Country Office 503416 Counterparts Nairo Both the Oxfam Strategic Plan (OSP) in general and the Humanitarian strategy are intentionally transformational. They are based on change objectives and strategic approaches which support specific changes and how these will come about. The humanitarian strategy change goal states:
"National state institutions and civil society in the most crisis prone/affected countries, supported by the international community, are able to deliver high quality, impartial and independent assistance to those in need, andresilience to increasingly frequent natural disasters and conflict is strengthened through improved preparedness and risk reduction".
Our long term objective is to shift power, resources and capabilities to the national level. It means changing our approach to how we engage with governments and civil society (and also with donors who have the power to decide how money is spent and by whom). At the same time, we need to keep firmly in mind that our primary objective is to save lives and deliver quality programming. Being quicker and reaching more people is inherent to the transformational change approach: we can only achieve our goals of quality, scale and speed by promoting more effective mechanisms at national level.  Thus, the OSP is asking us to shift focus in our humanitarian work. It is not business as usual. The OSP requires us to define what Oxfam will do in the coming years to increase local/national humanitarian capacity. From our experience we recognize 5 priority areas which need additional attention, learning and investment to enable us to shift focus. These include partner capacity development; working with states; preparedness; standards compliance and gender mainstreaming.
The end-state we want to work towards is not so much about enhancing Oxfam#s capacity but capacity of the states and civil society partners it works with, facilitating transformational change at the country level and contributing to ensuring that a country has theproper capacity in place to lead increasingly large responses.
In support of this we want to undertake a fresh analysis of the government and CSO country capacity and needs and the changes that will be required to grow their capacity to lead and manage response. This will inform what Oxfam can do to support transformations in the demonstration countries and allow us to re-focus on our internal work.
A process is designed for this and the demonstration countries will be followed and supported more closely by and Oxfam working group to ensure that we capture best practices in reaching our OSP ambitions for wider sharing across Oxfam and beyond. Somalia is one of these demonstration countries.

2.0  PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVE OF THE ASSESSMENT
The overall aim of the assessment is to conduct a fresh analysis of the existing national and local capacities in Somalia to lead, coordinate and respond effectively to humanitarian emergencies. With the view to support Somali actors as well as Oxfam to identity key capacity as well as gaps - mostly focusingon government national disaster management authorities and local NGOs # and ways to monitor progress.
This consultancy is also designed to contribute to the operationalization of Oxfam Strategic Plan and Humanitarian change goal strategy. Oxfam is shifting its focus and is keen to learn how Oxfam country programmes can support delivery of the Oxfam Strategic Plan. Somalia is selected as one of the #demonstration countries# which will be followed and supported more closely to ensure that we capture best practices in reaching our OSP ambitions for wider sharing across Oxfam and beyond. An Oxfam demonstration country Working group developed a suggested process which will be piloted in Somalia and El Salvador. After reviewing these pilots the approach will be rolled out to other demonstration countries. In support of this process we are looking for an independent consultant with a critical and strategic mind and ability to think #out of the box# to start of this process in Somalia.