Scope of Work

USAID Trade & Competitiveness (USAID T&C)

Title of Assignment: Support to Department of Industry (DOI) to design, develop and deploy Trademark, Patent and Design Registration Management Information System

Type of Consultancy: Service procurement

Period of implementation: Jan 2024 to March 2024

Project Description 

The USAID Trade and Competitiveness (USAID T&C) is a multi-year activity that aims to increase Nepali private sector participation in targeted global value chains. The USAID T&C will help chart a new growth path as the economy recovers — one that capitalizes on global integration to diversify toward higher quality and higher value exports. It will foster sustainable job growth and income-generating opportunities for those that have previously been left behind by economic growth in Nepal, creating greater sustainability and resilience. The USAID T&C will achieve this through interventions that incentivize public and private sector actors across the entrepreneurial and business ecosystem to adopt new behaviors driving outcomes across three Objectives: 

1. To increase access to market-based financial and non-financial services; 
2. To increase productivity in sectors with high growth and employment potential; and 
3. To improve the investment climate and business enabling environment (BEE), especially for targeted sectors.

Background 

Trademarks, copyrights, and patents are methods of protecting your intangibles while publicly communicating to other businesses or individuals to avoid copying or infringing on your intellectual property rights (IPR). If a country has established good practices in terms of protecting intellectual property rights, then it signals that the business environment is favorable for investors. Therefore, protection of trademarks, patents and design play a key role in terms of attracting and retaining investors, especially foreign investors and more so for those involved in exports. 

In Nepal, Department of Industry (DOI) is the key authority to implement and protect IPR. The DOI has been working on the registration of trademark, patent, and design services. However, till date all the registration process is manual and is very cumbersome. A company is required to visit the DOI office multiple times to get the certificate. Therefore, to streamline the process and make it transparent and easily accessible to the investors, automation of the registration process is envisioned. 

Department of Industry has expressed for a technical support from the USAID Trade and Competitiveness to design, develop and implement web application that primarily focuses on proper and logical organization of information and contents. This application will include record keeping, reporting and online registration. 

Purpose 

The purpose of the assignment is to design, develop and deploy user friendly online system/application, a complete package of Registration Management Information System, for the online registration and renewal of trademark, patent and design services. The application should be utilized to record all kinds of data related to trademark, patent and design services and monitor the related activities. 

The main objectives are as follows: 

• Design, develop, install, and deploy a user-friendly dynamic online system/application for the Department of Industry and its stakeholders or registration of all trademarks, patent and design services related activities. 
• Integrate payment mechanisms with the government’s taxpayer portal (RMIS).  
• Develop user guide to use the online system/application. 
• Conduct orientation/capacity building program for the staff of the Department of Industry regarding the operation of the online system/application. 

Tasks 

The below tasks are expected to be undertaken by the service provider. 

1. Kick-off meeting with USAID T&C and DOI to develop detailed plan for application development. 
2. Work with DOI to identify the processes and understand the existing practices regarding management of the trademark, patent and design related work. 
3. Design the system/application as per the 'as is' of the trademark registration process at DOI and present it with both USAID T&C and DOI for their inputs. 
4. Development of online system/application to capture the processes and requirements. 
5. Deployment and testing of the online system/application. 
6. Development of Users' Manual of the online system/application. 
7. Technical handholding/orientation to the DOI officials and concerned officials on the use of the online system/application for a period of 6 months from the date of deployment of the system/application.  
8. Documentation of the overall processes and learnings 

Security Requirement 

The design should ensure that confidentiality, integrity and availability of the system is not compromised. At an application-level user management, access level and authentication level shall be managed by the system Administrator. Configurable two factor authentications are preferred. System shall enforce time-based password change and strong type password.

Required Features

In addition to the security requirements, the following features should be in-built in the system: 

1. Data migration from the IPAS, currently used in IP management.
2. Generation of reports
   1. Industrial bulletin generation
3. Wizard workflow
4. Security and user management
5. Section management
6. Notification to applicants
7. Certificate generation
8. Record change
9. Duplication check
10. Ownership transfer
11. Workflow with its history
12. File location and update

Deliverables & Timeline 

The below are the deliverables and timelines for the assignment:

Proposal submission and evaluation 

Interested service providers (firms) are requested to submit their proposal no later than 20th December 2023 by 5:00 PM. The proposal should demonstrate the experience of the bidder in developing online applications/system for management of processes.  One single proposal containing both the technical and budget for the assignment shall be submitted via email to info@tc-udhyamnepal.com with a subject line “(Organization’s name) + Proposal- Support to Department of Industry (DOI) to develop Trademark, Patent and Design Registration Management Information System”.

Proposal shall be evaluated based on the criteria below:

• Organization’s expertise and core area of business aligning with the scope of work- 25%
• Elaboration of methodology to be adopted along with time-based strategy on how the targets will be achieved- 25%
• Team structure/Individual and its relevancy to the scope of work and credentials of proposed team members/individual- 25%
• Budget proposed - 25%

The bidder securing the highest score shall be invited for contractual negotiations. If the negotiation with the highest bidder is unsuccessful, negotiations will be initiated with the next best scoring bidder. Evaluation and contract award is expected to be done no later than 15th August 2023. 

Required Qualifications:

The consultancy firm selected for this assignment shall have the following competency profile. 

• The company objectives should be associated with the work area identified in the scope of the work provided.
• At least 7 years of experience in designing, developing and successfully deploying the open-source, modular application/system for information management at government agencies. 
• Experience of working with government agencies and understanding of their processes 
• Ability to provide orientation/trainings to the government officials on the use of the  

Contractual & Working Arrangements 

Successful bidder will be contracted by USAID T&C and work closely with a focal person from DOI and Policy Reform Manager by coordinating with Deputy Chief of Party and overall guidance of the Chief of Party (COP) of USAID T&C. USAID T&C will have a lumpsum agreement with the successful bidder. 50% of the payment shall be processed after completion of the design of the online system/application. The remaining 50% shall be paid after the completion of the assignment and satisfactory submission of deliverables as required by the reporting requirements of DOI and USAID T&C.