CONSULTANCTY - TERMS OF REFERENCE
UNRWA is a United Nations agency established by the General Assembly in 1949 and is mandated
to provide assistance and protection to a population of some 5 million registered Palestine refugees.
Its mission is to help Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip to
achieve their full potential in human development, pending a just solution to their plight. UNRWA’s
services encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and
improvement, microfinance and emergency assistance. UNRWA is funded almost entirely by
voluntary contributions. UNRWA is the largest UN operation in the Middle East with more than 30,000
staff.
Researcher-Arabic Speaker (The E-health Project Evaluation), HQ Amman
BACKGROUND
UNRWA’s Department of Internal Oversight Services (DIOS) is planning an evaluation of the e-health
project evaluation, which will be managed by the Evaluation Division in DIOS. It will be carried out by
external consultants. The evaluation will draw conclusions independently without any interference
from management, especially regarding analysis and recommendations.
DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The role of the Researcher-Arabic Speaker will be to contribute answers to the evaluation questions
mentioned in Annex 1, in Particular question 1 and 6 under Relevance, 4 under efficiency, questions 2
under effectiveness, question 2 and 5 under impact.
The Evaluator will carry out the following duties:
1. Reviewing relevant programme documentation (3 consultant days);
2. Contribute to developing the Evaluation Methodology, representative samples, qualitative and
quantitative research tools (2 consultant days);
3. Information collection (23 consultant days) by
a. Carrying out site visits to UNRWA Field offices and its Health Centres;
b. Carrying out Patients’ Survey and Health Centres Staff Survey across the fields.
4. Communicating the preliminary findings to the other members of the evaluation team as part
of a daily debriefing (consultant days included in the above);
5. Conduct the Surveys data entry, data analysis and interpretation (Frequencies, Regression,
etc...), and provide inputs into the drafting of the inception, draft and final report (8 consultant
days);
6. Contributing to presenting the preliminary findings in the debriefing (1 consultant day).
ESSENTIAL QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE
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Advance university degree from an accredited educational institution in Economics, Statistics
or in any relevant field;
A minimum of 5 years of work experience;
Experience in designing, conducting and managing surveys;
Extensive experience in the statistical software packages (SPSS, STATA or etc…);
Strong analytical skills;
Fluency in Arabic and English.
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DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS
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Previous work experience in the Middle East;
Previous work experience with UN agencies.
CONDITIONS OF SERVICE
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The expected starting of field work for the evaluation is 1 April 2015;
The duration of the assignment is 37 consultant days;
The Researcher-Arabic Speaker must be able to travel to UNRWA’s Fields of operation, namely
Jordan, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank (including Jerusalem).
APPLICATION PROCESS
Applicants should submit a cover letter, list of similar assignments and a CV or UN Personnel History
Form, as well as their expected daily consultant rate via consultancy@unrwa.org clearly indicating
the title of this consultancy as “Researcher-Arabic Speaker” in the subject line of the message. CVs
should contain the contact details of a minimum of three references. The deadline for the submission
of applications is 17 March 2015.
UNRWA is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applications from both women and men.
UNRWA encourages applications from qualified and experienced female candidates. Only those
applicants short-listed for interview will be contacted. UNRWA is a non-smoking environment.
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ANNEX 1: THE E-HEALTH PROJECT EVALUATION
The Health Department believes that the e-health project is essential because of its support for the
implementation of the Family Health Team approach in addition to its role in supporting the Health
Department as a whole. The e-health project in UNRWA has three outputs (1) the capacity building
package; (2) the e-health adoption component; (3) the e-health system development.
The evaluation will contribute to accountability and learning. It aims to attribute the e-health
contributions to the achievement of the overall health services (quality and efficiency improvement
and supporting Family Health Team approach). The evaluation will provide advice to the Health
Department to improve the e-health project implemented, prior to roll out to the remaining health
centres. It will identify good practice in relation to e-health projects.
The evaluation will cover all Fields of UNRWA operations, if accessible, and look at all aspects of the
e-health project including previous stages of development. The evaluation will include a sample of
health centres that have adopted the e-health system fully or partially and health centres that still
follow the paper based system (for comparison). In addition, the evaluation will assess good
practices in e-health systems design and the linkage to other systems used in the region (AviCenna
and Hakeem host government e-health systems in Jordan and oPt). The evaluation will include a
review lessons learnt from roll out, designing, planning, implementation and change management
process.
It will cover all evaluation domains; Relevance, Efficiency, Effectiveness, Impact and Sustainability.
Relevance
This evaluation will focus on the relevance of e-health project towards improving the quality and
efficiency of health service provision and of the e-health project supporting the Family Health Team
approach.
Suggested Evaluation questions include:
1. To what extent did the e-health project contribute to improving health service provision to
Palestine refugees in health centres and overall to the health service provision in the region?
2. To what extent the e-health system was integrated into UNRWA information systems, and
contributed to change management in UNRWA?
3. To what extent did the e-health project adapt to the change of approach resulting from the
health reform and in particular the adoption of the Family Health Team approach.
4. To what extent was information about governments’ e-health systems taken into account
when designing the e-health project?
5. Was the e-health project design adequate, in particular were the e-health project stakeholders
consulted adequately, was the intervention logic well developed and was the governance and
support to the project adequate?
6. Did the e-health project take account of the particular needs of female staff?
Efficiency
The e-health project is evaluated as efficient if it uses resources appropriately and produces the
desired outputs. The evaluation will assess the efficiency of the e-health approach in comparison with
the paper based system, as well as the processes to implement e-health.
Suggested evaluation questions include:
1. How does the total system cost of e-health system compare with other relevant systems?
2. To what extent has the e-health project implementation been efficient in terms of achieving
the time line, using existing space, coordination, staffing and cost?
3. To what extent has the e-health project revision process been efficient in reflecting the
change of approach resulting from the health reform and in particular the adoption of the
family health team approach?
4. To what extent does the e-health project contribute to efficiency gains in terms of data
collection, use of resources (paper, etc.), and health centre management?
Effectiveness
It will aim to identify what elements of the e-health project were provided a desired result.
The suggested questions that will be used to assess the effectiveness include:
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1. To what extent has the e-health project been able to support the Family Health Team
approach to improve the quality and efficiency of health service provided?
2. To what extent has the e-health project achieved its objectives of improving patient
compliance, and collected comprehensive, accurate and timely information from UNRWA
health centres?
3. How has the e-health project contributed to how UNRWA gathers data?
Impact
Impact measures contribution of e-health towards improved service quality in health centres to
Palestine refugees.
Suggested evaluation questions include:
1. Is the e-health system providing information that feeds into the decision making process in
UNRWA at all levels?
2. Does the e-health project, improve the performance of the work in health centres?
3. To what extent is this contributing to overall health service provision in the host countries?
4. To what extent is the data disaggregated and the information prepared to provide a better
understanding of gender and other cross-cutting issues?
5. Assess whether is the unintended impact (positive or negative)?
Sustainability
Sustainability measures the extent to which the benefits of adopting the e-health will continue in the
long term.
Suggested Evaluation questions include:
1. Are the recurrent costs of the e-health implementation higher than before or lower, and are
resources available to run the system in the medium term?
2. Are the resources available to maintain the e-health (security, backup, training, support,
etc…)?
3. To what extent is the e-health able to respond to changing and emerging health priorities and
needs?
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