General Procurement Notice for Consulting Services for the Dissemination of the Pties and Dissemination Strategy Project Name: Program to Improve Access and Graduation in Higher Education. The Ministry of National Education (MEN), with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), developed the aforementioned Program "Program to Improve Access and Graduation in Higher Education," which was approved through CONPES Document 4122 of 2023. The Program to "Improve Access and Graduation in Higher Education" will be implemented by the Ministry of National Education (MEN) as the Executing Agency (EA) between 2025 and 2029. To achieve its objectives, the Program comprises the following components: Component 1. Support for the Transition of Young People to Higher Education (HE). This component addresses the first specific objective of the Program by helping to reduce the academic and information barriers faced by EM students and recent high school graduates. It will finance: (i) consulting services for the design of the PTIES and its dissemination; (ii) consulting services for the development of a monitoring system for this Program; (iii) agreements with HEIs for the implementation of the PTIES in municipalities. beneficiaries; and (iv) technical management services for the execution of the PTIES, which includes the management and payment of agreements with the HEIs and the monitoring of their implementation. The PTIES will support young people in their immediate transition from secondary education to higher education. To this end, the HEIs will carry out extracurricular activities that include: (i) socio-occupational guidance workshops, to provide information with a territorially and culturally relevant focus, without gender bias, and promoting the participation of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) training programs; (ii) workshops to strengthen socio-emotional skills (e.g., communication, self-regulation, time management, study habits) and academic skills (e.g., literacy, reading comprehension, and digital literacy); and (iii) the provision of study materials. Additionally, the PTIES will provide transportation and meals to students; and, if necessary, will make minor space adjustments and/or lease premises. The PTIES is a comprehensive strategy to promote access to higher education and is an innovative aspect of the Program, which will take into account diversity and gender issues. Before beginning implementation of the PTIES, the Ministry of Education (MEN) must have approved and published the program design. The PTIES will be implemented in seventy-two (72) subregions of the country with rural, dispersed rural, and intermediate municipalities whose Immediate Transition Rate from higher education to higher education is lower than the national average. At least seventy-two (72) municipalities will benefit, one per subregion. To select the municipality within the subregion, priority will be given to those municipalities that require an increase of at least twenty-five (25) students in the total number of students who transition immediately from higher education to higher education in order to reach the national Immediate Transition Rate from higher education to higher education. For the selection of the EEM beneficiaries of the PTIES in each municipality, priority will be given to those in Category D, according to the Colombian Institute for the Evaluation of Education (ICFES) classification for performance on the SABER 11 test, and with the highest enrollment in 11th grade. To achieve the inclusion of ethnic groups in this component, at least eight (8) municipalities will be selected with at least seventy percent (70%) of the total population self-identified as belonging to an ethnic group, according to the Population and Housing Census (DANE). The eligibility criteria will be part of the ROP. Component 2. Support for the Permanence of Higher Education Students. This component addresses the second specific objective of the Program by supporting HEIs in strengthening their PPs. It will finance: (i) technical assistance to HEIs to strengthen their PPs; (ii) development of a monitoring system for the implementation of PPs in HEIs, which includes disaggregation by gender and ethnicity of students benefiting from PPs; and (iii) agreements with public HEIs to implement actions within the PPs through competitive funds, including the cost of a trust entity to administer them. At least fifty-seven (57) public HEIs are expected to benefit through competitive funds, financing up to seventy percent (70%) of the value of the projects proposed by the HEIs to strengthen or expand their PPs. The MEN will support the development of the projects with technical assistance in the application of a methodology to strengthen the institutional capacity of HEIs. Projects will be selected competitively using, at a minimum, the following criteria: (i) technical quality (justification, institutional priorities, budget, and schedule) and alignment of the project with MEN guidelines; (ii) institutional capacity of the HEI to execute the project; (iii) number and characteristics of students. The Programs implementation generally includes the hiring of firms and individual consultants, among others, through which the following will be carried out: Consulting services for the dissemination of the PTIES and dissemination strategy. Consulting services for the development of a monitoring system for this Program. Services for the implementation of the PTIES in municipalities benefiting from the HEIs and consulting services for support and monitoring of the execution of the PTIES. Consulting services for technical assistance to HEIs to strengthen their Permanence Plans (PPs). Services for the development of a monitoring system for the implementation of the PPs in HEIs and the PTIES. Services with public HEIs to implement actions within the PPs. Services for the design and implementation of a contingency mechanism to resolve delayed processes. Consulting services for the redesign of the four (4) main SACES processes (Qualified Registry, High-Quality Accreditation, degree validation, and inspection and surveillance); Consulting services for the reengineering of information systems supporting SACES processes. Consulting services for the uniqueness and coordination of technological solutions, covering the development and implementation of a cybersecurity management model, data analytics, artificial intelligence, interoperability, document management, and access to public information; Acquisition of goods and services to strengthen the technological infrastructure (servers, cloud environment expansion, and software licenses). [Disclaimer: The above text is machine translated. For accurate information kindly refer the original document.] Tender Link : https://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=EZIDB0000177-851794898-119
