In March of 2007 the World Bank’s Executive Board of Directors unanimously adopted a new internal policy placing an emphasis on enhancing governance effectiveness and addressing corruption. The resulting strategy paper— Strengthening World Bank Group Engagement on Governance and Anticorruption—was the culmination of extensive consultations with internal and external partners from around the globe. This strategy spelled out the problems caused by corruption and weak governance and suggested a comprehensive series of policy choices aimed at making GAC a priority for all World Bank Group practice areas.

A global, multistakeholder consultation was undertaken in the development of this document.  A listing of the events and summaries of these consultations can be found here.

GAC Implementation Strategy

To ensure this new policy was more than just words, the Executive Board requested that an implementation plan be developed detailing how GAC would be operationalized at the regional, country, and sector levels. The Public Sector Governance Board prepared an Implementation Plan for Strengthening World Bank Group Engagement on Governance and Anticorruption. This document spelled out concrete actions to be taken by World Bank units to integrate GAC policy in everyday operations and was approved by the Executive Board of Directors in September 2007, who requested that an Implementation Plan Progress Report be prepared and delivered to the board for review within one year.

This document was posted for external and internal review.  For more detail please see the summaries of individual and institutional comments.

GAC Implementaiton: Two-Year Progress Report

This report was released in mid-October 2009.  Click HERE for details.

The Board met on October 21, 2008 to review a progress report in the first year of implementation of the Bank Group’s strategy, Strengthening World Bank Group Engagement on Governance and Anticorruption (GAC). The Report focuses on progress in relation to the specific tasks laid out in the October 2007 Implementation Plan summarizing progress in seven areas -- country governance and anticorruption efforts (or 'CGACs'), GAC in sectors, GAC in projects, the demand side and country systems. The approach to change management adopted for the first year of GAC implementation has combined bottom-up engagement with top-down commitment from senior management and highlights important areas where momentum is being built. (See also the presentation delivered during the 2008 Annual Meetings).