CALL FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF NIGER-DELTA OPEN GOVERNMENT OBSERVATORY PORTAL 

Expressions of Interest

Background

Grassroots People Empowerment Foundation (Policy Alert) is a non-governmental organisation with a vision of accountable institutions; empowered citizens; and sustainable communities. Our mission is to promote social, economic and ecological outcomes that are people-centred, equitable and sustainable. We operate principally in the Niger Delta. Our target audiences include communities, media, civil society organizations (CSOs), state actors and institutions, international financial institutions, and corporations. 

Policy Alert and eight other organizations are currently implementing the Niger Delta Open Government Observatory (NOGO) Project in six states of Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Imo, and Rivers, with support from USAID Nigeria through Strengthening Civic Advocacy and Local Engagement (SCALE) project implemented by Palladium. The aim of NOGO Project is to strengthen the uptake and implementation of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in the six project states mentioned above.

Currently, twenty-five (25) states have signed on to the OGP, and are at different levels of implementing state specific commitments to change the way government business is done – thereby reducing corruption and leakages, redirecting spending to development priorities, rebuilding citizens’ trust in government; and attracting foreign direct investment to subnational governments.

In the Niger Delta region, only six out of the nine states have signed on to the OGP, namely Abia, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo and Ondo states. Of these six States, only Abia, Edo and Delta States have approved State Action Plans (SAP). None of the states with approved SAP has an OGP portal which is very critical for measuring, tracking and keeping all stakeholders informed of OGP reforms in their states. At regional level, it is desirable to have a centralized OGP portal to warehouse all open government data. The proposed portal will be an open-source repository for budgets and other fiscal documents, laws, draft bills, guidelines, regulations, audits, policies, assessments, reports, minutes of public consultations, legislative proceedings, statistical reports, procurement data, freedom of information requests, and other datasets that are relevant for improving citizens access to, and engagement with, the governance process. As a pilot, the portal will provide data linkages to service delivery in the education, health, public works, agriculture, WASH, environment/climate change sectors, while providing cross-cutting data on gender and social inclusion. 

Specific Objectives:

  1. To provide the public with a repository of information and open data relevant to or generated by sub-national governments and other open government stakeholders in the Niger Delta region.
  2. To create a clearing house for all existing open gov portals and websites on the Niger Delta.
  3. To trigger a race to the top in the region on the supply and uptake of open government data (including civic-tech and gov-tech initiatives) by making bulk data available for re-use in standardized, machine-readable formats, with their metadata included.

Description of assignment:

This assignment is to the design and develop a functional, user-friendly web portal to warehouse all open government data and open government-related information in the nine Niger Delta states. Specifically, the consultant will:

  1. agree with Policy Alert on a minimum number of pilot content themes, features and data sources for the Proof of Concept (PoC) phase of the project.
  2. Design and develop a searchable hub for multiple datasets that is feature-rich, user-friendly, and easy-to-access (for both data publishers and end-users) in the nine Niger Delta States.
  3. Prioritise machine-readability and re-usability, and enable retrieving, downloading (as CSV, Excel, and XML), indexing, searching by commonly used web search applications,
  4. Provide a means to capture metadata about each dataset and embed the ability to search and browse through the list by department (e.g. news, document/report, data, featured infographic), by tag/theme (e.g. procurement, FOI, etc), by sector (e.g. WASH, public works, health), by data supplier (e.g. International development agency, CSOs, Federal Ministry of Finance, National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Government of Abia State, Government of Delta State, Boki LG Council, etc), or by some other classification.
  5. Ensure portal is designed to accommodate both tabular CSVs and geospatial data (such as, but not limited to map-based visualizations).
  6. Utilize available baseline content to build a custom database and Application Programming Interface (API) that can handle data acquisition, processing, and delivery to the front end to avoid risks such as bugs and downtime from third party portals.
  7. Enable designated data publishers for each supplier to publish new data or make changes to existing datasets.

Scope of work

The NOGO portal will host datasets that are relevant for improving citizens access to, and engagement with, governance in the nine Niger Delta States of Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Ondo, Imo, and Rivers, and an agreed minimum number of pilot local government areas. At the PoC stage, the portal will (preferably) provide data on the classifications in (v) above, but prioritizing the following:

Sectors: Education, health, public works, agriculture, WASH sectors, environment/climate change, with cross-cutting data on gender and social inclusion

Themes: socio-economic data, open budgets/fiscal transparency, open procurement, Freedom of Information (FOI), extractives.

Timelines

The Consultant will commit to be available immediately and complete the assignment within 2 (two) calendar weeks from the time of signing a contract.

Key deliverables

The Consultant will present the final output in form of:

  1. An open data portal with features described above

Application and submission guidelines

Interested developers (firms or individual consultants) should submit an Expression of Interest that includes:

  1. A technical narrative (no longer than 2 pages) describing their understanding of the task described above and how they will accomplish it, including a two (2)-week work plan and samples or links to similar work done within the last three years, preferably related to open data portal.
  2. Their CVs or company profile (not more than 3 pages)
  3. Two references that can be contacted regarding the quality of their work / past performance.

Submission Guidelines:

Interested consultants should submit an Expression of Interest to: [email protected] on or before  Thursday 29th June 2023. Only shortlisted applicant(s) will be contacted.

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