Common use of BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION Clause in Contracts

BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION. UNICEF Nepal is committed to continue engaging families, children and youth as key actors in their own development and exploring innovative approaches and technologies to address major child-related issues which, if successful, can be scaled up to the national level. A key part of this work is testing and applying innovative approaches and methodologies such as SMS and real-time monitoring methods in collaboration with key partners. RapidPro is an open source software platform that allows organizations and governments to easily design, pilot, and scale services that connect directly with a mobile phone user using SMS text messages. RapidPro allows to manage data, complex workflows, and group coordination using a simple, interactive online dashboard – providing officials and community members alike with a tool to disseminate real-time information and feedback loops for the issues that matter most to them. RapidPro has been successfully implemented for real-time monitoring, two-way communication with communities, and citizen engagement initiatives. Since 2012, UNICEF Nepal has been piloting and using mobile technologies based on RapidPro in support of multiple projects across sectors and in collaboration with key partners. This includes supporting the implementation of RapidPro to provide real-time monitoring of the Child Grant – one of five government-led social cash transfers targeting children under five years of age – which being supported as part of the RapidPro Scale-Up Global Initiative with technical and financial support from Innovation Unit in New York. In addition, interest has been shown from other sections including education, health and C4D in using RapidPro for testing and applying innovative approaches based on RapidPro to support engagement with youth and strengthening of existing monitoring systems. For the Rapid Pro platform to function a local service provider is required to provide a toll-free SMS short code services that is functional across all major networks in Nepal. Note that UNICEF Nepal already owns two short-codes, which are currently being managed by the current contractor (Focus One). In order to ensure continuity of service, and maintain consistency in communication channels with UNICEF’s partners and wider constituency in Nepal, it is preferable that the short code remains the one already exclusively allocated to UNICEF and partners.