Digital transformation of skills development and learning solutions at International Labour Organization

Context

Technical context

Kenya’s young population continues to face socio-economic pressures as economic growth has not led to the creation of a sufficient number of (decent) jobs. Consequently, a major challenge currently facing young people in Kenya is youth unemployment, which stood at 38 per cent in 2019 according to the most recent Kenya Population and Housing Census report. Almost one in seven (13.7 per cent) young people in Kenya were Neither in Employment, Education or Training (NEET, SDG Indicator 8.6.1) as of 2016, with young women finding themselves around twice as often (18.2 per cent) in this group than young men (9.2 per cent).

At the same time, the world is witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record. In recent years, forced displacement has increased in scale and complexity. While forcibly displaced persons face specific vulnerabilities, including psychological trauma, lack of opportunity and protection risks, host communities struggle to pursue their own development efforts in an environment that has been transformed by a large influx of newcomers. The responses to these challenges are becoming more focused on durable solutions to support more dignified, inclusive and comprehensive programmes for refugees and the communities that host them.

The digital economy has emerged as a key driver for the creation of decent jobs especially for Kenya’s youth. The country has adopted the Digital Economy Blue Print of 2019 providing a framework to leverage digital government, digital business, infrastructure, innovation-driven entrepreneurship and digital skills and values. This also presents opportunities for refugees and host community members to access jobs in the digital labour market. Fully harnessing these opportunities requires to improve access to quality education and skills development as well as stimulating labour demand and access to digital labour markets within and beyond refugee camps. For young refugees to benefit from the transformative power of information and communication technologies (ICTs), they must be equipped with a range of digital skills and have affordable access to connectivity. In short, there is a need to change towards the digitization of lifelong learning systems through supporting strategy definition, definition of specific needs for each context and recommendation of solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.

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Operational context of the assignment

In response to the challenges facing both host communities and refugees, a new partnership initiative titled: PROSPECTS Partnership for improving Prospects for host communities and forcibly displaced persons’, has been launched by the Government of the Netherlands that brings together the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank. The overall objective of PROSPECTS in Kenya is to improve the living standards and inclusiveness of refugees, asylum-seekers and vulnerable host communities, by contributing to the expansion of socio-economic opportunities through better education and mainstreamed protection interventions.

A key partner of the ILO, the National Industrial Training Authority (NITA) is a state corporation established under the Industrial Training (Amendment) Act of 2011. Its mandate is to promote the highest standards in the quality and efficiency of Industrial Training in Kenya and ensure an adequate supply of professionally trained workforce at all levels in the industry. NITA is also responsible for developing industrial training curricula; Integrating labour market information into skills development; Harmonising curricula and certificates of competence; assessing industrial training, testing occupational skills and awarding certificates including Government Trade Test certificates.

In this regard, there is an ongoing undertaking between ILO, NITA and TVET stakeholders whose objective is to build the capacity of Industrial Training Officers (ITOs) in the digitization of curriculum; development of digital training materials, and training of ITOs in curriculum delivery using e-Platforms. In this undertaking, NITA and TVET stakeholders have already pointed out the identification of a suitable platform for use with digitised curriculum content as part of the main activities for the successful accomplishment of the undertaking.

The vision under digitising learning content for NITA and TVET stakeholders is to broaden their reach to youth groups across the country with more focus on people from marginalised communities as well as young people living in areas further apart from training centres. Another channel through which the reach of NITA and TVET training stakeholders offer will be broadened by digitisation is through employers and workplaces where employers and industry representatives can access the learning content and make it available at their workplaces.

Objective and scope of work

The objective of the assignment is to support organisations (ILO, NITA and TVET institutions) in the identification of sustainable and cost-effective technological solutions for the digitalisation of their TVET systems. The consultant will leverage data to assess processes; gather, validate, define requirements; and deliver data-driven recommendations and reports to key stakeholders and decision-makers, thus straddling the line between IT and business analysis.

The technical expert consultant will work alongside ILO, government and TVET institutions to deliver within these outlined roles:

• Perform a rapid situational analysis and develop strategic recommendations to stakeholders along with implementing a learning management system (LMS) and recommendations on the infrastructure and trainers' capacity.
• Define or refine existing strategy in the digital era, expressed needs, map processes, design digital transformation plan, and prioritization.
• Identify business change needs and assess their impact on the current processes and services
• Analyse, document and communicate requirements /specifications with relevant stakeholders, including I.T related ones.
• Document/communicate technical specifications/requirements of the target solution, that could be handed over to IT teams or companies, to offer relevant solutions and support implementation.
• Provide support through implementation, testing the identified solution to make sure it is aligned with the broader strategy and initial scoping of the needs.
• Providing Technical advice and assistance, on areas such as but not limited to the design of processes, the financial investment in infrastructure, hardware or software, the breakdown of tasks, the definition of new roles and responsibilities through a RACI model, the indicative timeline, data management and visualisation, information flows and other expert option requirements
• Conduct assessment and recommend training programmes for the ITOs and trainers and work closely with the IT firm to design a ToT training for users to ensure that there is system sustainability and operational efficiency.
• Engage and keep close contact with ILO and the different stakeholders.

