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CODE Chairman Chander Mohan Vasudev presenting award to Felly Akiiki Kaboyo of the Burkina Faso Transport SECAL team |
July 7, 2004-The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) recently handed out its first Good Practice Awards at a ceremony at Bank headquarters in Washington, DC. Recipients were especially pleased that their work was being recognized by the Bank's independent evaluators.
Maryvonne Plessis-Fraissard, who participated in the award-winning Burkina Faso Transport SECAL Project, said she and other team members on whose behalf she spoke were very gratified by the award.
"The idea of an IEG award is wonderful because it recognizes excellent but unglamorous work that can easily go unnoticed," she observed. She said the project was built on strong previous projects and was supervised by a great team that cohered extremely well with the client. Plessis-Fraissard said that the awards will highlight good practices in project implementation.
In all, seven teams won awards in three categories. The Armenia Rehabilitation Credit; Bangladesh Third Rural Electrification Project; Burkina Faso Transport SECAL project; and Estonia Health Project received awards for Good Practice Projects. The Thailand Lam Takhong Pump Storage Project and Grenada Basic Education Reform Project won for Good Practice Implementation Completion Reports (ICR), and the Cameroon CAS Completion Report (CCR) for Good Practice CCR.
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CODE Chairman Vasudev, Maryvonne Plessis-Fraissard, Hedi Larbi, Felly Akiiki Kaboyo, Brigitta Mitchell (retired staff), and Ajay Chhibber
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IEG Director Ajay Chhibber noted that IEG is widely known as the bearer of bad news, but its evaluations also bring good news as demonstrated by the evaluations of the winning projects. The main reason for the gathering, he said, was to celebrate the achievements of colleagues and to recognize strong Bank performance that contributes to positive development outcomes.
An IEG Panel selected the winners from among projects, programs, ICRs and CAS Completion Reports that have been evaluated by IEG . For projects and programs, the criteria were:
- highly satisfactory overall Bank performance or exemplary design/implementation; and
- strong all-around performance on dimensions of development effectiveness including relevance, efficacy, efficiency, sustainability, institutional development impact, and monitoring and evaluation.
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| MD Shengman Zhang addressing participants at the awards ceremony |
Speaking about the Armenia Rehabilitation Credit, winning team member Linda Roth ascribed the success of the project to excellent teamwork and task management. She said many team members have since moved on to other parts of the Bank but they still keep contacts forged when they worked on the Armenia project.
The awards in the ICR/CCR categories were given for the quality of evidence and analysis in the reports as well as fealty to lessons based on evidence and analysis, internal consistency, consistency with guidelines, and conciseness.
Rebecca Sekse, speaking on behalf of the Thailand Lam Takhong Pump Storage Project team, said she and another member of the team received the news of the award while on operational travel in Cambodia. "At first it did not register that this was a very singular award," she observed. That perception changed when she realized that only a handful of projects merited awards. The ICR was very concise, Sekse acknowledged, emphasizing that it was tailored for "maximum impact with minimum verbiage."
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IEG Director-General Greg Ingram presenting award to Brendan Horton
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Managing Director Shengman Zhang said that the IEG awards exemplified the continuous learning process that the Bank engages in to be more relevant to and supportive of the its clients. He noted that IEG performs an important and unique independent evaluation function to determine whether the Bank's programs and activities are producing the expected results.
CODE Chairman Chander Mohan Vasudev observed that the IEG Awards celebrate what has worked. He said that disseminating such success stories can help foster replication, and that he hoped the award ceremony would serve to spread the word.
Director-General, Operations Evaluation, Gregory Ingram closed the program by lauding IEG for the good choice of projects to be recognized. He noted that the awards would enhance the Department's function as a credible and independent evaluator of Bank projects. The awards will be given annually. |
