CALL FOR QUOTE (CFQ) FOR DIGITAL SKILLS BOOTCAMPS AND EVENTS 2023 WOMEN

• June 28, 2023
• admin

1. Background Information

1.1 Beneficiary Country

The beneficiary country will be Malta within the context of the European Union.

1.2 Contracting Authority

eSkills Malta Foundation

1.3 Relevant Country Background

Malta is an island state located in the Mediterranean Sea, south of Sicily (Italy). It consists of three islands: Malta, Gozo and Comino, of which Malta is the largest island. Malta became a European Union (EU) member in May 2004, and Malta had its first EU Presidency from January to June 2017. Malta’s business activity is very active and can be said to be one of the highest-expanding economies in the EU. This has driven up several challenges which also include the capacity of the Digital Sector.

1.4 Malta Digital Skills Current State of Affairs

European Digital and Economy Index

In 2022, Malta ranked 6th overall in the European Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) while ranking 8th in Human Capital. The country is above the EU average for basic digital and software skills. In Malta, 61% of people have at least basic digital skills (EU average: 54%), and 35% have above basic digital skills (EU average: 26%). And 71% of the individuals have at least basic digital content creation skills (EU Average: 66%). Another interesting factor is that 72% of internet users use e-Government Services (EU Average: 65%)

The percentage of ICT specialists in the workforce is also higher than the EU average (4.9% vs 4.5%). ICT graduates have significantly increased, reaching 6.5% of all graduates, well above the EU average of 3.5%. While 26% of the ICT graduates are female, as against the 19% of the EU average.

When it comes to what is now coined as the Integration of digital technology, we fair well against the EU averages. To mention a few, SMEs with at least basic digital intensity – 73% against the EU average of 55%, use of social media in enterprises – 42% against 29%, Big Data – 30% against 14%, Cloud – 47% against 34%, AI – 10% against 8%, SMEs selling online – 26% against 18%.
All these percentages are based on the DESI index for 2022. However, the EU member states still have a long way to go to reach the collective European targets established in the European Digital Decade 2030.

National eSkills Strategy

In March 2022, the eSkills Malta Foundation launched the “National eSkills Strategy (2012-2025)”. The strategy covers the four target groups of Education, Society, Workforce, and ICT Professionals and endeavours to reach the following outcomes:

• Society acquiring more digital awareness and becoming increasingly confident in the productive use of digital.
• Public Administration pursuing its digital transformation and its online public service delivery in line with the Public Service Strategy.
• Enterprises are increasingly willing and able to adopt digital transformation as a means for them to thrive in an increasingly competitive digital world.
• The educational system evolving further at all levels so as to ensure readiness for the needs of current and future digital skills.
• Having more ICT professionals available in the local labour market.

Malta has carried out many digital skills initiatives, with comprehensive coverage. With the collaboration of all players involved, we look forward to a positive trajectory, with a focus on addressing skills mismatches and monitoring projects and policies in implementation

1.5 The eSkills Malta Foundation

The eSkills Malta Foundation is a National Coalition made up of various representatives from Government, industry and education, who can contribute to the increase in digital skills and the development of the IT profession and help us with the following mandates:
• Advise Government and relevant stakeholders on matters related to eSkills policies;
• Contribute to the expansion of ICT educational programmes and related formative initiatives;
• Lead an ICT professionalism development programme;
• Instigate further reform in the ICT educational offerings and contribute to the capacity-building of the ICT education community; and
• To champion campaigns and promote the Maltese eSkills potential locally and internationally.

The Maltese Government established the eSkills Malta Foundation to reflect this inclusive synergy paradigm. The members of the Foundation are the Ministry for Education and Employment, the Malta Information Technology Agency, the Malta Communications Authority, the Malta Enterprise, The Malta Gaming Authority and The Malta Chamber of Commerce Enterprise and Industry.
 
2. Scope
In line with the digital skilling, upskilling and reskilling mandates, the eSkills Malta Foundation would like to receive quotations for the setting up of training course sessions or events or coaching sessions to be included in our Digital Skills Bootcamp 2023 in the following target groups:
a) Females in the Maltese Society

eSkills Malta Foundation has been entrusted with a number of mandates relating to skilling, upskilling and reskilling. The Foundation has the overall objective to increase digital skills in Malta. In line with this objective, the Foundation will be offering training course sessions or coaching sessions or events for specific closed groups or open to the public.

