GAC Country Diagnostics: a tool for partner countries serious about tackling the challenge of corruption

When Pierre Nkurunziza came to power as president of Burundi in late 2005, he pledged to take serious action to address his country’s poor record on governance.  Burundi had considerable problems with official and petty corruption, and he asked the World Bank Institute (WBI) for support in developing an action plan for tackling these challenges.

 

Starting last year, WBI, working in partnership with the World Bank country team and the Government of Belgium, assisted Burundi in carrying out its first nationwide governance and anti-corruption (GAC) diagnostic survey.  Applying the same methodology that it has used in more than two dozen other countries, WBI helped Burundi create a multi-stakeholder steering group of government and civil society members. This group’s aim was to initiate and lead a process of identifying Burundi’s specific governance problems and designing an approach to address them.

 

 

Launched in the late 1990s, WBI’s GAC country diagnostics methodology is a tool for countries that are serious about taking action on governance and anti-corruption.  This tool complements the World Governance Indicators (WGI)—which give a broad global overview and country comparisons. The country-level diagnostics collect more in-depth data on specific agencies and particular transactions that are taking place within and among those agencies.  Through these detailed surveys, countries learn which agencies suffer more acutely from governance problems and which are least affected. And with this knowledge, a country is able to set priorities for reform and set benchmarks against which reform progress can be measured.

These in-depth diagnostics start with a formal request for assistance from the government and its commitment to a participatory and transparent process. The diagnostics can be customized and focused at the national, sectoral, or sub-national level depending on the demands and needs of the country. These needs are determined through a participatory process in which government representatives, civil society, the media, parliamentarians, business people and the donor community get together to tailor the survey to the realities and priorities of the partner country.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, in line with the government’s decentralization agenda, three provinces—Bandundu, Katanga and South-Kivu—are carrying out diagnostic surveys focused on service delivery at the local level. 

Once a survey is completed, WBI works with the technical team and local steering committee to analyze the results. The steering committee then leads the process of making the results public and working with the government to translate these findings into a concrete plan of action for implementing needed reforms. In the recently completed survey in Haiti, for example, the data showed that the country’s justice system and its large public electricity utility were among the most corruption-plagued institutions, and those two areas are now among key government priorities for action.

In addition to a focus on concrete reform planning, the methodology privileges government-civil society cooperation, which helps build consensus among key stakeholders, providing the basis for politically sustainable reform.

Equally important is WBI’s supporting role, which uses a “learning-by-doing” technical assistance model to help countries strengthen their capacity for country-managed monitoring.  As a result, several countries including Paraguay and Peru have gone on to independently update and adapt the survey process for their evolving needs.  Sometimes, countries ask for assistance in institutionalizing the on-going collection of governance data, in which case WBI collaborates with their national statistical agencies to make it happen.  Peru for example, has included governance questions in their regular collection of national statistics.  Besides, throughout the process, WBI facilitates south-south connections in which countries that have successfully carried out governance diagnostics advise new clients. For example, a representative from Haiti’s civil society gave a presentation during a learning program on governance for Central African officials last April. And most recently, in Kinshasa, four francophone African countries came together to share knowledge about their own surveys and reform agendas and to deepen their knowledge about possible next steps.

 

 

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 see video in French here

More than two dozen countries in Latin America, Africa, Eastern-Europe, and Asia have used this methodology to address their governance challenges. And today, the interest in this tool is expanding to the Middle East and North Africa Region with Morocco and Yemen recently deciding to apply this process to their own governance strategies.