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government effectiveness

Governance Matters 2009: Learning From Over a Decade of the Worldwide Governance Indicators

Submitted by Kaufmann on Mon, 2009-06-29 11:15

Today we are releasing the report Governance Matters VIII, which includes the new update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI).   Now collaborating from the Brookings Institution, I continue to take part in this research project with my former World Bank colleagues Aart Kraay and Massimo Mastruzzi.

How can technology in public procurement bring about improved governance?

Submitted by Kashmira on Mon, 2009-05-04 18:36

-Jointly submitted by Kashmira Daruwalla and Tanya Gupta

Experts have identified procurement as one of the areas most prone to corruption in the public sector.  Corruption in public contracting can take many forms, including bribery, deception (fraud) or simple abuse, affects the efficiency of public spending and donors' resources and creates waste.  Corruption is widespread in public procurement and service delivery programs.  In a study in Uganda, Reinikka and Svensson compared central government data on public grants to schools from a survey of school officials to find what fraction of grants were ultimately received by schools.  They found that schools received only 13 percent of central government spending on the program, over the period 1991–1995.  Most schools received nothing and the evidence suggested that most of the funds leaked out of the public system through procurement fraud.

In a different randomized field experiment in Indonesia, Olken found that 24% of the funds for a road project had been stolen, after comparing reported expenditure and actual expenditure. 

e-democracies: will Digg-like social networks pave the way for participatory decision-making?

Submitted by Alfredo on Fri, 2009-04-24 18:16

The hype about social networking sites doesn't seem to come to an end.  If it's not Facebook, it's MySpace, and now it's Twitter.  Even though some people are still reluctant to believe in the functionality of some of these web 2.0 applications, it's a matter of years before they become a tool that we have to use on a daily basis, as it happened with email and the internet not so many years ago. 

In this entry, I will follow-up on one of Tanya's three points mentioned in her last entry -namely, participation-, and will make the case for Digg, one of some applications for social bookmarking that allow its users to share, comment and vote on their preferred bookmarks.  From my perspective, these participatory features can give us a glimpse of how decision making processes in the public sector might look like in the not-very-remote future.

Lessons from America for the US Financial Crisis?: the case of Chile

Submitted by Kaufmann on Mon, 2009-02-02 11:04

Forbes Magazine invited me to write an article on corruption.  Among others, I argue that the US financial crisis is a major and overdue wake-up call to the dormant anticorruption field, which for too long has focused on conventional second-order issues (here the article).   I also suggest that some humility could help: for a change, lessons from an emerging economy could be useful to the current situation in the US.  We know that the experience of Sweden in addressing their past financial crisis  offers some insights. 

But it is also important to draw on the lessons from other countries.  Let us focus on Chile, another country in the Americas (the era of equating the US with America should be over anyway).  I am getting questions about the parallels and insights from Chile for the US crisis.  Let me bring up a few points here, with some more detail than in Forbes.

 

Bailout a la Swedish? Not without transparency and tough measures

Submitted by Alfredo on Wed, 2009-01-28 20:56

With a new administration in the White House, different approaches to address the persistent financial crisis are on the table, once more.  Over the last week there's been some talking about the creation of an "aggregator bank" -also called 'bad' bank- that will buy troubled assets with part of the remaining bailout funds (TARP), aiming to take toxicity off financial institutions' balance sheets. 

An aggregator bank that eats all of the junk in the financial sector is expected to finally unfroze credit markets, and gives new life to the idea of a bailout a la Swedish.  However, the Nordic country's experience draws some specific governance lessons that go beyond separating good and bad assets, and that are applicable regardless of the technicalities, features and context that make both cases different.

 

From self regulation to government regulation: Mary Shapiro move to the SEC as a metaphor?

Submitted by Kaufmann on Tue, 2009-01-27 12:59

Mary Shapiro, unquestionably a highly qualified choice, was confirmed by the US Senate and is expected to be sworn in the next days as the new chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC).  She would literally be moving from a chief self-regulator to a chief government regulator.  Her previous position was as CEO of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, FINRA, the largest independent and non-governmental regulator for securities firms in the US.  In her Senate hearings, Shapiro indicated that she would give priority to the regulatory problem in the country and that she will reinvigorate the SEC enforcement divisions.  But according to a Wall Street Journal article, Shapiro showed a light regulatory touch at FINRA.

 

How about next G-20 Summit on good governance for sound financial markets?

Submitted by Kaufmann on Wed, 2008-11-19 18:27

The first G-20 summit, focused on the financial crisis, just took place this past weekend.  When measured against expectations of such gatherings, there were some accomplishments.  Such as in trade:  the collective pledge to avoid raising any trade and investment barriers, or the promise to ‘strive’ for a deal on the stalled Doha round.  And the  summit's ‘action plan’ holds promise. 

The declaration includes a generic list of a plethora of financial sector  ‘principles’ and many areas of work.  But at least it is comprehensive in scope, touching on most of the right ‘buttons’.  It provides space to work concretely on real issues.

The most useless procedure: cutting red tape and corruption in Mexico

Submitted by Alfredo on Tue, 2008-11-11 16:15

It’s been recognized that civic engagement is fundamental to hold governments accountable and to improve the quality of governance.  This bottom-up approach was recently put into practice in Mexico, where the president decided to reward citizens who denounce the most absurd bureaucratic procedure that they have faced, and who propose the best solutions to cut red tape and bribery.

“The most useless procedure” is the name of the temporary campaign launched by the Mexican government to get citizens’ inputs about how it can improve its effectiveness to deliver public services and goods as well as to combat bribery. The citizen with the most original proposal at the federal level will win about $30,000, while more than $9,000 will be awarded to the best case and solution proposed at the state and local level of government.

So far, procedures related to health and social security , tax administration, education, civil registration and property rights protection are among the most denounce by citizens.

As innovative and attractive as this approach looks, in order to be effective it must be appropriately linked to major plans of modernization and reform of the public sector.  Moreover, even though more than 20 thousand citizens participated in this campaign, there needs to be more massive and permanent, rather than temporary, options to empower citizens in the fight against corruption and red tape.

Governance in the public sector – a new paradigm?

Submitted by Tanya on Mon, 2008-10-27 13:40

The financial crisis has been spreading slowly but steadily from the US to Europe, and now to Asia.  It is neither clear when the markets will finally recover nor when the world can begin to get back to business as usual.  Last week in sunny Barbados, a tinge of pessimism pervaded many of the discussions taking place at CAPAM 2008 – the annual Commonwealth Association of Public Administration and Management conference, attended by career civil servants, public management professionals, and a smattering of politicians, private sector and civil society organizations.   The pessimism was about the potential effects of the crisis on the Commonwealth countries, but more broadly to the impact of the crisis on the role of the state and civil servants, and the implications on governance. 

With the plausible nationalization of private entities and a greater post-crisis emphasis on oversight and regulation, there is a temptation to declare victory over the “down-sizing government” faction. Many at the conference did not resist the temptation to do so.  Last week, even ex-Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan admitted that he had been mistaken about the market’s ability to regulate itself.

With a greater role of the state, both the private sector and the public sector will need to assume different roles in the new and emerging governance structure.  Some predictions about what is to come:

Notebooks for school children in Burundi: Improving performance in the education sector

Submitted by Susana on Fri, 2008-10-03 07:00

During my recent mission to Bujumbura, Burundi, I witnessed the rapid results initiative team in action.  Earlier this March, a group of government officials participated in a training session on the use of the Rapid Results Approach to promote good governance and anti-corruption.  During this training, a group of officials from the Ministry of Education decided that this method could help them to improve efficiency in their sector.