Consultant – Morocco – Smart Port Challenge, Virtual Hackathon

Terms of Reference  

“Smart Port Challenge – Hackathon Portuaire”  

virtual hackathon on COVID-19 and trade facilitation challenges  

Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation and Agence Nationale des Ports (ANP) 

 

1. Background on the collaboration 

 The Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation (the “Alliance”) is an initiative jointly hosted by the World Economic Forum, the International Chamber of Commerce and the Center for International Private Enterprise, in partnership with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). It is a public-private platform to leverage business expertise and leadership to support effective trade facilitation reforms in developing and least developed countries. The Alliance benefits from the financial support of 6 donor governments: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark and Germany.  

The Alliance works to help governments in developing and least developed countries to implement the World Trade Organization Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). It does so by bringing together governments and businesses as equal partners to identify opportunities to address customs delays and unnecessary red-tape at borders and design and deploy targeted reforms that deliver both a development benefit to the beneficiary country and commercially quantifiable results for the private sector. 

Our collaboration partner in Morocco, the National Ports Agency (“ANP”), is the authoritative and regulatory body of the new Moroccan port system established by Law 15-02. Increasing globalization and the intensification of trade in an ever more competitive environment means that the port sector in Morocco and throughout the world has become an important resource for development and competitiveness. At the same time, it must respond to new social, societal, and environmental challenges. 

In recent years, the port sector in Morocco has undergone significant institutional and organizational reforms with the aim of adapting the status and organization of the Port Authority to meet the overall needs of globalization, while delivering on social responsibility and sustainable and equitable development. 

As a strong player within the Moroccan port landscape, the agency brings together the entire port community to focus on common goals and working to create a competitive port environment, by: 

• Promoting equitable and sustainable development, characterized by healthy competition, efficiency, transparency, and good governance, 
• Ensuring safe and high quality services.

2. Background on the project 

It is vital to continue to foster innovation in the port and logistics sector through periods of crisis both to provide quick and innovative solutions to the challenging context and to ensure the sector emerges in a position of strength.  This is why, even during the current health crisis, it is important to adopt a new agile operating mode to support the performance and efficiency potential of the port and logistics sector. Innovation is a real engine of development for ports and for foreign trade, and this only becomes more true in challenging times. 

This is an opportunity to mobilize the resources of the port and trade community to look ahead to the exit from the economic crisis, and to face new challenges by accelerating digital transformation in the port and maritime sectors and developing a paperless world and 100% paperless trade.

 

3. Objectives 

ANP and the Alliance have agreed to pilot an innovation event (“hackathon”) to solve trade facilitation problems identified by ANP in their Innovation Strategy. The program aims to identify and develop innovative projects in the port sector and to promote the digitization of this sector.  

• To bring forward innovative solutions for a more efficient port through the collaboration of all actors in the port community 
• Improve the functioning of ports, streamline logistics chains and remove current bottlenecks 
• Create tools to facilitate exchange and establish an environment receptive to reflection and innovation
   

4. Methodology 

The port and logistics hackathon will be a purely virtual event taking place in the early autumn (final dates TBD) using a portfolio of online collaboration tools. It will bring together teams and individuals, including subject experts, companies, start-ups, researchers, and academia to create relevant and innovative solutions to challenges in this period of health crisis as part of the Smart Port Innovation process CHALLENGE launched by the ANP and the Alliance. The solutions will meet criteria presented by the ANP in common agreement with all the actors and stakeholders in the port innovation process.

 

5. Deliverables 

There are two main deliverables: 

• Providing support in setting up an appealing hackathon event, preparation of a detailed project plan in terms of activities and timeline, a communications plan proposal and promotion of the event in third party provider networks, preparation and implementation of a challenge announcement event (kick-off) and a demo day. Suggestions for incubation.  
• Providing a virtual collaboration platform allowing the hackathon teams to build a team, select a challenge and to collaborate to find a solution to the challenges presented. Furthermore, this platform will allow the teams to reach out to their dedicated mentors to receive feedback on their work and allow for the judging of the provided solution by the documented process of the solution.  

 6. Management, Timeline and Compensation 

The third party provider procured under this ToR will be contracted by the World Economic Forum (“WEF”) and will report to the Innovation Lead of the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation hosted at the WEF, who will serve as the main point of contact between the third party provider and the hackathon organization team, providing all relevant documentation and assisting in setting up necessary connections and meetings.   

The work will be conducted between July and December 2020, according to the timeline below:  

 

Activity	Tasks	Timeline
Landing page providing information on the hackathon and the challenges, and which allows participant applications	Provide a landing page / website to announce the hackathon, advertize, populate information on the event  Allows showcasing of the selected challenges  Provides the support of participant registration and their selection and team creation  Updating of landing page	20th July 2020 and ongoing
Project management	Detailed project plan, inputs for communication plan  Event planning, deadlines, training moments  Intellectual Property  Onboarding of participants, mentors and jury members to the working platform   Adjust platform, landing page and related communication to design provided by ANP and the Alliance  Motivating teams throughout the hackathon   Proposal on judging criteria	July & August 2020 and ongoing
Challenge announcement event	Creating an appealing challenge announcement event to present the selected challenges and facilitate team matching and onboarding  Provision of necessary infrastructure	September 2020
Provide a working platform for remote participation and collaboration	Preparation of platform for teams to collaborate, reach out to mentors, upload their solution  Technical support throughout the hackathon   Participant onboarding and trouble shooting  Logo and banner inclusion  Possible integration of SLACK and ZOOM / CISCO Webex videoconferencing  Solution uploading and presentation  Summary of all projects on the platform  Dashboard / report on statistics	July 2020 and continuous support
Demo day	Proposal on demo day structure, and the execution via virtual means  Brainstorming on incubation of the project	November / December 2020

 

7. Selection Process 

The selection will be done by ANP and the Alliance.  

Third party providers (legal entities) are requested to submit the following by 17 July 2020 to the Innovation and Hackathon Lead, Mrs. Ines Knäpper (ines.knaepper@weforum.org)  

• Project outline (max 2 pages) describing the proposed methodology and approach 
• Description of the online collaboration platform envisaged 
• Three relevant virtual & two traditional (face-to-face) hackathon showcases   
• Company profile 
• Financial Proposal (in USD)