Terms of Reference: Playbook for Language Technology - review and validation

Activity Timeline: September 25-October 15, 2023

Activity Budget: Up to $7,400; workload is estimated at 2 weeks maximum, budget to be confirmed depending on the proposed work plan, scope and approach

Activity Location: East Africa

Project Owner: CLEAR Global

Proposal deadline: September 20, 2023*

*Due to the urgency of this project, screening and interviews will commence immediately and the partner/organization can be selected at any stage before the closing date.

Project Name: 4 Billion Conversations

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Project Description

The 4 Billion Conversations initiative is an undertaking to use technology to address the issue of language exclusion from information, services and governance. CLEAR Global has funding from GIZ to build some of the first steps toward achieving the goals of the initiative. Specifically, this work aims to achieve the following objectives:

Packaging language AI so it can be more easily used by non-AI specialists
Developing playbooks to help partners working for social good to use language AI in their programs
Developing dialogue with program and tech partners across three key regions
Mobilizing the CLEAR Global community for language data initiatives
Researching and designing detailed use cases for language AI in social impact projects

This GIZ-funded project will significantly accelerate the deployment of language AI in social impact programs. This element of the work will focus on climate resilience for farmers, and sexual and reproductive health - in three key regions: East Africa, West Africa, and South Asia.

Planned activities and overall goal

The overall goal of the project proposed is to accelerate the initial activities of the 4 Billion Conversations initiative. The first activities will be to engage with partners and the community and to identify candidate use cases. This will then inform the content, packaging process and the priorities for the playbooks.

Activity 1: Active Program Partner Engagement
Activity 2: Local Community Mobilization
Activity 3: Use-Cases for Language Technology
Activity 4: Language AI Packaging and Maturity metrics
Activity 5: Playbook

This Terms of Reference is related to Activity 5 - Playbook.

Activity 5: Playbook

The Playbook is targeting a non-technical and technical audience, and walking them through the process of building and using language technology to support programs.

The objective of the playbook is to help partners use language AI for specific program use cases. It aims to include all the steps of evaluating the technology approach with user-centered design approaches, testing the language models (and creating specific language data where needed), as well as how to combine technology-supported programs with traditional analog program approaches (for example face to face training and Q&A). Finally, the playbook also attempts to cover standard approaches for integrating digital impact measurement into partner programs - for example through surveys and follow-up questions in conversational style interaction.

Activity Description

Objectives

CLEAR Global has created a first draft of this Playbook. We would like to engage an organization that represents the target audience in a review and validation work. By this, we hope to achieve the following:

- Assessment of Playbook Effectiveness: Determine whether the playbook communicates its intended information clearly and simply.
- Identification of Gaps: Identify any areas where the playbook might lack information, coherence, or where there is too much or too little detail.
- User-Centric Perspective: Gauge the playbook's user-friendliness and accessibility, ensuring that both technical and non-technical stakeholders find it easy to understand and valuable.
Relevance: Validate if the content is relevant, helpful, and applicable. Identify what should take on another angle based on organizational needs.

Playbook content

To support the proposal development, please see below a brief outline of the Playbook’s content and word count. At this point, the Playbook is still under edition and can not be shared in full, but hopefully, the structure and headers can give a good enough idea of what the Playbook is trying to communicate.

Estimated word count: around 24,000

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Introduction

1.1 About the Playbook

1.2 Purpose and Objectives

1.3 How to Use the Playbook

2. Overview of Language Technology

2.1 What is Language Technology?

2.2 Benefits of Using Language Technology in Communication

2.3 Potential Applications

2.4 Key Terminologies and Concepts

3. Partner Opportunities

3.1 Enabling Organizations with Language Technology

3.2 Bridging the Technical Gap

3.3 Engaging with Language Technology Providers

4. Identifying Impactful Use Cases

4.1 Defining Use Case Selection Criteria

4_.2 Evaluating What Can Be Done and What Works_

5. Communication and Collaboration

5.1 Communicating with Communities

5.2 Communication and Collaboration with Partners

6. Language Technology Implementation

6.1 Navigating language technology landscape

6.2 Creating a Language-Specific Peculiarities (LSP) Document

6.3 Open source data and models

6.4 Assessing data and model maturity

6.5 Key Metrics for Evaluating Language Solutions

7. Development and Deployment Guidelines

7.1 Chatbots

7.2 Machine translation

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Responsibilities

In collaboration with the CLEAR Global team, the partner will plan and carry out the following activities (but not limited to):

Feedback Collection: Distribute the playbook among relevant staff (program, technical, decision makers etc.) and encourage them to provide feedback based on their understanding, challenges, and suggestions. The feedback collection should be structured, documented and transparent using methods such as interviews and/or surveys.
Discussion Sessions: Organize discussion sessions where participants can openly share their thoughts, concerns, and ideas about the playbook's content, presentation, structure, and approach.
Use-Case Analysis: The partner will theoretically apply the playbook's recommendations to real-world scenarios within the organization to test its practicality and relevance.

