GET Brief

7 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/9408

These briefs capture the knowledge and advice from individual engagements of the World Bank’s Global Expert Team (GET) on Public Sector Performance.

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7

Assessing Country Readiness for Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation to Support Results Informed Budgeting

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-01) Kusek, Jody Zall

This brief provides an overview of the role of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in informing budgetary decisions and presents one tool: the readiness assessment - that can help determine the M&E capacity and demand present in a country. Case studies on the use of this assessment are included from Egypt, Romania, and a country in East Asia. This assessment tool focuses on collecting baseline information on how well positioned a government is to design, build and sustain a results-based M&E system. It is divided into three sections: incentives; roles and responsibilities; and capacity building. There are 40 questions in the instrument that cluster into eight areas. These questions identify issues at the national, sub-national, or sector-wide levels of government, rather than at the program or project level. The readiness assessment tool seeks to assist individual governments, the donor community, and their multiple development partners also involved in public sector reform to systematically address the requisites (present or not) for a results-based M&E system. With the information garnered from this effort, development partners can help address the challenges inherent in improving on the current system used to track progress towards achieving the results from government action.
Improving Performance : Foundations of Systemic Performance

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-02) Manning, Nick

At its heart, a performance orientation in the public sector is a predisposition to make promises and an ability to deliver them. Some of the key ideas behind this are: 1) responsiveness - reducing the time lag between changed political priorities and corresponding public policy actions; 2) measurement - the quantification of outputs (and occasionally outcomes); 3) managerialism - the relaxation of the enforced consistency in procedures to move towards flexibility with accountability in order to improve efficiency. It is often seen purely as an import from the private sector, but in fact there have always been areas of managerialism within the public sector. Using these ideas, this note describes some of the key technical foundations necessary for moving towards a performance orientation and outlines a pragmatic approach for improving performance, highlighting the part played by changing performance arrangements for senior management.
Maryland’s StateStat : A State-level Performance Management System

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-12) Dorotinsky, Bill ; Watkins, Joanna

Statestat is Maryland's performance measurement and management system. In use since 2007, Statestat was originally modeled after Baltimore's citistat as a way of capturing and monitoring the progress of government service delivery using frequently updated data. Through a process of continual re-evaluation by the Governor, his executive staff, and agency leadership during bi-weekly meetings, new and improved strategies emerge for delivering key public services effectively and efficiently. Located within the Governor's offices in Annapolis, a lean staff provides the logistical and analytical support for the operation. A recent visit to Statestat by the Public Sector Performance (PSP) Global Expert Team (GET) in November 2009 revealed a set of interesting findings applicable to countries developing performance management systems.
Pay Policy Reform : Building a Foundation for Public Sector Performance Through Improved Public Sector Pay Policy by Using a "Single Pay Spine"

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-11) Green, Malcolm

Appropriate public sector remuneration policies are key for performance. They can motivate staff to a limited extent by rewarding performance but more generally by eliminating inequities and avoiding frequent and sudden changes in pay. They can also assist in retaining competent staff one of the most critical drivers of public sector performance. Developing pay policy in the public sector is complex, administratively and politically. This note analyzes one approach to creating a fiscally sustainable, equitable and performance enhancing pay policy, the single pay spine. It focuses on the single pay spine as a means to help countries achieve four pay policy objectives: 1) ensuring that public service pay is affordable; 2) achieving competitiveness with pay outside the public service; 3) promoting greater transparency in public pay; and 4) ensuring that there is equal pay for equal work (i.e. eliminating inequity).
Arms Length Bodies

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-11) Manning, Nick ; Shepherd, Geoffrey

There has always been a diversity of organizational forms within the public sector. However, in some countries organizational diversification has increased significantly through the distribution of government responsibilities to so-called "arm's-length bodies." This notion reflects their common characteristic of being at arm's length from the control of politicians, outside the hierarchical control of traditional vertically-integrated line ministries and departments. There is some uncertainty concerning the scale of this movement of staff and budgets towards such agencies. Some commentators maintain that arms-length agencies have always been found within governments and that some highly publicized examples of "agencification" have skewed the debate (Wettenhall 2005). Others argue that the creation of distinct entities with independent financial management regimes held responsible for discrete areas of service delivery is a distinct and growing phenomenon.
Review of Public Investment Management Performance (PIMP) in an Economic Crisis

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-08) Ferris, Tom ; Thomas, Theo

This report reviews how various countries are seeking to boost public investment management performance (PIMP) in response to the current economic downturn. Public investment, for the purposes of this review, includes investment by the general government plus investment by government-owned corporations. The report was commissioned for the Public Sector Performance Global Expert Team (PSP GET) at the World Bank. The report focuses on the potential roles for public investment management in the current downturn, including: i) scaling-up investment spending i.e. simply doing more; ii) selecting investments that are likely to be most effective in terms of stimulating the economy or protecting particular social/vulnerable groups; iii) helping to accelerate investments by reducing the time between conception to implementation; and iv) other improvements in the general quality of investment spending, i.e. reducing waste or enhancing efficiency and effectiveness.
National Planning Commission Arrangements

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-05) Watkins, Joanna

Based on a review of relevant World Bank materials and outside sources, this note focuses on two questions of critical importance in discussions surrounding the establishment of a planning commission. These are: 1) what planning commission arrangements seem to be effective? 2) What should the role of a planning commission be in a quasi-federal system? It should be recognized that a planning commission is only one possible institutional device to deal with coordination issues within and across levels of government. The determination of the most appropriate mechanism for dealing with each type of coordination issue or failure requires careful understanding of the specific driving factors.