In ECA countries, there is a great demand to learn how one’s peers are going about the process of transition in public finance. An innovative approach was needed to build capacity of public finance officials in the ECA region by supporting the development of professional networks in treasury, budget, and internal audit.
PEMPAL is a response to this demand. The goal of PEMPAL is to develop active and sustainable networks of practitioners in public finance to share experiences of implementation of reforms and benchmark their performance in order to improve practices in their own countries. It brings together practitioners from the governments of the region to discuss issues and concrete problems that they are facing, and learn from each other’s experiences. PEMPAL is an innovative and promising approach to building capacity of public finance officials in the ECA region by supporting the development of professional networks in Treasury, budget, and internal audit.
In 2006, PEMPAL began by organizing conferences and community-of-practice meetings. Officials can pose real questions about the reforms they are trying to develop and implement in meetings and videoconferences of their communities of practice, exchange visits, sharing of reports, web-based exchanges, and informal contact. They then get feedback from their peers in about 15 countries.
PEMPAL is now in the process of consolidating the existing communities of practice by learning what works best and replicating that across the communities. The communities are meeting regularly and interacting between meetings. They have also formed executive leadership teams. In addition, new communities – including in external audit – are under development. The Center for Excellence in Finance in Slovenia has taken over the role of PEMPAL Secretariat – an indication of rooting the initiative further in the region and making it sustainable beyond the life of the project.
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