Key Partner Outputs

The outputs expected (but not limited to):

Feedback Report: The partner should generate a report summarizing their observations, comments, and suggestions as well as findings from interviews and/or surveys regarding different sections of the playbook. This report should highlight areas of clarity, confusion, and potential improvements. This must cover both content as well as navigation and structure.
Annotated Playbook: The partner should provide CLEAR Global with an annotated version of the playbook, where they've added comments, questions, and notes directly into the document to indicate their thoughts on specific sections.
Discussion Notes: The partner should share notes from any discussion sessions or workshops that have been organized. These notes may include insights from group discussions, debates, and points of consensus or contention.
Use-Case Definition and Analysis: An important part of the output is a use-case definition based on the playbook's recommendations for real-world scenarios. A use case definition should be provided with the following sections:
- Problem statement
- Target Audience (user persona)
- What language technology solution is proposed
- How would the solution address the problem
- How would the solution support the larger organizational goals and objectives
- How would impact be measured
Visual Aids: If the partner has created diagrams, flowcharts, or other visual aids to supplement the playbook, they should share these materials to enhance the understanding of certain concepts.
Comparison Data: If the partner has compared the playbook with other resources or methodologies they've used, they may provide comparative analyses highlighting strengths and weaknesses.

Outcomes

By engaging an organization from within the target audience of the playbook CLEAR Global seeks to achieve the following:

Refine the Content: Based on the feedback received, CLEAR Global will be able to refine and improve the playbook's content, ensuring that it becomes more accurate, clear, and comprehensive.
Enhance the Usability: Insights from the validation process will help CLEAR Global to identify areas where the playbook's usability can be enhanced, making it more accessible to a wider audience.
Identify Best Practices: Through discussions and use-case analyses, CLEAR Global may uncover additional best practices or case-specific approaches that can enrich the playbook's guidance.
User-Centric Modifications: The validation process can lead to modifications that align the playbook more closely with the needs and preferences of the intended users.
Stronger Engagement: CLEAR Global hopes that by involving an organization in the validation process we foster a sense of engagement, increasing the likelihood of successful implementation and adoption.
Demonstrated Value: By successfully validating the playbook's effectiveness, CLEAR Global hopes to collect tangible evidence of its value and relevance to share with potential users or stakeholders.

Proposal

In your proposal please clearly describe how you will approach the playbook validation and review.

What activities do you propose to carry out, and who will be participating at which stage?
What specific type of outputs will be created as a result of the activities?
What timeline is proposed?
Describe also how you would like to engage with the CLEAR Global team and with what purpose.

Feel free to be creative, as long as the approach aligns with the objectives we are open to your suggestion and will be partly assessing the proposal based on any unique ideas proposed.

Qualifications

The partner/organization should be based in East Africa, and have experience in running social impact programs. The organization should have experience with using technology in their program delivery, be open to innovation and have some basic tech capacity in-house. Previous relevant experience is a plus and should be presented. The right partner agrees with CLEAR Global´s core values and can work remotely to collaborate on the playbook review and validation.

How to apply

To apply for this consultancy please submit the following documents:

A technical and financial offer to include:

a brief description (no more than two sides of A4) of how you would tackle this task
a proposed work plan and deliverables (including the number of days required for each activity)
a financial offer, specifying fees per activity including all costs and taxes (if applicable)

Brief description of your organization and your experience with similar projects.

Please upload the technical and financial offer as one document under “cover letter” and present the description of your organization and experience in one document under “CV”.

About CLEAR Global

CLEAR Global exists to help people get vital information, and be heard, whatever language they speak. We believe that everyone has the right to give and receive information in a language and format they understand. We work with nonprofit partners and a global community of language professionals to build local language translation capacity and raise awareness of language barriers. Our network of over 100,000 community members translate millions of words of life-saving and life-changing information a year.

Core Values

CLEAR Global employees and volunteers are people who believe passionately about the value of this work and take personal responsibility for achieving the mission. CLEAR Global’s mission and organizational spirit embody the core values established in its strategic framework:

Excellence: As the leading voice for communicating humanitarian information in the right language, CLEAR Global is a leader in the translation industry and in the non-profit sector.

Integrity: CLEAR Global believes that every person, whether it is the people who we serve, our volunteers or our staff, has value, deserves respect and has inherent dignity.

Empowerment: CLEAR Global believes in using language to empower people around the world to control their own development and destiny.

Innovation: CLEAR Global recognizes and celebrates the power of innovation to address humanitarian and crisis issues around the world.

Sustainability: CLEAR Global recognizes that meeting our mission necessitates establishment and maintenance of a solid financial and organizational infrastructure.

Tolerance: Our staff and volunteers are highly knowledgeable and skilled; value each other, our partner and our recipients; create a supportive work environment; and, conduct themselves professionally at all times.

CLEAR Global may re-advertise the vacancy, cancel the recruitment, offer an appointment with a modified job description or for a different duration at its discretion.