Ten Things You Didn't Know About the World Bank Institute

1. How long has WBI been in operation and how many clients does it reach?

The World Bank Institute began as the Economic Development Institute in 1955, delivering a single six-month course per year in Washington on General Development to 20 developing country policymakers. The Institute was partly funded by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and had 4 staff. WBI now reaches more than 75,000 people a year through more than 700 activities. 

2. What is WBI's mission?

WBI's mission is to enable countries to acquire, share, and apply global and local knowledge to meet their development challenges, and in the process develop capacity at the individual, institutional, and societal levels. The Institute aims to increase development impact by customizing its work to meet specific country needs. WBI delivers sectoral, thematic learning programs; provides technical assistance; designs and delivers cabinet-level retreats; and uses diagnostic and needs assessment tools as well as face-to-face learning activities. WBI has also contributed to the capacity development components of World Bank Country Assistance Strategies (CASs).

3. Who are WBI's Clients?

Since its first course in 1956, WBI has reached more than 500,000 people including policymakers in all economic sectors, mid-level and high-level government officials, parliamentarians, members of the judiciary, journalists, civil society leaders, and other opinion maker's involved in developing their communities.

4. What kind of partnerships has WBI developed?

Seventy-five percent of WBI's programs in FY07 were delivered in conjunction with partners.  WBI has resource partners and delivery partners; some organizations act in both capacities.  Resource partners augment WBI's financial, intellectual, and technical resources by providing funding, expertise, content, staff, facilities , and other inputs.  Delivery partners, most located in WBI's client countries, collaborate with the Institute to deliver a wide range of capacity development programs and activities. 

5. What's so special about WBI's approach to learning?

Capacity development is a complex process that varies not only by country, but also by sector and even by institution. It requires customizing content to meet specific national needs and priorities and designing programs with long-term institution building in mind. WBI connects people with ideas brining together global and local knowledge and facilitating south-south exchanges of experience about what works, what doesn't, and why.

WBI accomplishes its goals through training courses and seminars, technical assistance, and long-term relationships with service delivery institutions and capacity building organizations. To increase its reach, the Institute also uses information technologies, mass media, and other knowledge-sharing instruments.

WBI contributes to the international debate on approaches to capacity development by designing and implementing new diagnostic tools and instruments to assess countries capacity development needs.

6. Is WBI still a training institute?

WBI does more than training.

WBI helps build institutions over time

For example,in the Middle East and North Africa, the Governance Institutes Forum for Training in the Middle East and North Africa (GIFT-MENA) is a locally owned consortium of 35 schools and institutes that specialize in training civil servants.  GIFT is building the region's capacity for good governance and anticorruption reform.  It supports the organizational development of its member institutions; instills a culture of reform, problem-solving, and results in new cohorts of mid-level and senior civil servants; and creates networks of reformers and agents of change in the public sector.  In FY07, the program held a training-of-trainers course on performance-based budgets for 20 directors, middle managers, and professional trainers from ministries of finance and institutes specialized in public finance in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia.  The course was organized by the Institute of Finance of Lebanon-Basil Fuleihan Institute, the Moroccan Ministry of Finance and Privatization, and WBI.  

Rapid Response...just-in-time, just enough

In China, WBI supported capacity development for urban environmental management through a program for local government officials in the Pearl River Delta area of China, a region that is at the forefront of China's challenge of balancing rapid economic growth and environmental protection.

In Tajikistan, WBI delivered a leadership seminar, the fourth in a series of annual events, with the participation of the International Finance Corporation and International Monetary Fund.  The seminar, which included all line ministries and the president's adviser, provided a forum for a high-level exchange of ideas and perspectives on the cross-sectoral implications of policy reforms touching on Tajikistan's most pressing development challenges.

7. What are WBI's Global Programs and how do they help countries?

WBI's Governance programs combine action-oriented learning, capacity-building tools, and the power of data, usually in collaboration with other units in the World Bank Group, to support countries seeking to improve governance and control corruption.  Action-learning methods link empirical diagnostic surveys, the practical application of those diagnostics through collective action, and prevention.  This integrated approach is supported by operational research and a comprehensive governance databank.

Following a decade of pioneering development in the field of governance metrics, the developers of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) took this work to a new level by expanding the frequency and depth of reporting to better serve clients and colleagues.  Produced by WBI in collaboration with the World Bank's Development Economics vice presidency (DEC), the July 7, 2006 release of the WGI provides electronic access to the underlying disaggregated governance data from each contributing institution.  The WGI website contains a detailed data report for each indexed country with trending from 1996 to 2006.  WBI and DEC also published accompanying papers that provided a detailed methodological and data report, with citations. With coverage of 212 countries and territories from 1996 to 2006, the WGI is one of the largest governances databases.  Visit:  www.govindicators.org

WBI's  Knowledge for Development Program (K4D) engages with countries that have both the will and the potential to stimulate growth and improve competitiveness by accentuating the role of knowledge in their economy.  A notable example: the program's FY07 report on Enhancing China's Competitiveness through Lifelong Learning.  The report discusses the issues and steps involved in building a lifelong learning system in China, among them a coherent policy framework, a sound incentive and institutional framework, a sound regulatory environment, a coordinated governance process, a timely and reliable management information system, a dynamic link with the evolving global system, and the optimal use of limited resources.

8. Has WBI been innovative in reaching new and broader audiences?

WBI often pilots initiatives to reach new audiences and try out new ideas.  The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) and the Knowledge for Development (K4D) program are just two examples of how WBI has been innovative in reaching new and broader audiences.  The Development Education Program helped schoolchildren learn development concepts face to face and through the Internet; the Development Forum became the Bank's first web-based discussion facility; and the Global Development Network helped research institutions around the world share their knowledge resources electronically. These were later mainstreamed in the Bank or spun-off to become independent enterprises.

WBI pioneered new information and learning technologies through World Links for Development for secondary and primary schools; and the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN) which connects 120 GDLN affiliates across the globe. GDLN members exchange knowledge worldwide through distance learning courses, seminars, and discussion of key development issues.

9. How does WBI maintain its standing in the academic world?

WBI has had an active academic publishing program as a natural extension of its capacity development work. Some of the World Bank's best selling titles and classics in the development literature (beginning in the 1960s) have been WBI-authored books including, The Design of Development by Jan Tinbergen; Development Banks by William Diamond; Economic Analysis of Agricultural Projects by J. Price Gittinger; The Open Economy by Rudiger Dornbusch and Leslie Helmers; The Quality of Growth by Vinod Thomas; and The Right to Tell: The Role of Mass Media in Economic Development, among others. These have been used in university courses and institutes all over the world.

10. Does WBI award scholarships to help build local capacity?

Since 1987, WBI has administered the World Bank's Joint Japan/Graduate Scholarship Program (more than 3,700 scholarships awarded for graduate study on subjects related to economic development). The program partners with Harvard University, Columbia University, McGill University, Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur Le Developpement International, University of Tsukuba, Yokohama National University, and Keio University.

The Government of Japan has provided more than 130 million dollars to the programs to help create an international community of trained professionals in the field of development. Scholars are required to return home on completion of their studies to apply their knowledge and skills to the development of their regions and communities.

WBI also manages the Robert S. McNamara Fellowships Program which awards fellowships for full-time study or research in economic development at the postgraduate level. The program sponsors about 16 scholars a year and has granted some 250 fellowships since 1982.