The World Bank - Working for a world free of poverty
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Welcome to the World Bank's new blog on governance and anti-corruption (GAC). Governance for Development aims to provide a forum among World Bank Group staff and the wider development community engaged in the governance endeavor for debate, reflection and experience-sharing on the implications of GAC-mainstreaming for development work.
The Governance & Anticorruption Knowledge and Learning Portal is the primary destination for GAC-related knowledge-sharing and learning at the World Bank Group.
Please click here for access.
Haven’t we been here before? Getting budgets to more perfectly reflect the policy priorities of government has long been the holy grail of budgeting in the public sector, but the reality of government budgeting is messy compromise. If the history of various countries efforts to promote policy coherence shows one thing clearly it is that the budget is the wrong tool to achieve this. Why is this and how can governments achieve greater coherence in support of higher level policy goals? 
Is the timing ripe for President Obama and the U.S. Congress to begin making spending decisions based on what they wanted to achieve rather than on individual agencies and programs? That’s the premise of portfolio budgeting. 
Perched on top a 60 meter column in a bustling square on the waterfront of Barcelona sits a magnificent statue of Christopher Columbus. With one hand clutching a map and the other pointing towards the horizon, the statue is the perfect image of a great explorer leading his fleet to the new world. History has been kind to Columbus and has bestowed on him the credit of discovering the new world. 
There are several issues that I would like to comment on regarding the emerging WBG Public Sector Management (PSM) approach and point out the synergies between the OECD approach and the PSM one. 
In this period of fiscal crisis and tightening of public expenditure budgets, it is especially interesting to look at the extent to which public expenditures are wasted.