Consultancy service to develop a multi-country platform prototype, virtual community of practice on skills and labour migration for knowledge sharing

The International Labour Organization (ILO) would like to notify your company of a tender recently published on the United Nations Global Marketplace (UNGM) available here:

https://www.ungm.org/Public/Notice/157960

ADDIS-RFP2021/83 Consultancy service to develop a multi-country platform prototype, virtual community of practice on skills and labour migration for knowledge sharing**

Your proposal must be received by the ILO no later than 17 December 2021,17h00 EAT.

In order to submit the offer, your company must be registered on UNGM. If your company is already registered, kindly ensure that your company’s contact information is up to date (i.e email, contact name, etc.). For any queries related on the registration of your company on UNGM, please contact UNGM directly at: registry@ungm.org.

We look forward to your company’s participation.

The objective of the consultancy is

Design conceptually and develop a multi-country digital prototype platform for knowledge sharing, capacity building and dialogue on skills and migration issues.

The prototype should be designed in such a way that the platform will cater for exchange of knowledge, good practices and policy approaches among the East Africa and other geographical regions, reaching out to key stakeholders: Governments, employers, and workers’ organizations, research institutions and other Partner organizations working on labour migration and skills in the sub-region.

The platform will also serve as a repository of legislation and policy documents, governing skills and qualifications recognition in the countries of East Africa that can be used as a point of reference and will promote policy and practice learning. The platform will be designed to foster and host a virtual community of practice, which will promote a peer-exchange on labour migration and skills-related issues and capacity building activities.

The platform will be hosted by the African Union Commission (AUC) and managed by them in the future. The linkages with other existing platforms, such as the one hosted by AUDA-NEPAD and the ILO Knowledge Hub on Recruitment, will be ensured to feed up-to-date information on events, innovative research and policy approaches, as well as technical content on labour migration and skills issues.

To ensure that the needs of the stakeholders and partners are duly considered in the prototyping the platform, the consulting firm will work alongside the content experts who shall lead consultations with all key stakeholders to gather information on preferences, scope and type of engagements and functions the Platform should be able to do.

Component of the platform:

As indicated, the Learning and Knowledge Management Platform will also serve as a capacity-strengthening platform, a clearinghouse and repository of knowledge products, tools and resources that AU and its partners collect and/or produce. In particular, Platform will have the following key components: a Public Interface (accessible to all users) and a Secured Private Interface (access restricted to AU Secretariat and or Task Force/technical team):

The two components aims to:

I. Create an access point for knowledge sharing including through virtual community, promoting analysis, dissemination of proven best practices and knowledge products on skills and labour migration

a. Improving access to technical information via a customizable search tool to help users achieve better search results across various research topics and information products, including maps and multimedia. AU and partners will also disseminate the knowledge it has developed before on the same topic

b. Collaboratively designing and developing a support tool to disseminate knowledge developed by member states, relevant RECs and other stakeholders to improve the quality of information availed for users and also key documentation from partners that support research actions and data based evidence;

c. Serving as a gateway to a broad range of tools that enable countries and stakeholders to address issues related to policy-making and on-the-ground implementation;

d. Addressing the gap in research on skills and migration, especially the research-practice in Africa, and highlight success stories and innovative practices. The Platform will help inform policies and practices in labour migration at national, sub regional and regional level.

II. Ensure seamless and quality operations of the platform by

a. A centralized system for accessing professional and technical content

b. Monitor and evaluate progress on the functioning of the platform including feeding the platform with requisite information on a timely manner

c. Learning management centre integrated in the AUC IT department that will provide technical support as may be required and trouble shoot any challenges that may impede the smooth functioning of the platform

Functionality of the Platform

The envisaged platform shall have the following functionalities

i. A Content and Document Management System:

This will support AU’s institutional memory and it will enable the creation, classification, management of various types of digital content by also retaining and protecting electronic information. To this end, it will be necessary to integrate the following sub-functionalities:

a. Design structure for the proposed online knowledge repository and knowledge exchange platform.**

i. Support content driven collaboration.

ii. Review and update the repository system for AU and stakeholders’ documents.

iii. Update AU profile database: a compilation of information and knowledge produced by member countries and partners on the topic and related issues on.

ii. *A Capacity Strengthening System:**

This will support the strengthening of national capacity through peer reviews and exchanges; to this end, it will be necessary to integrate the following sub-functionalities:

a. Virtual Community of Practice (VCP): To share the practical and technical challenges, success stories, ideas, resources and define common solutions.

b. E-learning functionality?

iii. Stakeholder management tools/options

This functionality will enable AU to interact continuously with its stakeholders and potential partners.

1. Contact database system: It registers, manages and updates different contacts.


2. Digital questionnaire to collect information from member’s countries: to get updated information from member countries.


3. Quality Assurance System: to assess the quality and use of the Platform, design and develop forms for reporting.


4. Resource mobilization: Dashboard indicating which partner is contributing to AU on projects or themes related to skills and labour migration specific project or thematic area and integrate a call to action report.


5. Integrate social media tools and other easy-to-use share buttons and publishing tools to promote better use and access to the Platform.

Platform Hosting

The platform is expected to be hosted by AU. The consulting firm in designing the prototype will work collaboratively with AU team for understanding resource requirements and other technical aspects to be taken into consideration. The consulting firm will consult AU IT team on technology standards for platform development; AU IT team shall provide required information which will consider development technology standards including Operating systems, Databases, Programming Languages, Security, and Cloud Hosting.

Specific tasks of the consulting firm:

i. Review the knowledge sharing platforms with similar purposes, functions and scope from both organizations (AU, ILO) and elsewhere, for comparability and learning of weakness and success factor for each. To start with the consulting firm need to visit and study KS platforms such as:

a. Africa Continental framework -ACQF https://acqf.africa/

b. AUDA NEPAD knowledge portal https://www.nepad.org/communities-of-practice

c. The Pan African Forum on Labour migration https://www.iom.int/pan-african-forum-migration-pafom

d. And other relevant KS platforms for e.g https://mixedmigration.org/

e. ILO’s Skills KSP https://www.skillsforemployment.org/skpEng

ii. Suggest, based on the consultations and review of the report from the subject expert and from own experience on similar assignments a design suitable for the functions of the platform. Including:

a. Platform architecture and technical content

b. Knowledge organization strategy

c. Additional functionalities needed (social networking, service request tracking, collaboration spaces and tools, instant messaging, multilanguage capabilities, user feedback, usage metrics and reporting,)

iii. In consultation with AU IT department, assess the capacity and feasibility of the department hosting the platform with the intended functionalities

iv. Provide technical guidance on the choosing of the right platform and hosting modalities for sustainable use by the AU and maximizing engagement by a community of practice

v. Produce the platform design prototype for review by select technical team

vi. Incorporate comments and submit the final prototype to ILO