A.    BACKGROUND

The World Bank (WB) and the EU agreed to implement a new Trust Fund (TF) financed project called Strengthening Governance in Mongolia aimed to support the efforts of the Government of Mongolia (GOM) to improve fiscal discipline, public financial management (PFM), and transparency and accountability processes for strengthened governance in the public sector in Mongolia.   

This new TF, through both Recipient Executed (RE) and Bank Executed (BE) interventions, will serve two main purposes. Firstly, it will complement and expand the ongoing technical assistance the WB is providing through the Strengthening Fiscal and Financial Stability (SFFS) Project. Secondly, this TF will support the GOM in advancing the current efforts toward increasing transparency, participation and accountability in fiscal matters as well as in strengthening its capacity to deal with non-technical drivers of the reform process that prevent state agencies from implementing policies and regulations as intended.  

The Component 2 of the TF will focus primarily on supporting the specific needs of the GOM to establish sound fiscal discipline, to improve expenditure management by strengthening the budget credibility, to establish the foundations for medium-term budgeting, and to re-orient public investment to strategic projects linked to the diversification of the economy. Five priority areas will constitute the core of the component: (i) development and implementation of a public financial management reform plan and inter-agency coordination; (ii) strengthening budget preparation and execution towards results-based medium-term budgeting; (iii) improving budget reporting and transparency by increasing the comprehensiveness of fiscal and financial information and reporting; (iv) improving the management of contingent liabilities, through improving the existing governance framework for recognizing, managing, and disclosing contingent liabilities; and (v) strengthening public investment management, through the development and implementation of mechanisms for prioritizing capital project proposals and cost-benefit analysis.

BOOST is a WB collaborative effort launched in 2010 to provide quality access to budget data to enhance transparency. The initiative aimed to make well-classified and highly disaggregated budget data available for policy makers and practitioners in government, researchers, and civil society to promote their effective use for improved decision making, analysis, transparency, and accountability. Since its launch, the program centered its activities around three work streams: (a) supporting expenditure analysis, (b) advancing fiscal transparency and public dissemination of budget data, and (c) improving public financial management (PFM) processes and systems. The program has designed and delivered more than 60 national and subnational BOOST data sets in standardized formats whose contents are country specific. Each data set typically allows for approved, revised, and executed budgets to be yearly cross-referenced with categories such as, Government levels (central or local); administrative units (ministries, departments, agencies, schools, hospitals, and so forth); subnational government units (regions, districts or municipalities); economic classification categories (staff salaries, procurement of goods, and so forth); sources of funding (budget funds, off-budget funds, external finance, and so forth); and budget programs (if the country uses a program-based budgeting system), among others. 

In the case of Mongolia, the lack of functional classifications have a deep impact in the generation of aggregate expenditure numbers as the identification of budgetary allocations make the review of the country’s public spending a challenging endeavor. So, to enhance the quality of its macro-fiscal data, the government of Mongolia wants to pursue the BOOST agenda. 

Furthermore, as mentioned above, to support the BOOST dataset creation and maintenance for Mongolia at least for last 10 years in budget, the Fiscal Policy and Planning Department of the MOF wishes to hire a local consultant.

 B.     OBJECTIVE OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The main objective of this assignment is to support development of the BOOST platform in Mongolia, from the budget planning perspective, through gathering, processing, cleaning and assessing historical budget data for 2009-2019 for better quality and consistency with existing executed budget information for 2016–2018, and update the datasets until the latest year of available information. 

C.   SCOPE OF THE ASSIGNMENT

Key responsibilities under this assignment will include the following tasks and duties:

i.      Data recollection, processing and analysis:

-      Collect the historical budget planning data on State budget, Local budget and Social Insurance Fund, Health Insurance Fund and other Funds (submitted, approved, amended/revised budget data) from the  most accurate primary source (Fiscal/BPIS) for the period of 2009-2019;

-      Process the collected data and identify information gaps and inconsistencies on annual basis with the executed budget datasets made so far available for 2016-2018;

-      Generate a database structure broken down by different levels of government and Funds and their relevant administrative units (ministries, departments, agencies, schools, hospitals, and so forth); economic classification categories (staff salaries, procurement of goods, payment of services, transfers and so forth); sources of funding (budget funds, off-budget funds, external finance, and so forth); and budget programs (if the country uses a program-based budgeting system), among others (based on further availability);

ii.    Data cleaning:

-      Recode and standardize the data, when needed, to eliminate the gaps and differences concerning the economic,  functional, administrative and programmatic classifications (both the data prior to/post 2015) towards building standardized BOOST datasets for Mongolia;

-      Generate a list of compatible codes and their corresponding keys for further processing and creation of BOOST dataset.

iii.  Cooperate with BOOST team under the Treasury Department in the assessment of the resulting datasets to solve any inconsistency;

iv.   Control the accuracy of data collected by comparing resulting figures to reports presented by national authorities. In case of any inconsistency or major difference, coordinate with corresponding authorities to identify the source of such issue;

v.     Cooperate with BOOST team regarding the assessment and planification for the inclusion of geographic references in the datasets to explore possibilities for data visualization. This task requires the systematization of codes to identify locations where expenditure has been executed and to test this on control sectors (based on current state of data, it may be feasible to focus on the identification of geographical references in social development sectors such as health and education);

vi.   Draft English translations for the different categories and variables.

vii. Any other tasks as reasonably requested by the client related with BOOST agenda.

