Governance

Overlapping crises—from the war in Ukraine and the pandemic to climate change—affect governments' response in unprecedented ways. Citizens’ trust in public institutions continue to erode, and there is an urgency for renewing the current social contract in countries around the world. Public Sector Governance and Anticorruption continue to rank high among the most important development priorities. In this context, governments need to do more with less to meet increasing demands from citizens while removing obstacles for private sector development. To effectively address climate change and pandemic risks there is a need for a stronger, flexible, and more responsive civil service which can incorporate risk management and has access to contingencies in an emergency. The lessons from the COVID-19 response point to the need to adapt models of government operations, service delivery and interactions with citizens, which include GovTech options for modernization of services to citizens and businesses. These lessons will be important in tackling climate change and future pandemic risks.

The Governance Global Practice supports client countries to build capable, efficient, resilient, sustainable, inclusive, and accountable institutions. This is critical for returning to sustainable growth and is at the heart of the World Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. In doing this, the World Bank focuses its efforts on strengthening Public Finances, Public Administration, and Public Institutions. The ability of governments to effectively provide public goods, to support an environment that can generate jobs and growth, to address market failures and to engage citizens in the process is more important than ever. Countries with strong institutions are more resilient, are better able to facilitate private sector growth, reduce poverty, deliver valuable services, address climate change, earn the confidence of citizens, and ultimately avoid conflict and fragility.

The Governance and Institutions Cross-Cutting Issue (G&I CCI) in IDA20 support capable, inclusive, and accountable public administration. IDA20 G&I CCI builds on the strong progress made in IDA19 and IDA18’s “Governance and Institutions” Special Theme and deepens commitments that reinforce fiscal sustainability and accelerate digital governance to improve service delivery, statistical capacity, and institutional strengthening. More specially, the policy commitments support debt transparency and fiscal sustainability, domestic resource mobilization, GovTech, and the fight against illicit financial flows. These commitments serve both as enablers and cross-cutting foundations for IDA’s effective investments in a green, resilient, and inclusive recovery. The COVID-19 crisis exposed pre-existing weaknesses in the core governance systems of governments in IDA countries, as the experienced enormous strain to swiftly implement containment measures, respond to surging demands for health care services, vaccination campaigns, manage large-scale vaccination campaigns, deliver offsite/remote education services, and scale-up social protection programs. These weaknesses include uneven planning, regulatory and implementation capacity, as well as suboptimal structures for policy coordination at national and subnational levels. 

Last Updated: Jun 09, 2023

Drawing on its convening power and multidisciplinary expertise, the World Bank is working with its clients and partners to help countries address complex governance challenges through evidence-based reforms. Issues of government effectiveness are at the core of our support for poverty reduction, shared prosperity, resilient and sustainable development that are critical to the Bank’s mandate.  We work closely with a wide range of partners in Governments, civil society, the private sector, the academia, and other international development agencies. In addition to supporting reforms at the country level, the World Bank operates also at the global level to shape global standards. Our strategy is to tackle governance problems through three priorities: building the capacity of the state; closing the feedback loop between government and civil society; and supporting public sector agencies to enhance the State’s performance in core public good provision.  We are delivering on our strategy through three global streams:

• Public Finance and Procurement: Provides specialized support and global knowledge to strengthen the design, development, and administration of public finance policies, systems, and processes. The unit is structured around eight global programs: (i) Public Financial Management; (ii) Procurement for Development; (iii) Domestic Revenue Administration; (iv) State-Owned Enterprise ; (v) Governance in Sectors; (vi) Multi Level Governance; (vii) Climate Change Governance; and (viii) Fiduciary Quality Support.
• Public Administration: Generates global knowledge, incubates innovation, produces data and analytics, supports operational work, and fosters partnerships to support effective, inclusive, and accountable public administrations.  The unit is structured around six main global programs: Public Administration Reform, Global Program on Justice and Rule of Law, GovTech, Anticorruption, Coalitions for Reforms and the Future of Government. 
• Public Institutions data and analytics: Provides strategy and support for transversal governance engagements and ensures that the global governance agenda is greater than the sum of its parts.  It also serves as a hub for data on government and governance patterns in developing countries, and supports a repository of key global, regional, and country analytical studies. Its remits covers: assessment of governance broadly defined, including the distribution of power, interests, and resources, as well as technical processes and systems; assessment of the current state of public institutions as well as its implications for institutional reform and implementation of complex policies such as the ones needed to address climate change, across countries and regions;  a data and analytics hub that will collect and curate governance related data produced by the Bank and elsewhere and that will serve for analytical and operational work of the Bank. The Country-Level Institutional Assessment and Review (CLIAR), one of the products of the hub, will provide guidance on conducting a systematic, context-driven, and empirically grounded reviews of national institutions, with the goal of influencing policy dialogue and informing the design of country engagement products.

Last Updated: Oct 05, 2023

Brazil: Data analytics to deter corruption

The Governance Risk Assessment System that identifies around 200 red flags of potential fraud in public expenditures, has been piloted at the federal, state, and municipal levels of government in Brazil. The numerous high-risk cases that have been identified include:  over 420 firms that won bids against companies which have a high likelihood of being shell companies and reflecting potential bid rigging; 857 companies that won bidding processes against firms that have at least one partner in common; 450 firms whose partners are beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer program Bolsa Família, and potent ially strawmen; more than 500 firms who are owned by public servants working at the same governmental agency that has executed the contract. The system can be replicated in other countries to optimize the process of detecting fraud in public expenditure, saving valuable resources and increasing the effectiveness of audits and investigations.

