event. The consultant should anticipate that all questions and topics listed in Tasks 1B and 1C above will be addressed in the Draft Final White Paper.

D8 - Draft Final White Paper

TASK 1E -- Final State of Practice White Paper –The consultant will produce a final white paper incorporating the comments of MCC and all other relevant information. The consultant should anticipate that all questions and topics listed in Tasks 1B and 1C above will be addressed in the Draft Final White Paper.

D9 – Final White Paper

TASK 2 – ASSESSMENT AND DESIGN TOOLKIT – Optional Task

This development of the Assessment and Design toolkit builds on the final white paper and the results of the Consultation

Event. The Assessment and Design toolkit should provide MCC land experts with a decision matrix that can be used in the future to guide its scoping and budgeting decisions related to land information and transaction system investments in its partner countries. The toolkit will be framed in such a way that it can be largely applied by MCC's land experts themselves as part of work guiding land-related investing in a partner country. The application of the toolkit by MCC will be a guide for project design, either as part of compact development or as part of project scoping and MCC's oversight of the development of specifications for system design during compact implementation. The toolkit will be formatted as a combination of questions, decision trees, checklists, options to choose from or other formats to structure and ease options analysis and identification of tradeoffs. The final approach to the toolkit will be agreed with MCC, but can be expected to 1) Account for the MCC lessons described in Section II.B., above, 2) Account for the white paper and all topics listed above in this SOW. The consultant should expect that the draft and final Assessment and Design Toolkit will include at least the following illustrative components:

1) Design and Complexity Checklist – The consultant should provide MCC with a design and options decision checklist that could be applied to every new potential investment in land information and transaction systems. The checklist could include system design features, sustainability drivers, a risk-and-mitigant assessment framework, and guidelines for "calculated risk taking" focused on the role of technology in solving the identified land-related problems. To the extent that such checklist tools already exist, the consultant should seek to expand on or adapt these to MCC use.

2) Institutional Dimensions Checklist - The toolkit should aid documentation and systematization of the extent of the types and levels of institutions that will be immediate or potential future users of any land information and transaction systems investments. The goal is to help map out the relative complexity of an investment, necessary for consideration of areas of focus and risk. This includes identifying the national level institutions that would be system users and/or regional, local, and community level users as relevant.

3) Technology Dimensions Checklist – The toolkit should define the parameters required to identify the level of technology currently used in relevant institutions, identify the level of technology that is most pertinent and least pertinent to the issue needing resolution, and contain technical descriptions of the range of technology or systems options and their distinguishing features. Decision trees or other tools could facilitate this assessment.

4) Financial Dimensions Checklist and Templates – The consultant should develop a standard resourcing method and template or workbook, to aid MCC in ensuring that any system investments have sufficient budget levels for the risk/complexity they entail, and ensuring a common approach to system costing across a variety of investment opportunities and countries. The consultant should develop budgeting templates for MCC costs, cost assumptions, and cost parameters, including oversight, and risk mitigation. For budgeting assumptions tools, the consultant will review budget templates used by MCC in the past to project system investment costs, and should review templates and budgeting tools available from other institutions, as a basis for adaptation where useful. The consultant should also develop an easy-to-use total cost of ownership model to assist with analysis of technology options and costing of each option, drawing on other total cost of ownership models or frameworks that may already exist. Components that the template or workbook should address and estimate are initial investment cost, annual operating cost, appropriate contingency percentages, other risk and mitigant costing, revenue and explicit subsidy assumptions. The template/workbook will provide options to cost difference management models, including long term direct management by the partner government as well as management via a build/operate model. All costing-related tools should accounting for/acknowledge the data limitations in the environments in which MCC typically works.

5) Sustainability Risk and Risk-Taking Analysis and Decision Tool – Investing in land information and transaction technology systems in developing country contexts presents sustainability risks, similar to the sustainability risks of any other infrastructure investment that MCC might make. Here the consultant should identify land administration IT risks.

At the same time, all efforts to materially improve land administration involve taking calculated risks, so from this perspective the toolkit will also provide a framework for thinking about risks worth taking in the context of what's necessary to achieve the land sector objectives MCC is planning on achieving For example, in Mozambique MCC made a decision to expand implementation of a new provincial IT system to all 10 provinces of the country at the very end of the compact, beyond the planned 4 provinces. The logic was that a system that was in place in all provinces was more likely to receive longer-term support to maintain and use than a system that was only implemented in 4 "pilot" provinces, even though time was insufficient for MCC to fund substantial training in the additional six provinces. This is an example of a calculated risk..

6) System Design Parameters – The toolkit may contain standard design parameters or requirements, to which any MCC-funded system would need to adhere to.

• What would these look like?

• How could these concretely address/avoid the challenges that MCC faces in designing the land system?

• How specific and detailed would these design parameters be?

7) Systems Used/Shortlisted, Providers Used/Shortlisted – This portion of the toolkit would address whether MCC should be more directive about whether partners build new systems from ground up or adapt/ customize an existing solution?

This portion should also explicitly name types of systems and system suppliers. And, if adapt/customize, should MCC short-list existing systems that meet certain requirements, standards, or market share?

8) Conditions – This portion of the toolkit should map out investment conditions that MCC may consider applying to the funding of land information and transaction systems. These would be conditions that the partner country would have to meet before MCC would make available funding for investments in land information and transaction systems. Are there "standard" conditions or criteria that if not met, would have MCC walk away from an IT investment? Should we put these conditions in compacts or otherwise agree to them with our partner governments? What are those conditions and criteria? When should they be triggered - at project design stage, or during project implementation, once approach/constraints are clearer? Or a combination? What are the risks/reward and to what degree will these mean walking away from an investment in land?

9) Other components as may be indicated by MCC

Deliverables:

D10 – Outline and Structure for Assessment and Design Toolkit

D11 – Draft Assessment and Design Toolkit

D12 – Final Assessment and Design Toolkit

OPTION PERIOD ONE – TECHNICAL SUPPORT - Time and Materials

TASK 1A – AS-NEEDED SUPPORT TO MCC TO REFINE THE ASSESSMENT TOOLS, FOLLOWING APPLICATION

Work under Task 1A will be mobilized via Technical Directive, should MCC determine to exercise the Option Period and determine there is a need. Work will involve revisions or refinements to the tools developed in the Base Period and applied under Task 1, above, to the extent that the application of the tools generates areas meriting revision or refinement. Specific deliverables will be outlined in the Technical Directive(s)

TASK 1B – AS-NEEDED SUPPORT TO MCC TO APPLY THE ASSESSMENT TOOLS IN PRACTICE

Work under Task 1B will be mobilized via Technical Directives, should MCC determine to exercise the Option Period. Work will involve supporting MCC staff to apply the tools developed in the Base Period to a given country context where a new land information and transaction technology investment is being evaluated. Specific deliverables will be outlined in the Technical Directive(s)

C.5 CONFLICT OF INTEREST

In accordance with the principles of FAR Subpart 9.5 and MCC policy, the Contractor shall be ineligible to furnish,…