Call for expressions of interest - Consultancy to conduct a mid-term internal evaluation of the ILO-KSA Cooperation Programme Phase 2

Evaluation background

ILO considers evaluation as an integral part of the implementation of development cooperation
activities. Provisions are made in all programmes in accordance with ILO evaluation policy and based
on the nature of the programme and the specific requirements agreed upon at the time of the
programme design and during the programme as per established procedures. The Regional M&E
Officer at the ILO ROAS supports the evaluation function for all ILO programmes.

In accordance with the ILO evaluation policy, two evaluations are required during the programme
implementation, one internal evaluation at the mid-term and an independent final evaluation at the
end of the Action.

As the programme is half-way through implementation, a mid-term internal evaluation will be
conducted, which will be used to enhance learning within the ILO and among key stakeholders and
guide the programme team in adjusting if necessary the programme’s approach and scope for
implementation during the programme’s remaining period.

Programme background

Following a successful first phase of the ILO/KSA Development Cooperation Programme between
2018 and 2021, a second phase of the Programme was launched in 2022. This second phase builds
on the achievements of the first phase of the ILO/KSA Development Cooperation Programme
including in the areas of labour market inclusiveness and non-discrimination, Social Dialogue, child
labour and labour market information, and goes beyond to address issues related to:

(1) Supporting effective labour market and employment policy development, monitoring and
evaluation;

(2) Promoting fundamental principles and rights at work and supporting related national efforts,
including development and implementation of policies and legislation;

(3) Strengthening social dialogue institutions and building capacities of tripartite stakeholders
on tripartism and social dialogue in KSA;

(4) Improving skills governance for better employability and employment outcomes in KSA; and

(5) Improving Occupational Safety and Health in line with international labour standards.
More specifically, the Programme includes interventions and support across the following five pillars
of work.

· Improved Employment and Labour Market Policies and Outcomes: The ILO supports Saudi
Arabia's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development (MHRSD) in enhancing
employment policies, addressing labour market duality, and improving outcomes for Saudi
nationals through policy reviews and effective monitoring with a focus on building a robust
Labour Market Information System (LMIS).

· Fundamental principles and rights at work promoted in KSA: The ILO collaborates with
Saudi Arabia to enforce fundamental principles like the abolition of child labour, elimination
of discrimination, eradication of forced labour, and ensuring safe and healthy working
conditions. This includes technical assistance and capacity-building to align national policies
with international labour standards and introduce the ILO’s constituents to current
methodologies in place to promote FPRW.

· Strengthened social dialogue institutions and enhanced capacities of tripartite
stakeholders on tripartism and social dialogue in KSA: The ILO assists in enhancing social
dialogue in Saudi Arabia by assessing its current status, recommending improvements, and
promoting the ratification of relevant ILO Conventions. This supports the development of
credible social dialogue actors and institutions crucial for social cohesion.

· Improved skills governance for better employability and employment outcomes in KSA:
Addressing skills mismatches in Saudi Arabia's workforce, the ILO aids in reforming the skills
development system to align with market demands. This involves enhancing national skills
governance, building capacities in skills development institutions, and promoting lifelong
learning initiatives. The ILO will also work with the tripartite sector skills councils to allow
them to fulfil their mandate.

· Improved Occupational Safety and Health in line with relevant international labour
standards: Collaborating under Saudi Vision 2030, the ILO supports the implementation of
the National Occupational Safety and Health Policy to ensure safe working environments.
This includes technical support and capacity building for effective OSH standards and
practices. The ILO will also provide technical assistance for the development of an OSH
Strategy, updating the system for notification of injuries and deaths, and reinforcing the
inspection and compliance procedures in the Kingdom.

Purpose and scope of evaluation

The evaluation will be planned and implemented in accordance with the ILO Evaluation Policy and
the ILO Results Based Evaluation Strategy, using the ILO policy guidelines for evaluation: Principles,
rationale, planning and managing for evaluations
(http://www.ilo.ch/eval/Evaluationpolicy/WCMS_571339/lang-- en/index.htm

The purpose of the mid-term evaluation is to assess the progress so far, understand challenges, and
extract lessons learned that can help the remaining period of implementation and to determine the
relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, of programme outcomes achieved so far. The internal mid-term
evaluation promotes accountability and strengthens learning among the ILO and key stakeholders,
and helps capture the lessons learnt during the first half of the Programme in order to improve the
processes in place and ensure adequate, effective and timely delivery by the Programme end date.

