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Managing and Monitoring Grand Design Public Administration Reforms
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-08) Verheijen, Tony
A grand design attempt at public administration reform can be thought of as any centrally designed, multiple agency reform program or process designed to modernize or improve the performance of administrative structures at the center of Government, usually with a focus on addressing persistent underlying inefficiencies. International practice shows that reforming selected central institutions (especially those that hold the purse strings) is a different matter altogether from addressing performance issues in large ministries with a service delivery mandate. Therefore, it is of critical importance to ‘unpack’ these particular reforms and uncover the persistent issues that arise in countries attempting to pursue such reforms. The four grand design cases highlighted here were selected for their comparability in terms of size and economy, and as examples of reforms from different regions. The cases presented here are Brazil, Nigeria, Russia and Tanzania. Each of these cases has specific characteristics, based on a unique country or reform context, but they share the features of a broad, across-the-board reform approach (in three of the four cases with a clear sub-national dimension that is distinct from the national one). This note focuses on the three critical design aspects of such reforms: a) reform coherence, b) effective anchorage and, c) blending technocratic solutions with substantive service delivery improvements.
Targeting Results, Diagnosing the Means: Innovative Approaches for Improving Public Sector Delivery
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05) Watkins, Joanna; Manning, Nick
This note sets out approaches to reform which start with identifying the shortcomings in results and which then look for pragmatic solutions that fit the particular context: no best practice, fewer universal recommendations for institutional design. The relative merits of this type of approach have not been empirically tested, but they are nonetheless intuitively reasonable and offer an alternative to other models of institutional reform which have not had great success. This note argues that these results-based approaches are a welcome breath of fresh air in a difficult domain. They are clearly in tune with the current results focus of the international development community and they address many of the challenges recognized by practitioners in previous approaches. However the authors still have remarkably little hard evidence on which to base a robust assessment of the effectiveness of this type of intervention.
Public Service Delivery in the Era of Digital Governance: Case Studies from Indonesia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05) Karippacheril, Tina George
In an era of digital governance, information technology, internet, mobile devices, and social media have transformed the organization, management, and delivery of public services. Developing country governments around the world are gradually replacing paper-based processing and delivery with next-generation technologies to serve citizens. In Indonesia, a host of citizen-led approaches have emerged ahead of government process transformation efforts. This global expert team (GET) note examines case studies of digital-era governance (DEG), a concept put forward by Dunleavy, further developed by means of examples from Indonesia focusing on demand-side approaches to stimulate improvements in public sector performance.