EMERGENCY NATIONAL POVERTY TARGETING PROGRAM PROJECT- Technical Audit

 DOCUMENTS and TOR

Republic of Lebanon

Ministry of Social Affairs

Emergency National Poverty Targeting Program Project

Terms of Reference for Consultancy Services for

Technical Audit for the Emergency National Poverty Targeting Program Project (P149242) and the Additional Financing for the Emergency National Poverty Targeting Project (P158980)

Proc Ref: FC006

Background

More than five years of conflict in Syria have resulted in massive influx of refugees to Lebanon and across the region at large. As part of the group of neighboring countries that are most affected —Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq— Lebanon is the one where these unprecedented numbers of refugees may have the most destabilizing consequences. As of January 2015, approximately 1.5 million Syrian refugees are residing in Lebanon with 1.1 million officially registered with the UNHCR.

At the request of the Government of Lebanon (GoL) in August 2013, the World Bank completed a rapid Economic and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) of the Syrian Conflict and an accompanying Roadmap for Priority Interventions for Stabilization from the Syrian Conflict (Roadmap). The ESIA finds that the Syrian conflict is projected to increase the poverty headcount in Lebanon by 170,000 people in 2013/2014. As such, the Roadmap identified the scaling up of the GoL’s National Poverty Targeting Program (NPTP), launched by the GoL in October 2011, as one of its immediate priorities to help vulnerable Lebanese households, as well as to help reduce tensions between the refugee and host communities.

The National Poverty Targeting Program (NPTP) is the first poverty-targeted social assistance program in Lebanon with the objective to “provide social assistance to the poorest and most vulnerable Lebanese households based on transparent criteria that assess each household’s eligibility to receive assistance, given the available public resources”.^[1] The NPTP targets the extreme poor and is managed by the MoSA and the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (PCM). The NPTP is based on a proxy-means testing (PMT) targeting mechanism and is implemented through approximately 700 social workers and inspectors operating at the level of 114 Social Development Centers (SDCs). In 2012, the Council of Ministers allocated US$28 million for the financing of the social assistance, demonstrating its commitment to the NPTP.

The program has established itself as Lebanon’s main social safety net program, playing a central role for donors, UN agencies, and other ministries in reaching poor and vulnerable host populations affected by the Syrian conflict. Increasingly any program that is interested in reaching poor Lebanese households is being directed to work with the NPTP and specifically to draw from its database for the identification of the beneficiaries.

The program has successfully established the NPTP database of poor and vulnerable populations in Lebanon. The database is housed at the Central Management Unit (CMU) of the NPTP at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (PCM), and its mirror sits at the NPTP MOSA unit.

The NPTP social assistance (the basket of benefits) consists of the following: (i) comprehensive health coverage for beneficiaries in public and private hospitals through the waiver of 10-15 percent copayments for hospitalization; (ii) registration fee waivers and free books for students in primary and secondary (including vocational) public schools; and (iii) food assistance via the electronic card food voucher program since November 2014. The food assistance was introduced lately as a means to help mitigate the impact of the refugee influx on poor Lebanese.

As of December 2015, 148,785 households (around 589,310 individuals) had applied to the program, and 105,811 households (460,281 individuals) were deemed eligible to receive the hospitalization and education benefits (i.e. below the cut-off score). Any social program that aims to target poor Lebanese requests the lists of eligible beneficiaries from the CMU which is responsible for managing the NPTP database.

Purpose and scope of the evaluation

A technical audit for the Emergency National Poverty Targeting Program Project (P149242) and the Additional Financing for the Emergency National Poverty Targeting Project (P158980)is to be conducted every 6 months by an external independent auditor.  

The objective of the technical audit is to verify whether the business process is implemented according to the Operations Manual developed for the Emergency NPTP. A key part of this objective is to verify whether the selection of beneficiaries is being carried out according to the agreed upon procedures and the eligibility criteria as generated by the Proxy-Means Testing (PMT) targeting formula, and to review the activities carries out by social workers in relation to the objectives of the program, and the number of such workers that are required.

