TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR NATIONAL CONSULTANT FOR

Court User Survey

On

The Services Provided by Two District Courts in Comilla and Pabna

The Justice Sector Facility (JSF) project is seeking to contract a National Consultant to undertake a court user survey on the services provided by justice agencies, particularly district courts in two districts at Comilla and Pabna. This is a two months assignment which will be completed by submission of final report.

I. BACKGROUND

Delivery of timely, affordable and accessible justice for all people is a key priority for the government of Bangladesh. But the ability to do this is limited by procedures, existing practices, lack of resources and other pressures (in particular case backlog, shortage of judges, ongoing reform of judiciary and lack of court administration reform). Despite this, it is possible to make improvements within individual courts that require minimal investment of time and money. Therefore, to support this aim the Law and Justice Division of the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, UNDP and DFID has jointly undertaken a project titled “Justice Sector Facility”. The project will provide support to improve the performance of key sector institutions, policies and practices through a combination of interventions that cut across the various justice sector institutions aiming at strengthening communication, coordination and co-operation within and between them.

The Justice Sector Facility is a three years project that started in July 2012. The project’s overall objective is to strengthen the capacity of the justice sector agencies in terms of planning and budgeting, monitoring, high level advocacy, cross-sectoral dialogue as well as supporting two pilot districts for improvements in the criminal justice system. The expected outputs of JSF are as follows:

(i)Communication, coordination and co-operation between justice agencies enhanced in two district pilots through establishment of solutions for inter-agency case management;

(ii)Selected agencies have improved strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation, delivery of government legal aid, and prosecution of cases; and

(iii)Strengthened cross sectoral dialogue and sector wide coordination mechanism established.

The immediate beneficiaries of JSF project include Law and Justice Division of the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, Office of Attorney General, National Legal Aid Services Organization and the key justice sector agencies in two pilot areas. Other institutions as well as initiatives for improved service delivery and increased access to justice can be supported through a Seed Fund based on criteria to be established.

II. JUSTIFICATION FOR COURT USER SURVEY

The overall development objective of all UN Projects working in the justice sector is set out in the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) Outcome 2: Justice and Human Rights institutions are strengthened to better serve and protect human rights of all citizens including women and vulnerable groups. Under output no. 1 the Justice Sector Facility project has been implementing a pilot initiative in two districts at Comilla and Pabna. The objective of the pilot initiative is to support the district courts to establish a mechanism to speed up trial procedures and reduce case backlog through enhancement of communication, coordination and cooperation (3Cs) between the justice agencies. The ultimate goal of the pilot initiative is to improve service delivery by the courts to the court users. The JSF project, under these mandates, aims at improving service delivery of justice sector agencies through no cost/low cost interventions for which it is needed to explore the bottlenecks in the justice delivery system where multiple agencies as Judiciary, police, prison etc. are closely involved.

Therefore, JSF proposes a court user survey of justice sector agencies (also alternatively can be called as court user satisfaction survey). This survey has been planned to gather and analyze citizen’s feedback on existing services provided by courts as well as citizens’ expectations from the courts. Further, the limitations faced by the courts to deliver better services will also be explored in the survey. Therefore, the proposed court user survey will provide baseline information of degree of agencies exposure to service delivery to end user of justice delivery system. This survey will also provide programmatic understanding of indicative low cost / no cost interventions through programming at the district pilot of the project to provide the justice recipient with improved access to justice. Finally, this information and understanding throughout the survey findings will provide input to developing Terms of Reference for the proposed Case Management Committee.

The conduction of court user survey and/or similar surveys at a regular interval will provide information like the variance of justice delivery system user’s perception after a certain period and the level of impact in increasing the satisfaction of them following the interventions done by JSF.

The findings of the court user survey will also facilitate the establishment of a proposed Help Desk at the court premises to ensure access to information on the justice delivery framework/process for the court users (it is observed that people are experiencing difficulties in accessing services from the courts due to lack of information).

III.OBJECTIVE

The overall objective of the survey is to gather and analyze citizen’s feedback on the services provided by pilot district courts, and citizen’s expectations from the courts and to identify the factors that are hindering the delivery of quality services. This survey will serve as a tool for providing a baseline and as a source of indicative interventions for achieving the target result of output 1 of the project- Improved user perceptions of the court system functioning more fairly and effectively in pilot areas.

