1. Background
Vietnam has defined governance reform as an area of significance in its sustainable development efforts toward 2020. However, the implementation of the governance reforms and the performance of the public administration is hard to assess and measure. To address this deficiency, a consortium of Vietnamese partners including the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) and the Centre for Community Support and
Development Studies (CECODES) with the support of the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) initially presented PAPI in 2009 as a tool to measure the performance of governance and public administration reforms along with public service delivery at the provincial level. PAPI offers the perspective of citizens as end-users of public administrative services. It focuses on measuring policy implementation performance to provide evidence that will feed back into subsequent policy-making.
PAPI is the first large-scale exercise of its kind in Vietnam measuring the standards of public administration drawn from citizens ’ experiences when interacting with governmental authorities at different levels.
VFF is a mass organization based on popular mobilization and is seen to be representative of the people. Both Vietnam’s constitution and laws establish its special role in supervising the activities of the government and government organizations.
PAPI was piloted in three provinces in 2009 and in 30 provinces in 2010. Since 2011
PAPI has covered all 63 provinces in Vietnam. Switzerland has supported PAPI since
2011.
The proj ect’s goal: The overall goal of PAPI is to strengthen the transparency, accountability and responsiveness of provincial governments to their citizens by measuring all provinces’ performance on governance and public administration, based on feedback of randomly selected citizens.
The project’s expected outcomes:

PAPI will foster (i) results-based management and monitoring of the public administration and (ii) evidence-based policy making and planning.
 PAPI will allow the people’s voice on performance of the public administration to be heard, and will strengthen VFF in its supervisory role, as a key actor of civil society in
Vietnam.

PAPI will create pressure from society to further increase, deepen and make more comprehensive public administration reforms in Vietnam.

An open database of the PAPI survey will be established at www.papi.vn to allow researchers or institutions to access and carry out data analysis on any issues of public administration reform. This is a necessary step to foster advocacy work in
Vietnam.

2. Objectives of the MTR
2.1 Objectives
As foreseen by SDC and UNDP, a MTR will take place in 2014. The overall goal of the
MTR is to assess whether the project is moving in the right direction toward its expected outcomes, to identify the key challenges in achieving the project outcomes and to provide recommendations to meet those challenges . The MTR has the following objectives:
Objective 1, review of key results of the project up-to-date and their contribution to the achievement of the expected project outcomes;
Objective 2 , assessment of whether the project implementation process ensures the delivery of the expected outcomes and its efficiency.
Objective 3, provision of strategic recommendations to the project key stakeholders
(VFF, CECODES, UNDP and SDC) to ensure sustainable project impacts.
2.2 Key guiding questions
Objective 1:

What are the key results of each expected outcome up-to-date?

Are there gaps between the current project status and its expected outcomes?

Are the project expected outcomes still relevant? If not what should they be?
Objective 2:

Is the operation modality of the project helping to achieve results? If not, why and how could it be improved?

What are the role and functions of each actor in the consortium of VFF,
CECODES and UNDP? What has been their performance up-to-date?

Who are key partners of the project and how do they participate/contribute to the project?

What possibilities are there to improve the project organization and the implementation process?
Objective 3:

Based on the findings and analysis of objectives 1 & 2 propose strategic recommendations to the project key stakeholders. The recommendation should be practical and action-oriented and guide the implementation in the next years
3. Expected results of the MTR
The expected results of the MTR are following:
(i) a briefing of the MTR findings and recommendations to the key stakeholders
(half-day workshop).
(ii) a final report in English and Vietnamese (max. 25 pages, excluding annexes) including an executive summary (max 2 pages) with critical and analytical views and clear recommendations. The MTR report should be concise and selfexplanatory
4. MTR Team

The MTR will be conducted by an independent consultant team consisting of one international consultant (team leader) and one national consultant.
The main responsibilities of the international consultant (team leader) are:
 Development of an evidence-based review methodology e, fine-tuning of the key questions
 Organisation of the MTR process
 Allocation of tasks to the national consultant (team member)
 Supervision and guiding the team member in task implementation
 Writing and finalising the evaluation report
The team leader should be:
 A specialist in social study and survey and have
 Excellent knowledge on governance and public administration reform (experience in and knowledge of Vietnam is an important advantage)
 Experience in project management and implementation
 Very good communication and editing skills
 Fluent in English (writing, speaking)
The main responsibilities of the national consultant are:
 Fulfil tasks defined by and work under the supervision of the team leader
 Help the team leader in understanding the Vietnamese situation and context
 Interpret for the team leader in discussion with the Vietnamese partners
 Translate the evaluation report from English into Vietnamese
The national consultant should be:
 A specialist on governance and public administration reform in Vietnam and have
 Good knowledge of social study and survey
 Experience in project management and implementation
 Fluent in English and Vietnamese (writing, speaking)
 Very good communication and editing skills
The independent consultant team will be jointly selected by SDC and UNDP. During the evaluation process the consultant team will work independently and self-sufficiently in organization, logistics and arrangements of meetings with stakeholders and counterparts.
5. Tentative schedule
The MRT will take place during Mid-February/March 2014 with a total of 20 person-days for each consultant. It is suggested the evaluation is conducted for three weeks of consecutive work as per the below tentative schedule.
Review process
Desk review
Number of days
3 person-days (max)
Expected outputs
Notes with concrete elaborated questions and interview schedules.
Initial briefing with SDC and UNDP.
11 person-days Interviews with relevant stakeholders
Report writing 4 person-days
Suggested and expanded sample of interviewees met
Briefing of the MTR initial findings and

Finalising MTR report
2 person-days recommendations to the key stakeholders
(half-day workshop)
Final report in English and Vietnamese
(max. 25 pages, excluding annexes) including executive summary (max 2 pages) with critical and analytical views and clear recommendations
UNDP and SDC will provide the independent consultants team with an initial list of stakeholders to meet. It will be the responsibility of the independent consultant to arrange meetings.
6. Facilitation
The MTR will be jointly facilitated by SDC and UNDP. The two agencies jointly develop the
TOR and select consultants for the MTR.
7. Reference documents
- PAPI report 2010
- PAPI report 2011
- PAPI report 2012
- Electronic copies of the reports and other materials are available at www.papi.vn