Background
The Government of Ethiopia (GoE) has overseen impressive economic growth and poverty reduction over the last decade. Around half of GDP growth is driven by public investment predominantly funded through a combination of external debt and aid; domestic revenues are insufficient. At current levels of borrowing, GoE debts risks becoming unsustainable. Ethiopia also aims to become a lower-middle income country, no longer aid-dependent, by 2025. However, GoE revenues stand at 10.5% of GDP – below the Sub-Saharan average of 16%. To meet public investment needs in a sustainable way, GoE aims to raise tax take to 17.2% of GDP. However, capacity at the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the Ministry of Revenue (MoR) is insufficient. To meet targets without jeopardizing poverty reduction efforts and the investment climate, the GoE needs robust technical assistance.
The GoE therefore requested the UK Government to support an accelerated delivery approach to transforming the tax system. As a result, the UK has committed to contribute up to £35 million through its five-year Tax Transformation Programme (TTP).
The overall objective of TTP is to assist the GoE in raising tax revenues towards 16.2% of GDP in a responsible and equitable manner by the end of 2026. The UK and GoE have already invested in the establishment of a delivery unit intended to drive accelerated delivery of tax transformation.
The programme is expected to work with the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Revenues and Customs Commission. The scope of TTP will cover priority areas related to policy and administration of the revenue system in Ethiopia including, domestic tax and Customs.
In terms of this position, it is expected that the advisor will contribute to tangible improvements in the performance the audit function within the Ministry of Revenues, leading to increases in audit yield and to enhance overall increases in revenue mobilization also impacting voluntary compliance.
Tax Transformation Management Model
Ethiopia is currently implementing a unique model of tax transformation with the Tax Transformation Office (TTO) at the center of the reform programme. The TTO, which is established within the MoR, is led by a Head, Deputy Head and Priority Area Managers who are responsible for managing the inputs of coordinators who are drawn from the operational departments of the MoR and customs Commission and advisors. The Consultant will report to the DATA/IT Priority Area Manager. Under the DATA/IT, a number of initiatives have been identified and work plans for taking forward the initiatives have been developed, moving from the inception phase of the TTP to the implementation phase beginning December 2019.
The Consultant will provide technical inputs under a joint accountability framework together with the Priority Area Manager and coordinators. Together with the rest of the Priority Area Team, the Consultant will work closely with the MoR Information Technology Center (MITC) Head. The primary purpose is to help develop and implement transformational activities under each of the initiatives already identified. Innovative approaches from the Consultant are highly encouraged to quickly transform the current practices to a much higher level which will improve customer satisfaction, encourage voluntary compliance and improve revenue generation.
Introduction
MoR Information Technology Center (MITC) is responsible for designing, implementing and providing an effective, efficient, reliable and secured IT services for all functions of the Ministry. The center is also responsible for managing and administering corporate wide IT infrastructure, which includes managing network and Internet connections for domestic tax and customs branches spread all over the country in addition to a head quarter.
Currently MoR has one active primary datacenter which provides services for both customs and domestic tax systems. A recent report made after detail IT assessment stated one of the challenges on resource management and usage as; “the number, type and advancement of servers and storage available at the datacentre is comparable to Sub Saharan Africa standards. However, the use of these resources is not optimal. While virtualization is introduced, it’s on a server level (as opposed to datacentre) and does not lead to a more optimized and highly available environment”, which clearly shows resource optimization should be one of our focus areas. In addition to this, lack of disaster recovery site for business continuity, lack of up-to-date security policy and adherence to policies and lack of complete current network design documentation are the main challenges of the MITC.
You can get full ToR document from the link below
ToR for Datacenter Optimization and Security Consultant Final 11MAY2020.docx
Consultant’s Qualification
Firm applicants must meet the following criteria
For individual applicants or for experts under a firm, the required qualifications are detailed below.
Network Infrastructure Expert
Data center Infrastructure Expert
IT Security expert
Selection Criteria
The Ministry would like to receive applications from both Firms and Individual Consultants. The Ministry may opt for a Firm, Individual or both for different subsections of work.
For Firm Applications
Applicants should submit
For Individual Applications
Applicants should submit latest CV along with necessary documents. In addition, payment proposal should be submitted for each deliverable outlined under section 4 of this ToRs. The selection of consultant will be based on both technical capability and payment proposal.