At a Glance · The World Bank actively supports governments to become more transparent, more accountable to citizens, and better in delivering services, as a key element of faster and more effective development. · In fiscal year 2011 (FY11), the Bank provided 11 percent of its lending or approximately US$4.7 billion to help countries improve the performance and accountability of their core public sector institutions and rule of law. · Many programs and operations across countries and sectors support governance institutions to make them more open, more accountable, more efficient, and more participatory. · Bank projects also build in enhanced mechanisms on corruption risk assessment, disclosure, oversight, and monitoring, to ensure that development funds are used for their intended purpose. Overview The World Bank Group (WBG) has been working on issues related to governance and anticorruption—in areas such as public sector performance, public financial management, civil service reform, decentralization, judicial reform, civil society participation, transparency and accountability—for more than a decade. The 2007 strategy, Strengthening World Bank Group Engagement on Governance and Anticorruption (GAC), is enabling a more systematic approach to making GAC integral to Bank operations across sectors and countries. The GAC strategy highlights attention to governance and anticorruption issues as critical to improving development outcomes, including better delivery of services in health, education, roads, water, and electricity, better management of natural resource revenues, and more efficient investment in infrastructure. For instance: support for better and more transparent management of public finances narrows the scope for resource misallocations or leakages; assistance to strengthen local governments enables them to be more responsive to citizen needs; and support for oversight bodies and transparency mechanisms strengthens the accountability of public officials for delivery of services. A second phase of the implementation of the strategy is currently under preparation and is expected to go to the Board later this year, Supporting Governance and Anticorruption in Country Programs As part of the implementation of the strategy, many country assistance programs have integrated governance and anti-corruption as a key element, including across sectors such as education, energy, health, land, local governance, and mining. Albania, Indonesia, Mongolia, and Zambia are among a set of countries, where the Bank teams took early measures to make governance central to the country programs, resulting in assistance and reforms that were more relevant to the country contexts. Country work on governance – in such countries as Afghanistan, Albania, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, DRC, Mongolia, Nepal, and Zambia - is being expanded with funds from the Governance Partnership Facility, a multi-donor fund with contributions from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Norway. Incorporating GAC in the Bank’s Own Operations Bank operations across sectors also systematically incorporate governance and anticorruption into project design, to better manage corruption and fiduciary risks, and to ensure that development funds are used for intended purposes. A review of a large sample of the Bank’s operations approved in FY08, shows that many projects now integrate political economy assessments, risk identification and mitigation measures, and stronger controls and oversight mechanisms, including an emphasis on disclosure and on monitoring by civil society and other third parties. Many of these projects also explicitly focus on using country-level procurement, financial management, and audit systems as a mechanism to build capacity within countries in these areas. The implementation of the Operational Risk Management Framework (ORAF), which was introduced in all projects in FY11, will further enable addressing risks related to poor governance and corruption, as part of the risk framework. The Bank has also intensified attention on detecting, investigating, and sanctioning corruption through the Integrity Vice Presidency (INT), including debarring firms that are found to have engaged in corruption from participating in future Bank-financed projects. Scaling up and Innovating New Approaches The Bank’s support to core public sector institutions—such as ministries of finance, procurement agencies, and the civil service more broadly—includes assistance for improving their capacity, efficiency, transparency, and accountability in key functions like budget formulation, implementation, monitoring and oversight, procurement, and performance management. WBG assistance is increasingly focusing on sector-level country institutions and accountability for results. GAC is being integrated into health, education, and social protection sectors to address service delivery challenges such as absenteeism of workers, improvements of performance incentives and accountability of service providers to clients. It has been set in place to foster a stronger focus on results, monitoring and evaluation, thereby raising the quality of services at the country level. The Governance and Anti-Corruption in Infrastructure Advisory Program – located in the Bank’s Social Development Network – is supporting operations through hands-on learning-by-doing and knowledge dissemination. The implementation of the GAC strategy has also heightened attention to the role of stakeholders outside the executive branch—formal oversight institutions such as parliaments, judiciary, and audit agencies as well as civil society and media. It has also directed attention to mechanisms such as access to information that enable these stakeholders to effectively exercise their oversight role. Many operations across sectors directly involve civil society and citizens’ groups in project process – such as community participation in program design and implementation, third party oversight of budgets, and better complaints handling and audit processes. In addition, new governance initiatives are emerging at the global level, including through partnerships among donor agencies, civil society groups, and governments for better development outcomes – such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the Construction Sector Transparency Initiatie. A key global effort for the Bank has been the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative, launched in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. StAR, which supports international efforts to deter illicit flows of the proceeds of corruption and facilitate asset recovery, helps build capacity of asset recovery teams in countries, helps countries prepare mutual legal assistance requests, and develops knowledge and analytical resources to share international experience and promote innovation. Measuring Results The Bank has also focused on developing tools to measure the effectiveness of its support to governance and anticorruption. A range of ‘actionable’ governance indicators (AGIs), to assess improvements in governance and help design interventions in weak areas, have been developed in areas such as human resources management. The indicators are publicly available at www.agidata.org. Existing “actionable” indicators, such as public expenditure, financial accountability and procurement indicators, are also being used increasingly in country strategies and operations. Contact: Alejandra Viveros, (202) 473-4306, aviveros@worldbank.org
Updated July 2011 |
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