Governance

Going the Last Mile: How to Solve the Trickiest Problems with Government and Civil Society

Also available in: Español

© Courtesy CARE Bangladesh. I’ve always been intrigued by the challenge of coming up with new solutions for everyday problems – kind of like 3D-puzzles for adults. Problems that seem simple from the outside but that are really difficult to crack once one focuses on them, like the development challenges countries face. Whether it’s access to basic services such as education or health, or building the infrastructure needed to connect producers to markets, or providing drinkable water to all, a broad range of sound and proven technical solutions already exists. But millions of kids continue to suffer from poor quality education, mothers continue to die while giving birth, and poor families spend a good chunk of their day walking just to get drinkable water.

Why is it so difficult to get solutions to reach those who need them the most? Many times, the almost automatic answer is that while the knowledge is there, countries lack the necessary resources to address these problems. But too quickly, more money is thrown at these problems without changing the fundamental issues, resulting in limited success at best. In other cases, we spend millions of dollars to build capacity and share knowledge, but it is hard to see results because the institutional support for a solution is lacking.

The World Bank Group is searching internally and globally for 18 experienced and driven professionals to help achieve two ambitious goals: reducing the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day to 3% by 2030 and promoting shared prosperity by fostering the income growth of the bottom 40%. These leaders will be crucial to our plan to improve the way we work, so we can deploy the best skills and expertise to our clients everywhere, to help tackle the most difficult development challenges around the world.

Last month, the Bank Group’s member countries endorsed our new strategy which for the first time leverages the combined strength of the WBG institutions and their unique ability to partner with the public and private sectors to deliver development solutions backed by finance, world class knowledge and convening services.

Instrumental to the success of our strategy is the establishment of Global Practices and Cross-Cutting Solution Areas, which will bring all technical staff together, making it possible for us to expand our knowledge and better connect global and local expertise for transformational impact. Our ultimate goal is to deploy the best skills and expertise to our clients at the right time, and become the leading partner for complex development solutions.

We are accepting applications for the Global Practice senior directors who will lead these pools of specialists in the following areas: Agriculture; Education; Energy and Extractives; Environment and Natural Resources; Finance and Markets; Governance; Health, Nutrition, and Population; Macroeconomics and Fiscal Management; Poverty; Social Protection and Labor; Trade and Competitiveness; Transport and Information Technology; Urban, Rural, and Social Development; and Water.

Last week I was a panelist at a civil society organization seminar during the World Bank Annual Meetings on the topic of “Engaging with Citizens for Greater Development Impact.” The task for the panel was to discuss good practices in citizen engagement to make governments and service providers (including the private sector) more accountable so that policies and project interventions have greater impact for all citizens. The other panelists included representatives from Civicus, Plan International, and the Bank and International Finance Corporation.

The invitation to this event made me reflect on a fundamental question: Is it realistic to expect citizens to hold service providers accountable given the huge asymmetry of power between the two, or are we setting unrealistic expectations that citizen engagement interventions can improve development outcomes?

As I searched for answers, I was reminded of the story of the mighty warrior, Goliath, and the shepherd boy, David, who stepped up to fight him when no one else dared. No one in his or her right mind would have given David a chance against Goliath. However, we all know how the story ends — David hurls a stone from his sling with all his might and hits Goliath in the center of his forehead, causing the mighty to fall. Can we have similar happy endings in citizens vs. almighty service providers?

Also available in: Русский

I landed in Chisinau on a short flight from Frankfurt a mere two years ago. I immediately liked this vibrant and cosmopolitan city built with white limestone and awash with greenery, and remember thinking that it has the potential to attract scores of tourists. But tickets to fly into Chisinau were expensive in 2011.

I also recall so vividly my first trip through the Moldovan countryside shortly after. An amalgam of bright green leaves on walnut trees contrasted the yellow of the sunflowers that grow in fields with some of the most fertile soil in the world. I was immediately struck by the immense potential that Moldova holds in agriculture.

Good things have happened since then.

Also available in: Русский | 中文 | Español | Français | العربية

Last week, Transparency International published its 2013 Corruption Barometer, which reports the findings of a survey of 114,000 people in 107 countries on their interactions with corruption, the institutions and sectors they see as most corrupt, and their perceptions on whether they have a role in combating corruption. The report captures a number of trends, including the view that corruption is worsening across many sectors; it also calls for governments to strengthen their accountability platforms and enhance standards for procurement and public financial management.

This year’s survey found that 27% of people report having paid a bribe in the past year, nearly the same percentage as in the 2010/2011 report (26%). This indicates that more than a quarter of people surveyed have been touched by bribery.

There was a follow-up question: If the respondent did pay a bribe, what was the reason? The answer given most often, with 40% of responses, was “to speed things up.” This high rate of bribes for speed of service, to me, suggests a troubling complicity: The person paying the bribe may feel entitled to more rapid service at the expense of others.