The sessions may take the form of physical (in-person), remote or hybrid. Prospective Training providers may choose to quote for any number of courses for one or more target groups mentioned above. Each course will address one theme.

The Digital Bootcamp will run from the date of the contract’s signature until the 30th of November 2023.

3. Themes Overview
The Service Providers are expected to address the following themes with the offers for the training courses, sessions, coaching sessions or events. The eSkills Malta Foundation’s overall objective is to organise Digital Bootcamps for 2023 to increase digital skills and upskill or reskill any of the target groups mentioned, as follows:

• To increase and retain women in the ICT sector.

• To instil an interest in girls or women in ICT and STEM subjects.

• To introduce girls to the love of coding. In this respect, you can choose any fit-for-purpose coding language which would be easy to follow. Examples include Scratch and Python.

• To upskill the digital skills and competencies of female education teachers.

• To familiarise female youths, adults, or elders with the upcoming emerging technologies.

• To upskill female youth, adults, or elders using digital office tools and to integrate the content and output of one tool into another.

• To help females with special needs or coming from disadvantaged groups enhance their lives by taking full advantage of technology.

• To incentivise and upskill female persons who are unemployed or not in training (NTE) with digital skills to help them become more employable.

• To increase awareness on the issues of gender bias and the benefits of implementing gender equality by employers and self-employed.

4. Selection and Award criteria:
Selection Criteria

The selection criteria for the courses depend on;

a) Completeness and quality of the Training Course Content/event in line with the Foundation’s vision/scope described in the Theme Description above. Applicants are required to fill in the COURSE TEMPLATE completely in detail.

b) Qualifications of the Trainers. The persons delivering the training courses/events must have at least an MQF Level 5 qualification in the subject matter and must preferably have teaching experience. Applicants are required to fill in the attached EXPERT FORM Template completely in detail.

c) Should the course or coaching sessions or events be delivered via a digital platform, this must provide quality interactive learning and collaboration. The platform must also be capable of video and voice communication, face-to-face communication, organising teams for learning, recording, and reporting that shows the list of persons attending the course and duration.

Award Criteria

Once the Training Courses/Coaching/Events are shortlisted, the award will be based on the following;

i) Relevance to the Themes, technologies and target groups. The Foundation will balance the Training Courses/Coaching/Events offered to maximise the coverage of all themes. Should particular themes attract fewer Training Courses/Coaching/Events, then the Foundation has the right to give an advantage to these themes.

ii) Cost of the training Training Courses/Coaching/Event: Cost including Taxes/Charges, other Duties and Discounts but EXCLUSIVE of VAT.

5. Instructions to Economic Operators
Responses are to be straightforward, clear, concise and specific to the information requested. For submissions to be considered complete, Training Providers must provide all the requested information mentioned in this document.
All submissions will be dealt with in strictest confidence.
No participation fee is being requested for submission of a bid to this Call for Quotations. Bids cannot be modified once submitted and can only be subject to clarifications issued by the Foundation.
This Request for Quotation is being issued under the provisions of Regulation 103 of the Public Procurement Regulations (S.L. 601.03). The training provider should declare acceptance of these regulations by filling the declaration Annex D.
The response must include the following information by using the attached template marked Annex A, B and C.

• Training Provider Name
• Course Reference (to be designated by training provider)
• Course Name
• Course Delivery Mode
• Target Group addressed by the course/training/event, also refer to clause 2
• Theme No and description to be addressed by the course/training/event also refer to clause 3
• Number of sessions per course/training/event
• Number of attendants per course/training/event
• Suggested age of the attendees
• Frequency of the training course/training/event
• Duration of training course sessions
• Proposed date and time of the course/training/event
• Learning Platform to be used
• Prerequisites (if applicable)
• Main contents of the course/Event
• The cost per head (if applicable) and the total cost. (Annex – C)
• Expert/Trainer Qualifications (Please fill in EXPERT/TRAINER Template – Annex B)