IV.SCOPE OF WORK

In view of the objectives of the survey, the following are the different issues and concerns that this survey will consider.

  • Socio-economic and cultural conditions of the court users
  • Awareness and knowledge about the Court facilities
  • Customer treatment by the courts
  • Area and extent of difficulties experienced by the courts users
  • Limitations of the courts to deliver quality services
  • Satisfaction of court users on different services provided by the courts

V.SPECIFIC ACTIVITIES

The Consultant will be responsible for the following specific activities:

  • Hire two enumerators(remuneration of the enumerators will be included within the consultant fees)
  • Prepare survey design including sample frame and data collection methodology
  • Prepare and submit a work plan including timeframe
  • Prepare and submit a data analysis plan
  • Prepare and submit data collection questionnaire covering scope of work mentioned (incorporating the key questions annexed)
  • Organize necessary field visits and other appointments with relevant stakeholders
  • Collect, process and analyze data with all necessary arrangements by consultant
  • Prepare data base with SPSS programme and submit to the project
  • Prepare and submit draft report
  • Prepare and submit final report
  • Produce a weekly one-page activity progress report for the project.

VI.GEOGRAPHICAL COVERAGE

The survey will be carried out in two district pilots in Comilla and Pabna.

VII.TARGET RESPONDENTS

The respondents of the survey will be the court users, lawyers, judges and court officials of the district court of Comilla and Pabna.

VIII. SAMPLE SIZE FOR THE SURVEY

S.N / Respondent type / Number of respondent
Comilla / Pabna / Total
1 / Court service recipient / 300 / 200 / 500
2 / Judges / 30 / 20 / 50
3 / Layers / 40 / 30 / 70
4 / Police / 40 / 30 / 70
Total respondent / 410 / 280 / 690

IX.DELIVERABLES

The assignment will generate the following:

  • An inception report that will include a plan and methodology for other deliverables
  • A statistically sound representative sampling frame for the survey
  • Data/information questionnaire and checklist (Bangla and English)
  • Analysis plan for the survey data
  • A user-friendly database based on survey result (SPSS format)
  • Outline of the survey report
  • Draft report (English) hard copy and soft copy (soft copy in MS Word and PDF)
  • Final report with executive summary and necessary annexes – hard copy and soft copy (soft copy in MS Word and PDF)

X.MINIMUM EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS OF THE CONSULTANT

  • Master degree in Laws, Social Science or other relevant discipline.
  • At least five years experience in designing and conducting national level research/citizen feedback survey in justice sector in Bangladesh.
  • Ability to compose a survey team with justice sector actors, social researcher and statistician for ensuring the quality of work.
  • Ability to retrieve required agency information in a precise and timely manner
  • Cautious about presenting confidential/sensitive data.
  • Ability to produce a high quality survey report in English.
  • Data processing and data management skill in SPSS.
  • A verifiable reputation of integrity and competence.

XI.TIMELINE

The tentative timeline for the survey is eight weeks:

Activities / Timeframe
July 2013 / August 2013
W1 / W2 / W3 / W4 / W1 / W2 / W3 / W4
Planning and preparation of the survey including development of data collection tool and formation of data collection team etc.
Data collection with spot check and back check
Data processing, analysis and sharing of preliminary findings with project stakeholder
Prepare report outline, produce draft report and share draft report with project stakeholder
Prepare and submit final report based on feedback on draft report

XII. PAYMENT

On the basis of relevant experience and expertise to the mentioned assignment, the candidate will be offered with a lump sum amount in lieu of consultancy fees (including the remuneration of enumerators and other expenses such as travel, food, accommodation etc). VAT and TAX will be deducted from the source as per the government rule. The payment schedule is as follows:

Installments / Amount / Milestone
First Installment / 40% / After completion of data collection and draft report
Final Installment / 60% / After acceptance of final report

The payment will be made upon the certificate of satisfactory performance given by the Chief Technical Advisor (CTA) of JSF project on specific deliverables.

XIII.BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS

The following background documents may be relevant:

  • JSF Project Document
  • JSF result framework
  • JSF Inception workshop report
  • Case Management Committee Concept Note