The specific objectives of the evaluation are:
• Assess whether the design of the Programme is adequate to address the problems at
hand. Are the programme objective and design relevant given the political, economic,
and financial context.
• Establish the relevance of the Programme design and implementation strategy in relation
to the ILO, UN and national development frameworks (e.g. SDGs and UNSDCF, Vision
2030);
• Assess the extent to which the programme has so far engaged with tripartite
constituents and other relevant stakeholders in the delivery of the different activities.
• Determine how relevant the programme activities are to the programme’s objectives
and to what extent they respond to the needs of the country’s socioeconomic context
and labour market. (Relevance)
• Identify unexpected positive and negative results of the programme;
• Assess the extent to which the programme outcomes could be sustainable;
• Examine whether the policies, strategies and capacity building activities by the
programme actively support the efforts of ILO Constituents in Saudi Arabia to improve
the state of the labour market
• Assess whether the Programme contributed to strengthening the capacity of national
stakeholders to engage in policy development, monitoring and evaluation in the areas of
focus of the Programme.
• Identify lessons learned and potential good practices, especially regarding models of
interventions that can be applied further;
• Identify possible corrective measures that could be implemented during the remainder
of the Programme to improve delivery of the programme outcomes.
• Determine if the resources have been used to fulfil the programme performance in an
efficient manner with respect to cost, time and management staff.
• Provide recommendations to the ILO on improving evaluability of the programme, in
anticipation of the final evaluation of the programme.
The evaluation will cover the implementation of the programme from its inception in November
2022 till August 2024.

Evaluation criteria and questions

The evaluation utilises the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Assistance
Committee (OECD DAC) evaluation criteria as defined below:
- Relevance and strategic fit: the extent to which the objectives are in keeping with local
priorities and needs, the constituents’ priorities and needs, and the donor’s priorities;
- Coherence: the extent to which other interventions support or undermine the
intervention, and vice versa. This includes internal coherence and external coherence, in
particular, synergies and fit with national initiatives and with other donor-supported
programmes and programme visibility
- Validity of design: the extent to which the programme design, logic, strategy and
elements are/ remain valid vis-à-vis problems and needs; the extent to which the
flexibility granted to the national chapters of the programme allowed for an improved
alignment of the programme with national policies and institutions; the extent to which
the methodologies used were adapted to the national and local context;
- Effectiveness: the extent to which the programme has contributed to the development
objectives and the immediate objectives and more concretely whether the stated
outputs have been produced satisfactorily; in addition to building synergies with
national initiatives and with other donor- supported programmes and programme
visibility;
- Efficiency: the productivity of the programme implementation process taken as a
measure of the extent to which the outputs achieved are derived from an efficient use
of financial, material and human resources;
- Sustainability: the extent to which adequate capacity building of social partners has
taken place to ensure mechanisms are in place to sustain activities and whether the
existing results are likely to be maintained beyond programme completion. The extent
to which the recipients have the mandate, the capacity, the financial means to replicate
the approaches promoted by the programme. In addition, effectiveness of management
arrangements and knowledge management as the extent to which lessons learnt during
the programme were documented, validated, shared with participants, and used for
changing methodologies and approaches, is an additional focus.

Evaluation questions

The evaluation will examine the programme and its different components on the basis of specific
evaluation questions (final list to be validated as part of the inception phase) and against the
standard evaluation criteria mentioned above.

Relevance and Strategic Fit

1. How well do the programme objectives align with local priorities and needs?
2. To what extent do the programme objectives reflect the priorities and needs of the
constituents?
3. How do the programme objectives align with the donor’s priorities?

Coherence

4. How do other interventions support or undermine this programme?
5. What synergies exist between this programme and national initiatives?
6. How visible is the programme within the broader context of national and donor-supported
initiatives?

Validity of Design

8. How valid is the programme design in addressing the identified problems and needs?
9. How has the flexibility granted to national chapters improved the programme’s alignment
with national policies and institutions?
10. How well are the methodologies used in the programme adapted to the national and local
context?

Effectiveness

11. To what extent has the programme contributed to its development and immediate
objectives?
12. Have the stated outputs been produced satisfactorily?
13. How effectively has the programme built synergies with national initiatives and other donorsupported programmes?

Efficiency

15. How efficiently have financial, material, and human resources been used to achieve the
programme’s outputs?
16. What measures have been taken to ensure the productivity of the programme
implementation process?

Sustainability

17. What capacity-building efforts have been made to ensure the sustainability of the
programme’s activities?
18. Are the existing results likely to be maintained beyond the programme’s completion?
19. Do the recipients have the mandate, capacity, and financial means to replicate the
approaches promoted by the programme?
20. How effective are the management arrangements and knowledge management practices in
documenting, validating, and sharing lessons learned?