6. Terms and Conditions
The Training Courses, sessions and events must follow the Terms and Conditions listed below:

a. Advertising and promotion for such courses using social media, websites, and newspapers will be part of the service provider’s responsibility. The promotion medium to be used is the choice of the Training course/event provider. eSkills Malta Foundation will also promote the chosen courses on their social media and network.

b. The training courses and events should be organised and delivered during the months following the award of the courses and completed by no later than 30th November 2023.

c. The date and time of the Course/Event should be proposed by the Training Provider. These must be submitted with the offer. eSkills Malta Foundation has the final decision about when the Course/Event will be organised and the service provider may be asked to reschedule the Course/Event as required. The service provider must take care of logistics related to the event whether or not the sessions are held physically, remotely or hybrid.

d. If a course is made up of a number of sessions, the period between sessions should not exceed more than a week.

e. Each Training Course/Event must address ONE Theme, and ONE Target Group mentioned in Sections 2 and 3 of this CFQ. Should it be otherwise, the specific course will need approval from eSkills Malta Foundation before proceeding.

f. The Training Provider will make use of their own equipment and online platform to provide the course/Event sessions physically (in person), remotely or hybrid and must follow all procedures as dictated by law.

g. The scope of the Bootcamp is to increase basic or advanced digital skills for residents in Malta. In this respect, Maltese residents will be the priority of the Bootcamp and this must be identified in the booking form.

h. The eSkills Malta Foundation has the right to accept, limit or refuse any course and training proposal submitted. In particular, the Foundation has allocated a specific budget for the project, and due to this, the Foundation will select the most advantageous courses that address the criteria.

i. The course sessions must be specifically delivered for the eSkills Malta Foundation.

j. Unless agreed otherwise between both parties, eSkills Malta Foundation shall keep content in strict confidence. Any dissemination of the content must be done through the consent of the service provider.

k. Attendance: The Foundation will be funding this initiative in its totality provided that:

• It is the service provider’s responsibility to collect evidence to present to the Foundation, that attests to the participants’ attendance and attendance duration in the course. This may be in electronic, system generated / Screenshots form if the course is being conducted remotely, or countersigned by the participants if the course is attended in person.

• In order for a participant to qualify as successfully attending the course he/she must attend 80% or more of the total time of the course. Furthermore, should the number of participants be less than 70% of the number of participants quoted, the payment for the course shall be calculated on a pro-rata basis. It is suggested that the Training/Event Provider use their own method to tackle “no-shows”.

l. The service provider binds themselves to deliver the course to twenty (20) attendees or more while maintaining course quality. The Foundation reserves the right to award providers who reach a larger number of attendees.

m. The service provider may request a nominal registration fee if deemed required. This fee should not exceed 20% of the cost of the course entered in the financial bid of this CFQ. However, this should be fully refunded to the participants who complete the course.

n. The eSkills Malta Foundation should be able to and will monitor attendance of live sessions. In case of a dispute over attendance figures, the eSkills Malta Foundation’s decision on record numbers is final.

o. The number of training courses, coaching sessions or events that one Training Provider may offer is not capped, but the cost of each course cannot exceed a maximum of €2,500 exclusive of VAT.

p. Each Training Course/event provider may be allocated funds up to a total of €5,000 exclusive of VAT but inclusive of any cost or other taxes.

q. Other terms:
• Clear evidence for each participant’s attendance for every Course/Training/Event/ Coaching session organised must accompany the Invoice.

• No Payments will be processed for courses/events without the appropriate evidence of attendance. Should online delivery of the course be chosen, then it is the responsibility of the service provider/event organiser to use the appropriate online platform to be able to produce the required digital attendance record.

• Strict adherence to attendance requirements should be kept (80% of total time confirmed attendance).

• No lengthy videos should replace interaction with students during sessions. Videos and other tools may be used at no extra cost beyond the original quoted cost but must not replace the teacher’s interaction.

Your response to this Call for Quote (CFQ) should be made valid for a minimum of 60 days and should be sent through electronic mail at info.eskills@eskills.org.mt by the 7th of July 2023, end of the business day. Late applications will not be considered. Any clarifications may be requested at the same email address not later than the 3rd of July 2023, these and relative responses shall be made public at the same website of this CFQ.

CALL FOR QUOTE (CFQ) FOR DIGITAL SKILLS BOOTCAMPS AND EVENTS 2023 WOMEN