Beschreibung der Beschaffung
Technical cooperation with the Palestinian Territories (BMZ):
E-Governance in Palestine and the MENA region (INDIGO)
The political context in the Palestinian Territories is characterised by ongoing conflict, limited mobility as well as geographical and social fragmentation. Against this background, the creation of a wide range of high-quality, citizen-centred and accessible digital services and innovative forms of participation can help to reduce regional disparities and strengthen social cohesion and inclusion. Local authorities play a key role in this respect.
So far, and despite a relatively young and tech-savvy Palestinian population, the provision of public services at municipal level and the interaction between the state and citizens are predominantly analogue. The few existing digital services and participation formats are little user-friendly and accessible, and the uptake remains low. The core problem here is that human-centred design approaches to digital transformation are still relatively unknown and, accordingly, digital solutions are usually developed without the active involvement of the users. If participation takes place, it is limited to the commenting on already developed products, rather than engaging citizens in a co-creative process from defining the problem to developing and testing solutions. Users are often seen as a homogeneous group, whereas the specific needs of certain social groups such as women, the elderly or people with disabilities are not taken into consideration. Thus, the great potentials of digital transformation to reduce regional disparities and strengthen accessibility, transparency, and social cohesion are not yet being exploited.
With the new project ‘E-Governance in Palestine and the MENA region (INDIGO)’, commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) until April 2024, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) aims to tackle this challenge and to promote citizen-centred, inclusive digital governance in Palestine and the MENA region, with a specific focus on the municipal level.
INDIGO (the short name of the project stands for Inclusive Digital Governance) is managed by a project team based in Ramallah and consists of two bilateral components targeting the Palestinian Territories and one regional component targeting the countries of the MENA region.
In the Palestinian context, INDIGO is implemented in close cooperation with the Palestinian Ministry of Local Government (MoLG), the Association of Palestinian Local Authorities (APLA), the Municipal Development and Lending Fund (MDLF), selected municipalities, as well as a wide range of civil society actors. Here, the target group of the project is the population of the Palestinian Territories who benefits from improved services and participation opportunities provided by municipalities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Especially women, people with disabilities, and people living in marginalized areas should benefit from increased availability and accessibility.
GIZ is seeking to procure the services of a contractor to develop capacities for human-centred service design and innovative participation in the Palestinian local governance sector. This will contribute to the achievement of the following two outputs of the overall project:
1) the range of inclusive digital services developed with users that are offered by municipalities has improved;
2) the range of co-creative and digital participation opportunities that are offered for citizens and the private sector has improved in selected municipalities.
The assignment is planned to be carried out between March 2021 and September 2023 with a total of 250 expert days for two international technical short-term experts (including one team leader) and 106 expert days for one national technical short-term expert.