The Future of Government: Reimagining Government for Good

Paul Blake is an External Affairs Officer at the World Bank, where he helps design, produce, host, film, and edit several digital podcasts, video series, data visualizations, and other multimedia products. Previously, he worked as a journalist for several outlets, including BBC News and ABC News (US), which allowed him to travel and report across North America, in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and the UK. His first experience with international development, however, was when he worked as a communications consultant for El Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT, part of the CGIAR system) in Cali, Colombia.

George Kronnisanyon Werner is an experienced public-sector leader and innovator who has spearheaded successful national and government-wide reform programs across a range of areas including health and education workforce reforms. He served in the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf administration as Director General of the Civil Service and Minister of Education. Werner served as co-chair of Liberia's Health Workforce Development Taskforce alongside the minister of health, which had a mandate of addressing the shortage of skilled healthcare staff in Liberia. In recognition of his expertise in this area, he was later appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the UN High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth. George is currently advising and coordinating the work of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPR) as a member of the Panel’s secretariat assigned to the Co-chair, HE Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, as Adviser.

As the Chief HR Officer and Advisor (Workforce Development) for the Public Service Division (PSD), Prime Minister’s Office of Singapore, Peck Kem is responsible for professionalising HR in the public sector of 16 Ministries and more than 50 Statutory Boards. She is also the twice-elected President of the Singapore Human Resources Institute (SHRI). Prior to her current appointment at the PSD, she was the Senior Director for HR & OD for a not for profit organisation, The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) based in Geneva, where she was responsible for human resource, organisation development, legal, internal audit and corporate administration for its 15 global offices. Peck Kem has the unique combination of experience, from quality engineer to manufacturing manager to VP human resources in the private sector (Tandon, Western Digital, Hewlett Packard, Agilent Technologies & Avago Technologies), from a Divisional Director of National HR Division in the Singapore Ministry of Manpower in the public sector, to Senior Director ODHR in GAIN, to currently Chief HR Officer for Singapore Public Service Division. This combination has widened her perceptions in the private, public and NGO sectors, and enabled her to view leadership from both the Asian and European perspectives. Peck Kem was recently the first in Asia to be named CIPD Chartered Companion and is listed as a top HR influencer in Asia.

Laura Chinchilla Miranda was elected the first female president of the Republic of Costa Rica on February 7, 2010, for a constitutional term of four years. Her election as President of the Republic of Costa Rica was preceded by a successful political career which began with her appointment as Minister of Public Security between 1996 and 1998, thus making her the first woman to hold that position. While in that role, she also served as President of the National Immigration Board and the National Drug Council. Between 2002 and 2006 she was elected member of the National Congress where she chaired the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Committee on Narcotics. In 2006 she was elected Vice President of Costa Rica, assuming office as the Ministry of Justice at the same time. Finally, in 2010 she became president. Her efforts in the promotion of the rights of women, on the protection of children, and on environmental sustainability, especially in the protection of the seas, earned her two important international awards: the “Excellence in National Management of the Ocean” Peter Benchley of 2011, and the “Award of the Shark Guardian of the year “in 2013. Along with her public career, Chinchilla dedicated part of her professional career to the international sector. She has worked as a consultant in Latin America and Africa with various international organizations in the area of institutional reform, with particular emphasis on judicial and public security reform. Relevant tasks performed include diagnostics on the justice sector for the Agency for International Development (USAID); coordination of studies and projects on judicial reform for the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP) and assessments and advice on police reform to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). She has been part of a number of initiatives to promote reforms in citizen security and human rights throughout Latin America. She has lectured at various forums and has several publications in both Spanish and English on topics related to the administration of justice, public security, and police reform. She holds Honorary Doctorates from the University for Peace of the United Nations, Georgetown University, and Kyoto University of Foreign Studies.​ She also headed the Organization of American State´s Observation Electoral Mission during the 2015 electoral process in México. Also, she is inviting professor at the Government School at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, were she is leading the Latin America Class on Democracy and Citizenship. She is a political scientist and graduated from college at the Universidad de Costa Rica. She also holds a Master's in Public Policy from Georgetown University.

Ed Olowo-Okere, a Nigerian national with three decades of experience working on governance issues around the world, leads the World Bank’s Public Sector and Financial Management team in the Governance Global Practice. This group is focused on helping countries build capable, effective, accountable, transparent, and inclusive institutions that deliver citizen-centric services, facilitate private-sector growth, and build trust in Government. The group provides expertise on governance issues, ranging from public financial management, domestic resource mobilization, state-owned enterprises reform/ corporate governance, public institutions reform, decentralization/subnational governance to anti-corruption policies, fiduciary assurance, political economy analysis and GovTech (i.e. leveraging technology to modernize the public sector and improve service delivery to citizens and business, and increase efficiency, transparency and accountability). Mr. Olowo-Okere joined the World Bank in 1998 and has held various positions in operations, including Director of Governance overseeing Africa, MENA and ECA regions, Senior Advisor in the Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions practice group, and Director of the Core Operational Services Department in the Africa region. Before joining the Bank, Ed held public- and private-sector positions in Nigeria, Britain, and New Zealand. Ed holds a Bachelor of Science (First Class Honors) Degree in Accountancy from the University of Maiduguri and a Masters’ Degree in Accounting, with Distinctions, from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. He has a Ph.D. in Management with a specialization in Change Management and Public Financial Management from the University of Bath, United Kingdom. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN). He has researched and published in reputable international journals and lectured at undergraduate and graduate levels in Nigeria and New Zealand on accounting and finance.

Donna Andrews is the Global Lead for public institutions reform in the Governance Global Practice at the World Bank, based in Washington DC. She is also one of the team leaders of the Future of Government initiative. She provides global intellectual and technical leadership in civil service reform, public administration reform, institutional capacity strengthening, and public sector employment reform.

Donna, an Australian national, joined the World Bank in 2015 and was based in Suva, Fiji where she led civil service and human resource management reform across the East Asia and Pacific region. Prior to joining the World Bank, she worked for the government in Australia for more than 20 years including at human rights and integrity agencies. She worked for over a decade at the Public Service Commission in Queensland where she had responsibility for workforce strategy and planning for over 220,000 employees. Her driving energy and knowledge of strategic human resource management saw her act as a contributing author for the Queensland Commission of Audit. She has also won many individual outstanding achievement awards including two Australia Day medallions. Donna is a Human Resource Management specialist and has Masters’ qualifications in Human Resources and Organizational Development, Business Administration, and Professional and Applied Ethics. She is also a certified change management practitioner.

Tim Williamson is the Global Lead for public financial management, public investment management, and subnational governance at the World Bank based in Washington, DC. He also is one of the team leaders of the Future of Government initiative. Through his work, Tim aims to strengthen the role of governance reforms in enabling the achievement of development results. 

Tim joined the World Bank in 2016 and was initially based in Nairobi, from where he led governance engagements in Kenya and Uganda. In Kenya, Tim helped develop a results-based approach to engagements in public financial and human resource management reform. In Uganda, Tim led a multi-disciplinary team supporting reforms to the financing and management of local government service delivery in health, education water and irrigation. In both Kenya and Uganda he has applied problem based approaches to reform, building teams and coalitions of actors to deliver change within both clients and focusing on the achievement of reform results.  

Prior to joining the bank Tim carried out advisory work and applied research predominantly in East Africa and South Asia. Tim had a long relationship with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) working as a Research Associate and started his career in 1998 working at the Ugandan Ministry of Finance.