Also available in: العربية | Français | Español

Businesses create jobs and spur growth. But businesses can do more. As competitive pressures increase and as resources around the world become harder to sustain, foresighted businesses have started to adopt new, collaborative and open private sector practices that accomplish two goals at once: improve the bottom line and increase development impact.

The reason businesses do this? Not because of old do-gooding principles, but because solving development issues around the value chain becomes a crucial part of doing business through crowd-sourcing innovations, reducing cost and managing risk.

But the questions are, how can practices that benefit both the bottom line AND development, be scaled up? Can we encourage mass-adoption of the sustainable approaches that IFC has been promoting for years? How do we mainstream that which Michael Porter has called “Creating Shared Value”? How do we go from a few smart companies to millions adopting open and collaborative practices?

To begin answering these questions, the World Bank Institute is launching the “Open and Collaborative Private Sector” initiative. This will complement efforts that others at the World Bank and elsewhere have been advancing on Open Aid, Open Data and Open Government.

The problem with the World Bank’s 20th anniversary in Kyrgyzstan last November was that everybody else’s party had happened already.

There has been a blur of speeches, gala concerts, jazz bands, canapés, toasts and traditional performances as one embassy after another feted twenty years of partnership with the Kyrgyz Republic. The same guests, speeches, and – truth be told - probably the same canapés.

We had to do something different. So, as we celebrated the last 20 years of our work in Kyrgyzstan (which have been quite good), we toasted the next 20 years as well.

Also available in: English

Birkaç hafta önce İstanbul’da gerçekleştirilen Birleşmiş Milletler Orman Forumu’nun 10. Oturumunun açılışı ve Türkiye Başbakanı Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’ın orman kaybının durdurulması konusunun ciddiye alınması yönünde küresel topluluğa yaptığı ateşli çağrı ile ilgili bir blog yazısı yazmıştım. Başbakan Erdoğan bu çağrıyı alışılmadık bir şekilde iklim değişikliği veya biyolojik çeşitlilik kaybı ile ilgili endişelere herhangi bir atıfta bulunmadan yapmıştı; bunun yerine basit bir şekilde “bunu ahlaki sorumluluk gereği gerçekleştirmemiz gerekiyor” demişti.

Erdoğan konuşmasında "İnsanlığın karşı karşıya olduğu küresel tehditler ‘bana ne başkasından’ deme lüksünü ortadan kaldırıyor’” demiş ve eklemişti: “Biz sadece gövde taşıyan, gövdesinin üzerine kafa, o kafanın içinde beyin taşıyan fizyolojik varlıklar değiliz. Biz kalp, ruh ve vicdan taşıyoruz.”

Peki günlerce süren tartışmaların ve müzakerelerin sonucunda BM Forumu neyi başardı? Forum, Erdoğan’ın çağrısına karşılık verdi mi?

Her ne kadar bunu hemen görmek mümkün olmasa da, bu soruların cevabı tek kelime ile “evet”. Parantez içinde ifade edilen metnin neticede daha açık bir anlayışa ve somut eyleme yol açtığı bu tip müzakerelerde görüşlerin birbirine yavaş bir şekilde yakınlaşması her zaman belirgin bir şekilde gözlemlenemeyebilir.

Also available in: Türkçe

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the opening of the 10th Session of the United Nations Forum on Forests, in Istanbul, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s impassioned challenge to the global community to get serious about stopping the loss of forests. Unusually, he did this without reference to the usual concerns about climate change or biodiversity loss, but instead quite simply said – we have a moral responsibility to stop this.

"The global threats which humanity faces eliminate the luxury of saying, ‘What do I care?’” Erdoğan said. “We are not only creatures of bodies, heads, and brains. We carry hearts, we carry souls, and we carry a conscience.”

So what did the UN Forum accomplish after days of discussions and negotiations? Did the Forum rise to Erdoğan's challenge?

Also available in: العربية | Русский

Available in 中文

What’s a cash-tight government to do when it wants to modernize a hospital, build a railway, or expand the power grid to reach underserved areas? It might explore outside, private sources of financing—that’s where public-private partnerships (PPPs) come in. The acronym has a promising ring to it, yet going back to the 1970s, its impact has been mixed. At their best, PPPs can provide rapid injections of cash from private financiers, delivery of quality services, and overall cost-effectiveness the public sector can’t achieve on its own.

But at their worst, PPPs can also drive up costs, under-deliver services, harm the public interest, and introduce new opportunities for fraud, collusion, and corruption. Our experience at the World Bank Integrity Vice Presidency is that because PPPs most often are geared toward providing essential public services in infrastructure, health and education, the integrity risks inherent in these sectors also transfer to PPPs.

On April 17, the Integrity Vice Presidency convened a public discussion on corruption in PPPs (pdf) bringing together finance, energy, and fairness-monitoring perspectives. Looking at the landscape, in the last eight years, 134 developing countries have implemented PPPs in infrastructure, and in the last decade the World Bank has approved some $23 billion lending and risk guarantee operations in support of PPPs.