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Overview :
Pacific Islands countries (PICs) boast “big ocean” economies, with young and mobile populations and highly resilient and adaptative societies. Past and recent investments have however
fallen short of developing diverse economies offering inclusive services and opportunities, resilient to external shocks and the increasing pace of climate disasters. While the scale of
Pacific economies does not allow them to respond to all these challenges alone, public investment and revenues would gain from empowered officials accountable to keep basic service
delivery and development priorities in mind while driving fiscal decisions.
For this reason, the “Accountable Public Finances to serve Pacific people – Vaka Pasifika” project (hereafter Vaka Pasifika project) builds on the results of the “Strengthening Public
Finance Management and Governance in the Pacific” (PFM) project implemented between 2018 and 2022. The proposed overarching goal of this project is to strengthen the governance mechanisms
enabling Pacific countries to deliver public services that are better calibrated to meet specific needs of the people. Its specific focus will be to ensure scarce Pacific resources are
better managed and the resource base available for achieving national development goals will be increased. To achieve this goal, PIC economies require stable and reliable institutions
implementing the right mix of creativity and rigor informed by ground reality. The Project will contribute to this vision by (a) supporting oversight institutions and decision makers to
define and implement their priorities through leadership and institutional capacity strengthening and (b) enhancing responsiveness of service delivery and public finance management by
developing institutional mechanisms for engagement and openness and strengthening civil society capacity.
A major challenge in the Pacific region is the quality and timeliness of audit reports with an even greater challenge in the follow-up and implementation of recommendations from audits.
Both are impaired by delays in producing whole of government financial statements and capacity of parliaments in the region to follow-up on reports, factors which are external to Audit
Offices. Yet a major challenge also relates to human resource. Supreme Audit Institutions cannot compete with the private sectors and very few manage to recruit from the extremely limited
pool of qualified accountant, with some Auditor Office functioning without any certified auditor.
Starting from this specific challenge, the focus of this consultancy is to understand what skills are actually worth investing in for Pacific Supreme Audit Institutions and where it might
be worth investing in ICT and artificial Intelligence tools. The report will lead to the Vaka Pasifika project focusing energy on developing and piloting some of these tools to accelerate
the transition and ensure SAIs can focus on the essential human resources capacity and cut down on capacity building of the past.
Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications to the link provided .
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Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability for the duration of the assignment using the template provided in Annex II.
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CV indicating all experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional
references.
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Financial proposal, as per template provided in Annex II (in USD)
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Portfolio of research or published pieces would be welcome
Note: Successful individual will be required to provide proof of medical insurance coverage before commencement of contract for the duration of the assignment.
Incomplete, joint proposals and proposals sent to the wrong mailing address will not be accepted and only candidates for whom there is further interest will be contacted.
Individuals interested in this consultancy should apply and will be reviewed based on their own individual capacity. The successful individual may sign an Individual Contract with UNDP or
request his/her employer to sign a Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA) on their behalf by indicating this in the Offerors letter to Confirming Interest and Availability using Annex II.
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