Sources_Sought_Notice_-_Metrics_Project_12.13.2016.pdf

Sources Sought Notice

This is a Sources Sought Notice. This is not a request for proposals, proposal abstracts, or quotations. It is a survey to identify potential sources. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is performing this market research to determine if an adequate number of organizations are interested in and capable of implementing and managing a program to provide monitoring, learning, and evaluation design support services to USAID/Guatemala.

Purpose/Objective

The current USAID/Guatemala Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) aims to maximize USAID contributions to initiatives and strategies, including Feed the Future (FTF), Global Health Initiative Plus (GHI) [including the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)], the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), the Global Climate Change (GCC) Initiative, and Goals 1 and 3 of USAID’s Education Strategy.1 In addition, the U.S. Strategy for Engagement with Central American Strategy (CEN strategy) and the Central America-led Alliance for Prosperity (A4P) emphasize increasing economic opportunity, reducing crime, and improving governance, which complement the CDCS’s overarching goal and development objectives.

Each of these initiatives and strategies comes with specific data collection and reporting requirements, and several provide specialized tools and resources. For example, USAID’s Bureau for Food Security (BFS) and the State Department’s Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) require regular reporting on a set of standardized indicators and provide access to web-based and other tools for collecting, maintaining, and reporting these data.

As such, currently USAID/Guatemala and its implementing partners collect a vast amount of highly relevant data in the course of activity implementation, including performance data reported by implementing partners as well as data collected by third-party evaluation, assessment, and survey teams. However, the methods and approaches by which these data are collected, analyzed, and utilized for decision making and reporting vary from team to team, project to project, and activity to activity. This lack of consistency in how the Mission plans for, conducts, and uses M&E products and information for both learning, adapting, and accountability presents management and operational challenges.

The purpose of the Metrics Project would be to support improvement of USAID/Guatemala systems, capacity, and processes for monitoring, learning, and evaluation design, to better

1 Goal 1 of USAID’s Education Strategy is “Improved reading skills for 100 million children in primary grades by 2015, and Goal 3 is “Increased access to equitable education in crisis and conflict environments for 15 million learners.”

understand and document programmatic outcomes, adapt current projects, comply with USAID regulations and requirements, rapidly report progress, better use evidence in project design, and generally contribute to the learning and adaptation agenda at USAID/Guatemala. By supporting the Mission’s execution of these approaches to performance management, the Metrics Project will indirectly contribute to achievement of results outlined in the CDCS Results Framework.

Tentatively USAID will prioritize the following project areas:

1. Evaluation Design: assistance to USAID in design of rigorous performance and impact evaluation in line with USAID’s evaluation policy, including expanded use of mobile technologies.

2. Performance Monitoring: including use of GIS and mapping, performance and compliance data management, and adaptation of existing performance monitoring systems for broad use at USAID/Guatemala.

3. Learning and Adaptation: applying evaluation and assessment findings, performance data, and other evidence to adaptation of existing and design of new USAID projects.

Project requirements:

1. Technical expertise in evaluation design and methods, sampling design and techniques, knowledge and experience applying mobile technologies to measure development projects, non-disclosure of evaluation and other project design, and broad technical understanding of health, education, citizen security, governance, agriculture and other sectors in which USAID/Guatemala works.

2. Technical expertise of USAID data regulations, data quality assessments, performance monitoring plans and systems (including IT platforms), and environmental compliance monitoring.

3. Understanding and experience in Collaborative, Learning and Adaptation (CLA) methods and applications, research and assessment methods and dissemination, expertise in project design, and communicating development outcomes (including infographics and other communications tools).

SPECIAL NOTE: The actual evaluations will be done through a different contractual mechanism. It is likely that the selected contractor for the Metrics Project will be precluded from bidding on any of these evaluations.

Supplementary Information

Included with this notice are several relevant sources of contextual and background information with website links:

1. USAID/Guatemala’s Country Development and Cooperation Strategy:

http://www.usaid.gov/documents/1862/usaid-guatemala-cdcs

2. USAID Evaluation Policy and associated information: https://www.usaid.gov/evaluation

3. Automated Directive Service (ADS) 201: Program Cycle Policy https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1870/201.pdf

Anticipated Period and Place of performance

The anticipated period of performance is for five years beginning October 2017 for a total estimated amount of $10 - $15 million subject to funds availability. The project will be implemented at the national level.

Submission Guidelines

Interested organizations should submit a statement addressing the following:

1. Capacity of organization to perform the work described above;

2. Organization size and type (Large, small, nonprofit, commercial);

3. Past experience implementing similar project activities , with an emphasis on CLA;

4. Sample of challenges encountered and creative solutions employed to overcome those challenges;

5. Experience working with other stakeholders, including implementing partners on the ground.

Statements sent in response to this sources sought notice should not exceed three (3) single – sided pages (including attachments and charts) using a Times New Roman 12 point font size minimum.

Send the statements electronically in Microsoft word by December 28, 2016 at 10:00 Local Guatemalan Time to guatemalaproposals@usaid.gov .

Disclaimer and important Notes

This notice does not obligate the USAID to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in the response, USAID reserves the right to use information provided by the respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Respondents are advised that USAID is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted.

After a review of the responses received, a pre-solicitation synopsis and solicitation may be published on the Federal Business Opportunities website www.fbo.gov. Reponses to this notice will not be considered responses to a solicitation.

Confidentiality

No proprietary, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response.

USAID reserves the right to use any non-proprietary information in any resulting solicitation(s).