1. BACKGROUND In 2010, to address programme fragmentation and to increase the overall efficiency of Social Protection (SP) programmes, the Government of Lesotho (GoL) initiated the process to develop a National Information System for Social Assistance (NISSA). The system is set up as a national database that uses consumption indicators to categorise households (HHs) into poverty levels. It uses a common entry point and is an essential mechanism for integrated systems, providing information which can be used to plan for, target, coordinate, monitor and evaluate HHs and individuals for various programmes. The NISSA involves a multi-step process that includes both data collection, proxy mean testing and community validation as well as grievance and redress mechanism. The NISSA is managed by the Director of Social Assistance at the Ministry of Gender, Youth, and Social Development (the #Ministry#). Currently, NISSA includes about 90% (488,000) of Basotho household demographic and socioeconomic information, from both rural and urban areas of the country, across all 10 districts. The nationwide coverage was achieved after several rounds of updates. The Ministry conducted three rounds of NISSA data collection between 2010 and 2015, focusing only on poor and ultra-poor households in rural areas. After that, the Ministry carried out a fourth round of NISSA Expansion in 2017. This entailed data collection of 55,895 households across 10 Community Councils in (4) districts # Butha-Buthe, Leribe, Berea and Mohale#s Hoek. The fourth round of data collection was completed at the end of May 2017. A fifth round was undertaken from August 2017 and completed in December 2017, in five (5) districts (Butha-Buthe, Leribe, Berea, Maseru and Mohale#s Hoek), covering 12 Community Councils entailing approximately 65,000 households. The work went further, and 42 more Community Councils were surveyed in the ten districts of Lesotho, from June 2018 to April 2019 with estimated 200,000 households. Data collection for these rounds took a different approach, enumerating all households regardless of their Community-Based Categorisation (CBC) well-being. NISSA data collection in the Urban Councils was carried out from August 2020 to June 2021, and the process included door-to-door enumeration and the establishment of registration centres to provide each household with an opportunity to be registered in the NISSA system. The NISSA system is currently undergoing an upgrading to improve its functionality, to introduce integration with other national systems and extend the data range in the database. As with any social registry, the data in the NISSA needs to be updated periodically to ensure that it provides accurate information to facilitate targeting and other policy decisions. The Ministry, therefore, seeks to update household data in 9 community councils nationally in 5 districts. These updates are co-funded by the European Union and UNICEF. The data collection needs to be completed by March 2026. 2. SCOPE OF WORK The objective of the assignment is to update household demographic and socioeconomic information in the NISSA registry for use by government programs by March 31, 2026, prior to commencement of the National Census. In doing so, UNICEF and the Ministry expect that data collection for approximately 57,000 households (+-2,000) in 9 community councils is completed within 8 months. It is estimated that the average time to collect data for a household is 30 minutes.