Honduras: Open Data

The Open Contracting Platform contains over one million procurement data entries (from 2005-2021) on budget and payments valued at more than $9 billion. During the pandemic, over 28,000 COVID-19 emergency procurement contracts from 289 government institutions and subnational governments were disclosed, following the Open Contracting Data Standard framework. The portal contains 81 open data sets from seven government institutions and is gradually expanding. In partnership with a national university, over 400 participants from government, civil society, and the private sector have received targeted training on data and open contracting.

Mexico: Public Integrity Tools

Citizens, public officials, and private sector firms participated in surveys that were conducted to raise awareness about conflict of interest, understand its prevalence and  identify solutions. A public financial disclosure template was developed for government officials, and later approved by the Coordination Committee of the National Anticorruption System. In response to a request from the Citizen Participation Committee and the Executive Secretariat of the National Anticorruption System, a National Anticorruption Policy was drafted and later approved by the Anticorruption Coordination Committee.

Albania: Citizen-Centric Service Delivery Project

Since 2014 the WBG has provided lending and technical assistance to support modernization of administrative service delivery to improve access and quality of public services. The Citizen-Centric Service Delivery Project has financed information technology infrastructure for e-services, business process re-engineering, and creation of one-stop shop citizen service centers. With interoperable systems, service delivery is speedier, business processes are more streamlined and efficient, and over 230,000 users have accessed services on the e-Albania portal. By deploying re-usable computer applications, Albania has increased transactional e-services on offer from just 10 to over 570 during a period of four years. These services include health cards, diplomas, retirement certificates and pension payments, building permits, business registration and more.

Tunisia: Digital Transformation for User-Centric Public Services

In 2019, the WBG approved a new project to improve access to, quality and accountability of selected Social Protection and Education services. Using a GovTech approach, the project aims to strengthen institutions by combining public sector reform innovations with change management and digital technologies. These include innovations such as mobile applications for school registration, giving citizens more input into the reform process, and introducing a unique ID for better targeting of social benefits payments to those most in need. Key result areas include increased access to social protection and other digital services, and increased user satisfaction.

Colombia: Improving Efficiency and Transparency in Judiciary Management RAS project

The World Bank has supported Colombia’s judicial branch to develop a modernization strategy focusing on digital services, including a digital transformation plan and data governance strategy. Under this project, the Bank provides technical assistance at the strategic level but also supporting analytics on IT initiatives within the justice sector, focusing on GovTech.

India: Madhya Pradesh Citizens’ Access to Responsive Project

The project aims to improve access to public services, especially by the under-represented groups including women and tribal communities. As a result, there has been an expansion in citizen service kiosks to remote and underserved areas, increased coverage and improved facilitation of services provided at these kiosks.  Back-end processes of departments have been integrated and application processes have been digitized. Various platforms including social media is being used to sponsor services and receive feedback from citizens.  Currently, there are 425 citizen service centers and over 16,000 additional outreach points throughout the state and more than 41 million applications have been processed. Furthermore, 107 services are now available online. All certificates issued are digitally signed and the Government is exploring the possibility of introducing digital lockers for safe keeping, easy access to these documents and eliminating the need to request multiple copies

Moldova: Modernization of Government Services Project

The project is part of a sequence of projects which have led to the adoption a whole-of-Government policy and technological frameworks for public sector modernization. Cross-sectoral technological solutions are currently in use by various public sector stakeholders supporting reform agendas, such as public services modernization, anti-corruption, open and smart governance.

Among the most impactful GovTech products:

• “MConnect” - the Government Interoperability Platform used by more than 50 public sector institutions, incorporating more than 130 data exchange protocols;
• “MCloud” -  the Government Cloud used by more than 50 public authorities generated already more than $40million in savings;
• Government Services Portal with more than three million visits to date, 685 services passports and 150 e-services;
• “MPay” an on-line payment service with more than 15 million transactions since its launch in 2013.

As a result, substantial increases have been generated in terms of (a) customer satisfaction with the availability, quality and transparency of public services and public data, and (b) savings for both citizens/businesses and the public sector; (c) openness of Government data and information. Currently, the project is building on these products and focusing on re-engineering and digitalization of selected administrative services, thus improving the efficiency, quality and accessibility of service delivery. GovTech in Moldova has been one of the essential triggers for the Government stepping into an irreversible journey towards citizen-centricity, transparency, and efficiency.

Independent and effective Supreme Audit Institutions for good governance

The World Bank is supporting enhanced transparency and accountability globally through nearly 80 country-level projects to enhance independence and accountability of Supreme Auditing Institutions (SAIs). For example, in Mawali, the government is strengthening the legal framework for SAI’s independence. In Bangladesh, SAIs have automated audit processes using audit management systems. The Bank also supports SAIs to comply with international audit standards adapted by countries, and to  introduce risk-based audits, performance audits and use of Computer Assisted Audit Tools (CAATs). The World Bank is the permanent Donor Chair of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) and is working closely with regional partners to contribute to policy dialogue for effective external audits. The Bank periodically releases  the Global SAI Independence Index to assess changes and support SAIs in client countries.

Last Updated: Nov 21, 2022