The technical auditor will have the following tasks:

• Propose a verification and social worker review methodology.
• Validate, on a bi-annual basis, that the services and activities have been conducted as per the provisions of the grant agreement, project appraisal document and the project operational manual.
• Conduct qualitative and quantitative verification and provide an opinion about the output and outcomes of the project. This should include taking a random sample of beneficiaries (or as on a need basis) from the NPTP database to verify on the ground adherence to the eligibility criteria. It also includes a random sample of social workers to review their activities and their relevance to program activities.
• Verify that the beneficiaries exist, and are benefiting from the program as intended. Verify that social workers are carrying their activities including field work, in collection and verification of applications in the field, attending complaints and grievances in an impartial and timely manner
• Propose corrective actions to any irregularities and /or weaknesses observed.

The technical auditor will be recruited for the duration of the project.

The technical audit will be used as an input for improving the quality and effectiveness of the services delivered; as well as for providing information to the Government of Lebanon and to donors; and for record-keeping purposes.

Deliverables and reporting requirements

The outputs of the assignment will be delivered in two versions, in Arabic and in English, and will be composed of the following:

TASK 1: Technical Audit Design and Inception Report (4 weeks):

Under task 1, the consulting firm will develop an audit design, sampling, questionnaire and methodology, and the implementation plan. Specifically, the technical auditor will:

1. Design the sample of beneficiaries to be interviewed based on available data (NPTP database), and a small sample of social workers to be interviewed
2. Develop the questionnaires that will focus verifying on the ground adherence to the eligibility criteria and could include the following questions but not limited to:
   • Household characteristics (no. of family members, children – going to school or not);
   • Household eligibility criteria;
   • NPTP benefits;
   • Time taken to process their request for benefit;
   • Usefulness and quality of information received from NPTP;
   • Overall satisfaction with the NPTP program.

      

     For the sample of social workers

3. Develop the methodology, data sources, data collection process, and timeline
4. Prepare an implementation plan with all the steps and actions required from inception to finalizing the technical audit. This will also include a plan for conducting the surveys (i.e. conduct the survey--collecting and analyzing the data)

• Identification and location of work activities
• Qualifications of social worker—education and degrees
• Daily hours spent on field—schedule
• Number of applications review during past week (including complaints and grievances)
• Time spent on travel and travel expenses paid last week
• Satisfaction of social workers
• Others as proposed by the auditor

   

Deliverables for Task 1: (i) A yearly work plan describing the methodology of the assignment (to be approved by the World Bank and delivered no more than one month after contract signing); (ii) Questionnaires; (ii) Inception report describing the work plan, methodology and logistics, timeline, financial and human resources requirements for implementing the survey; (iii) TORs for conducting the survey in the field, to be delivered no more than one month after contract signing

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TASK 2: Survey Implementation (Data collection and Analysis) (to be implemented each 6 months):  

This task will be divided into three sub-tasks:

2(a) Review of Process: This will include:

a.   Reviewing the process to verify whether the business process is implemented according to the Operations Manual developed specifically for NPTP

2(b) Data Collection:  This will include:

• Supervising the data collection as per the implementation plan and successful completion of the fieldwork.
• Carefully reviewing the data collected, conducting checks and data validation for the assessment
• If required, conducting interviews with critical stakeholders, meet with the representatives of the community and carry out focus group discussions with beneficiaries to complement the data findings
• Ensuring the data is collected and is inputted in a format that is user friendly for analyses.
• Ensuring the availability of databases generated for the analysis (in Microsoft Access, STATA, ASCii formats) accompanied by a data dictionary

   

  2(c) Data Analysis:

• Preparing the analysis report describing the field work and summarizing the main conclusions from the field visits and focus group discussions.
• Presenting the preliminary findings to NPTP for discussions and comments.

Deliverables for Task 2: (i) Electronic data files; and (ii)  Bi-annual Report summarizing the findings and providing an opinion about the process., to be delivered 30 days after the end of each semester.

TASK 3: Detailed Final Report (     )

Under Task 3, the consulting firm will be responsible for preparing the final report based on comments from MOSA and CMU.  The outline of the report must be agreed upon under Task 2.

Deliverable for Task 3:  Final Technical Audit Report, to be submitted by the project closure date.

Duration of the assignment

The assignment is expected to start in May 2017 and concluding on December 31, 2018.

Firm Qualifications

• At least 10 years of practical experience in designing and conducting Technical and social Audits. Experience evaluating poverty targeting programs, social interventions and community based approach would be a valuable   asset.
• Expertise in sampling and in the design and implementation of surveys. Knowledge of Proxy-Test Means targeting methods is an asset.
• Experience in combining quantitative and qualitative methods is essential.