Methodology

The evaluation methodology is expected to use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, to be
defined and approved as part of the evaluation inception report. The evaluation methodology
should include examining the interventions’ Theory of Change, specifically in the light of logical
connect between levels of results, its coherence with external factors, and their alignment with the
ILO’s strategic objectives, SDGs and related targets, national and ILO country level outcomes.
The methodology should clearly state the limitations of the chosen evaluation methods, including
those related to representation of specific group of stakeholders. Envisaged steps include the
following:

1. Desk Review: Review of programmes and its components materials, publications, data,
among others.
2. Inception meeting with the programme team and technical backstopping unit in ROAS. The
objective of the consultation is to reach a common understanding regarding the status of
the programme, the priority assessment questions, available data sources and data
collection instruments and an outline of the final evaluation report. The following topics will
be covered: programme background and materials, key evaluation questions and priorities,
list of stakeholders, criteria for country selection, outline of the inception and final report.
3. Initial interviews with the programme team and donor.
4. Submission of an Inception Report with the final methodology and Work Plan. The
Inception Report and the Work Plan will be subject to approval by the Evaluation Manager,
and it will indicate the steps/phases and dates of the process in which the Evaluation will
take place.
5. Additional documents review and analysis, data collection prior or in parallel to the
evaluation interviews as required by the proposed methodology.
6. Evaluation interviews (individual or collective) with ILO and stakeholders.
7. Debriefing with the Evaluation Manger and ILO Specialists after submission of the draft final
report.
8. Incorporating comments received from the Evaluation Manger and ILO Specialists into the
final report.
9. Final report submission after incorporating comments from the Evaluation Manager and ILO

Specialists

Other dimensions, including gender, tripartism, disability issues and non-discrimination should be
considered as a cross-cutting concern throughout the methodology, deliverables and final report of
the evaluation. In terms of this evaluation, this implies involving respondents from these groups in
the consultation, evaluation analysis and evaluation team. All this information should be accurately
included in the inception report and final evaluation report.

Evaluation timeframe

The evaluation is to start on 17 November 2024 and complete by 15 January 2025 (dates could be
adjusted slightly depending on the final start date). please review the tentative deadline in the attached ToR.

Deliverables

The deliverables for the evaluator consist of the following:
- Deliverable 1: Inception report
- Deliverable 2: Draft evaluation report
- Deliverable 3: Final evaluation report with separate template for executive summary and
templates for lessons learned and good practices duly filled in, as well as all related
annexes, such as the list of participants interviewed. (as per ILO’s standard procedure,
the report will be considered final after quality review by the ILO Evaluation Office)

Payment terms

The evaluator will be paid as per the below schedule:
- 10 per cent of the total fee against deliverable 1 above approved by the
evaluation manager and the regional evaluation officer.
- 40 per cent of the total fee against deliverable 2 above
- 50 per cent of the total fee against deliverable 3 above, approved by
the ILO Regional evaluation officer

Responsibilities

The evaluator will report to the ILO’s evaluation manager and should discuss any technical and
methodological matters with them. The programme team will provide administrative and logistical
support during the data collection.

The evaluator is responsible for conducting the evaluation according to the terms of reference (ToR).
They will:
- Review the ToR and propose any refinements to evaluation questions and methodology
during the inception phase.
- Review programme background materials (e.g., programme document and progress
reports).
- Prepare an inception report.
- Develop and implement the evaluation methodology (i.e., conduct interviews, review
documents) to answer the evaluation questions.
- Conduct preparatory consultations with the evaluation manager prior to the evaluation
mission.
- Conduct interviews and collect information according to the suggested format
- Present preliminary findings.
- Prepare an initial draft of the evaluation report with input from the evaluation manager,
ILO specialists, and constituents/stakeholders.
- Prepare the final report based on the ILO, donor and other stakeholders’ feedback
obtained on the draft report.
Legal and ethical considerations
- This evaluation will comply with ILO evaluation guidelines and UN Norms and Standards.
- The ToRs is accompanied by the code of conduct for carrying out the evaluation “Code
of conduct for evaluation in the ILO”1. The selected consultants will sign the Code of
Conduct form along with the contract.
- UNEG ethical guidelines will be followed throughout the evaluation.
- The consultants will not have any links to programme management or any other conflict
of interest that would interfere with the independence of the evaluation.

Qualifications

The evaluator is expected to have following qualifications,
- Proven experience in the evaluation of development interventions
- Expertise in policy/technical support programmes, capacity building and skills
development.
- An understanding of the ILO’s programmes. Prior experience in the region, particularly in
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is an asset.
- High professional standards and principles of integrity in accordance with ILO Evaluation
Policy and United Nations Evaluation Group Norms and Standards.
- An advanced degree in a relevant field.
- Proven expertise on evaluation methods and the ILO approach.
- Full command of English and Arabic.
- Previous experience in evaluations for UN agencies is preferred, particularly ILO.