GET Note

2011-03, World Bank

This report examines the pay-setting arrangements for senior civil servants in three settings: the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Singapore. It concludes that: a robust analytic approach for pay setting seems to be sufficient to maintain some general sense of legitimacy in the process, but is not the dominant driver of pay levels; external consultancies are employed significantly to obtain data on salaries for comparable positions in the private sector; the hay method is used in many settings and the World Bank analytic approach is not dissimilar to that used in many governments; however, governments are different to the World Bank in some critical ways. Like the Bank, they are driven by the need to establish a system which is seen to be legitimate both to staff and to the funders; thus, while the institutional arrangements for managing and overseeing the pay-setting process are, also, very much concerned with ensuring legitimacy for the resultant pay settlement, and so involve some significant delegation to signal that the recommendations are somewhat independent, the final decision for pay is ultimately made by government on political as well as fiscal and economic grounds; and the numbers of political advisors outside of the formal schemes is modest and does not seem to have a strong influence on the pay-setting process for senior staff in the settings studied.

2010-08, Matsuura, Miki, Watkins, Joanna, Dorotinsky, William

The Government of Japan began introducing evaluation techniques in 2001 within the context of a Central Government reform program that involved the establishment of new ministries and the integration and abolition of existing ministries. Japans approach emphasizes assessing policies and activities, and then incorporating results into future planning and budgeting, with a focus on making public sector programs and activities more efficient. This is a synopsis of Japans experience with public sector performance assessment processes between 2001 and 2010. This note presents a range of initiatives underway in Japan, including policy and activity evaluation, as well as the spending review exercise designed to make public sector service delivery more efficient. The intention of this note is not to necessarily endorse Japans approach, but rather to document it as a case study.

2009-08, World Bank

This note presents a number of different country experiences with functional reviews and alternative service delivery, and provides a conceptual framework from which to select appropriate cases for further analysis.

2011-03, World Bank

This note presents a framework for thinking about public sector results based management (RBM) systems, with a particular focus on the issues line agencies face in complying with mandates and directives from central agencies on monitoring and evaluating performance. It also provides five lessons learned from RBM systems of relevance for countries pursuing results based management reforms. Taking a system's view of results based management reveals a number of different approaches and techniques used across the public sector to improve results.

2010-04, Watkins, Joanna, Beschel, Robert

This guide presents a range of non-monetary award programs to recognize performance improvements in government programs, initiatives, and agencies. Nine award programs are drawn from Canada, Ireland, Abu Dhabi, the Philippines, the United States and Jordan. Each of the programs are analyzed along the following dimensions: objectives, target applicants, award categories, selection criteria, participation, selection process, type of reward, year of establishment, and number of awards given per year. Individual program details along these dimensions are available. The first section presents the theoretical background on how non-monetary award programs function, their expected benefits, and guiding principles to harness the potential benefits of such a program. The second section highlights the findings from the analysis of the nine programs along the key dimensions.

2009-08, World Bank

This brief describes in detail Canada's policy on alternative service delivery and service delivery reviews in the UK, such as the prior options reviews, better quality services and best value reviews, market testing, and fundamental expenditure reviews. Links are provided to relevant documents and case studies.

2010-11, World Bank

Several governments around the world have recently established delivery units at the center of government to drive performance improvements. This development may be in addition to whole-of-government reforms to improve performance, such as citizen charters, service agreements, or performance reporting. Given rising interest in public sector performance innovations, this note provides an overview of center-of-government delivery unit arrangements, including key factors for success, with a particular focus on one of the first incarnations of a central delivery unit - the United Kingdom's Prime Minister's Delivery Unit (PMDU).

2009-12, Dorotinsky, Bill, Manning, Nick, Rinne, Jeffrey

Nearly every personnel and pay system has some slack in it, either fiscal excess or staff positions (vacant or otherwise) that are not essential. The key is to look for targeted measures that produce savings and reduce the wage bill, without adversely affecting service delivery.

2009-06, World Bank

Countries across all continents face the challenge of managing contingent liabilities arising from multiple sources, including state-owned enterprises (SOEs), parastatals, off-budget financing arrangements, civil servant entitlement schemes etc. The current financial crisis has made countries even more vulnerable to the severe impact of contingent liabilities on government finances, creating an urgent need to institutionalize systems to control and mitigate fiscal risks arising from these contingent liabilities. This note captures the technical advice provided by the Public Sector Performance (PSP) Global Expert Team (GET) in response to a just-in-time request by Bank staff working with government officials in a Middle-Eastern country to manage contingent liability risks arising from SOEs.