Deliverables, duration and fees

The assignment will involve a hybrid working arrangement for an indicative duration of 60 working days and will have the below-outlined deliverables. The assignment will be carried out over the time period: 01 October 2022 to 28 February 2023.

Please note that the total level of effort (working days) indicated above should be seen as guidelines for consultants as they develop technical and financial proposals. Deviations from these guidelines are possible and should be justified in the proposal. Consultants are also kindly asked to specify a timeline for the deliverables.

Aside from remote work, the consultant will be required to regularly participate in physical meetings with ILO, NITA representatives and other TVET stakeholder in Nairobi. In addition, physical field missions outside Nairobi might occur and would be discussed with the ILO Kenya PROSPECTS team in advance to specify if and which parts of the mission need to be done in person.

Deliverables

1. Deliverable 1: Documented technical system requirements proposal for the implementation of the agreed digital solution (hardware, software, HR, Partners, Scaling and budget).

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2. Deliverable 2: A documented situational analysis identifying the current gaps and proposal on the NITA need to digitize content presented in a coherent narrative report (max. 10 pages) and a PowerPoint Presentation (following ILO format and branding).

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3. Deliverable 3: Documented system implementation strategy (Development, Testing, Capacity building, M&E, Scaling and Piloting).

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4. Deliverable 4: Terms of Reference/Tender document for a system implementation technology firm and recruitment

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5.Deliverable 5: Designed and delivered onboarding activities to the implementing firm.

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6. Deliverable 6: Training report for the training of the initial group of Industrial Training Officers (ITOs) available.

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TOTAL: 60 Days

Deviations from these deliverables can occur according to the evolution of the assignment; however, any changes observed or anticipated should be consulted with the focal person at the ILO.

Payment terms

The ILO will only pay for services that have been performed and for deliverables that are successfully completed to the satisfaction of the ILO. The payments will be made according to the following schedule:

• The first payment of 30 per cent of the contract volume will be made upon receipt of deliverables 1 and 2 to the satisfaction of the ILO and presentation of the invoice.
• The second payment of 30 per cent of the contract volume will be made upon receipt of deliverables 3 and 4 to the satisfaction of the ILO and presentation of the invoice.
• The third and final payment of 40 per cent of the contract volume will be made upon receipt of deliverables 5 and 6 to the satisfaction of the ILO and presentation of the invoice.

 Staffing, roles, and reporting

The consultant will operate under the overall supervision of The ILO Chief Technical Advisor and Director General NITA and will report directly to the Digital Skills Specialist at ILO HQ in Geneva. The ILO Kenya PROSPECTS team will offer technical support and will coordinate closely with the Regional Skills and Employment Specialist of PROSPECTS program, Skills Digitalization specialist at HQ, the Youth Employment Officer at the Regional Office for Africa and the Decent Work Skills specialist at Pretoria to facilitate mainstreaming and standardization of the approach across the project.

Specific clauses

Throughout the course of this assignment, the consultant will report on a weekly basis to the ILO for coordination and follow–up. All communication to other relevant stakeholders should be coordinated with the ILO. If it appears necessary to modify the tasks of work or exceed the time allocated, the consultant must discuss the circumstances with the ILO and obtain prior written approval. ILO may disclose the draft or final documents and/or any related information to any person and for any purpose the ILO may deem appropriate.

Required experience and qualifications

• Post-graduate qualification in a relevant field (social science, social policy, economics, development studies, Education, Business Management, IT, etc.)
• At least 8 years of progressive experience in the area of business analysis, (digital) learning solutions, training delivery. A mixed profile with business analysis, project management and IT background is strongly preferred.
• Expert understanding of the Kenyan digital ecosystem and learning solutions from system analysis, technical implementation, review, scaling and capacity building.
• Excellent technical understanding of digital technologies development of learning management systems and digitization of learning solutions through web platforms.
• A good understanding of SDLC, Applications, APIs, Databases and software, including data management tools programming languages and technology trends in digital learning environments is required
• Monitoring and evaluation experience, being able to gather, retrieve, explore and analyse data for reporting and data visualisation purposes
• Strong understanding of budgeting and financial management with sound knowledge in planning, cost-benefit analysis and projection.
• Experience with agile scrum methodology is an asset
• Excellent communication skills (oral and written communication skills, visual communication, active listening) in English required. Fluency in Swahili is considered an advantage.

How to apply

Interested applicants should submit their expression of interest including their technical proposal, CV, financial proposal, samples of similar work and other supporting documents that show previous experience in similar assignments to, E- mail: nboprocurement@ilo.org to reach no later than midnight on Tuesday 13th September 2022 EAT, Quoting “Consultancy for NITA Digital transformation of skills development and learning solutions”