Building Country Capacity

Ultimately it is the countries that achieve results, with support from development agencies and other partners. But many countries lack appropriate monitoring and evaluation systems to enable policymakers to track progress toward results; demonstrate the outcomes and effects of a given policy, program, or project; and feed these findings back into policy decisions. In many countries the basic statistics to assess changes in such core areas as poverty, health, and education during a three-to-five-year period of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) are weak or missing. The Bank’s action plan focuses first on fostering countries’ demand to measure and monitor results, and on building their capacity to derive and use results information. This can be achieved by strengthening the results focus of PRSPs in low-income countries; strengthening public sector focus on results through public sector management programs; and supporting improved national statistical systems through a simplified lending program for statistical capacity building.

Tracking Progress toward Results

It is not enough to have well-designed projects that achieve their objectives—the objectives must contribute to growth, social welfare, and poverty reduction at the country level. The Bank’s strategies and instruments will need to reflect the shift from focusing solely on project-level results to measuring country-level results. This will include strengthening the focus on outcomes; incorporating a clearer definition of country outcomes and how the Bank’s program contributes to them in Country Assistance Strategies (CASs), sector strategies, investment lending, and policy-based lending; and simplifying the required documents and processes. It also calls for an integrated architecture that allows better tracking of progress through measurable indicators at the project, country, sector, and global levels.

Keeping track of progress toward results is important in helping the borrowers achieve results, managing the Bank’s work, and demonstrating the effectiveness of efforts. A number of improvements are planned that will incorporate systematic assessment of results into Bank review processes, including the annual portfolio review process (see the discussion of the Bank’s Quality Assurance Group, below), the IDA measurement system, and the strategy and budget processes.

Simplifying Policies and Procedures

To enhance its contribution to country results, the Bank worked this year in three areas to simplify and modernize its internal policies and procedures (which, at the same time, will complement its harmonization agenda). In the area of financial management, it developed major changes to its audit policies, agreed with donors on harmonized processes for financial reporting and auditing, and began a review of the rules on eligibility of expenditures.

In the area of lending policy and procedures, the Bank undertook extensive consultations on the proposed update of the Bank’s operational policy on adjustment lending and the procedures for approving retroactive extensions of closing dates; established streamlined procedures for additional financing (repeater projects) and simple, low-risk projects; completed simplified and modernized templates and guidelines for the main investment lending documents; and activated a hotline to help staff quickly resolve operational issues.

In the area of procurement, the Bank is working with other multilateral development banks to harmonize policy, procedures, and standardized bidding documents. In this area, Bank management is in consultations with donors, borrowers, the industry, and civil society on a proposal for modifications to the Bank’s procurement guidelines to be submitted for Board approval. The revised guidelines will enable the Bank to move toward use of electronic procurement systems support to simplify procedures and harmonize policies. In addition to the higher thresholds already implemented for delegation to field offices, prior review of borrowers’ actions, and increased use of national competitive bidding, this effort will help lower transaction costs for partner countries. Country Procurement Assessment Reports and Country Financial Accountability Assessments are now economic and sector work products.

Forming Partnerships for Better Results

Getting better results at the country level requires the collaborative action of a community of practitioners among agencies and countries. One of the key challenges for the Bank and its partners is to coordinate international results reporting so that a core set of country outcome indicators is aligned with PRSP priorities and linked to the MDGs. Another challenge is to identify country-level data gaps and offer coordinated support to address statistical capacity building in countries.

Within the Bank the results agenda is an evolutionary process. Many Bank units have already achieved progress. For example, a revised PRSP Sourcebook (published in two volumes as A Sourcebook for Poverty Reduction Strategies) for use by client countries contains strengthened chapters on setting targets, monitoring and evaluation, and the role of civil society in tracking progress. More public sector analytical work and loans are addressing the use of results-based monitoring and evaluation as a tool for better management. A number of country teams, such as those in Cameroon and Ukraine, are pilot-testing the results-based CASs. The Bank has developed a new lending application—StatCap—to encourage a multidonor approach to building statistical capacity on the basis of a statistical master plan. Ukraine is the first country to use this application. Additional funding is now available for other countries and country teams interested in the program. (See “data” in “About Us” at www.worldbank.org.)

The results agenda is aimed at producing more effective outcomes and adding to the progress already made toward the MDGs.