D.    DELIVERABLES:

The National Consultant will be required to provide the following deliverables:

      i.         Report on the analysis of the historical data and on the gaps and inconsistencies identified for the budget planning data;

   ii.      Historical budget data cleaned for any gaps and inconsistencies; 

   iii.     Report on the review of the draft BOOST datasets; and

   iv.     Report on possibilities of data visualization using the BOOST datasets with practical examples.

E.      CONSULTANT’S QUALIFICATIONS/ SELECTION CRITERIA

·       Education: A suitable candidate should have a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field:  accounting, statistics, finance, and economics or a relevant discipline;

·       Experience:

o   Candidate should have at least 3 years of relevant professional experience in accounting, central, local budget management and financial management. Advanced knowledge of finance and budget is essential;

o   Candidate with a  relevant professional experience in data science and analysis will be considered a plus;

o   Previous experience in a similar capacity of working with the public financial management system and/or practical experience in diagnostic (quantitative and qualitative) analysis will be considered a plus.

·        Language skills: Fluent written and spoken skills in English is required;

·       Other skills:

o   Excellent analytical, organizational, communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to function effectively and collaboratively in a team environment; 

o   Ability to multi-task and meet tight deadlines;

o   Proven ability to work both autonomously and cooperatively as part of a team;

o   Ability to work with multidisciplinary teams and institutions;

o   Responsible and flexible attitude and capacity to manage a variety of tasks with minimal supervision;

o   Be proficient in MS Office such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and have excellent web research and navigation skills. Familiarity with IT systems and fiscal management information systems as well as experiences in dataset management are essential; and

o   Ability to use statistical software or data analysis programming languages (R, Stata or Python) would be considered a plus; 

o   Be able to work overtime if required.

F.      SUPERVISION AND REPORTING

•       The consultant will primarily work with the staff of the Budget Consolidation and Expenditure Divisions of Fiscal Policy and Planning Department (FPPD). Given the coordination required, the consultant will also work with the staff and consultants of the Financing and Reporting Division of the Treasury Department of MOF. The Heads of the Budget Consolidation and the Expenditure Divisions and the Financing and Reporting Division will communicate regularly with the consultant to review progress of the relevant tasks, respectively, to resolve any outstanding issues;    

•       The consultant will work closely with respective officials of central budget entities;

•       The consultant will be required to carry out his/her tasks in line with the approved WP which will serve as a basis for measuring progress on desired outcomes and goals for the entire consultancy service;

•       The consultant will prepare monthly progress reports detailing the achievements and impediments in executing the entire WP effectively. These progress reports will be discussed with  the Head of the Budget Consolidation Division  and the Director General of the FPPD;  

•       All information provided to the consultant will be regarded as confidential and information will not be shared with any outside individuals or organizations without prior agreement by the Client. 

G.    INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS

The client will provide an office space, assign the officials to accept deliverables stated in the contract and provide all necessary materials required for undertaking the assignment. The consultant shall bring his/her own computer/laptop.

H.   CONTRACT DURATION AND PAYMENT CONDITION

The assignment is expected to commence in March 2020. The total duration of the consultancy service is estimated to be 9 months. 

Payments will be released upon satisfactory completion of deliverables under each task according to the actual contract proposal. As of now, the Client is unable to define condition of payments for each task.

The consultant will be selected in accordance with INDIVIDUAL CONSULTANT SELECTION METHOD, the World Bank’s Procurement Regulations for IPF Borrowers (July 2016).

If you possess the above qualifications, please submit following documents via email to procurement@sffs.mn:

    1. Cover letter indicating why she/he considers her/himself suitable for the position,

    2. Detailed CV highlighting relevant skills/experience,

    3. Copy of diplomas or certificates and,

    4. 2 reference letters from previous last two employers no later than 17:00, April 13, 2020.

The submitted documents will not be returned to the applicants. Please note that incomplete applications would not be considered for evaluation. Only selected candidates will be contacted. Candidates can be interviewed. Detailed terms of reference can be requested from procurement@sffs.mn Contact address: Attn: Ms.Bayarmaa, Procurement Specialist, Strengthening Fiscal and Financial Stability Project.

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