Person:
Kusek, Jody Zall
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Health; public sector
Degrees
External Links
Departments
Health, Global AIDS Unit, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Jody Zall Kusek is an expert in Monitoring and Evaluation at the World Bank. During her fifteen years at the World Bank she has held both regional and corporate positions focusing on how the World Bank can better align its resources and investments to achieve development results on the ground. She has worked in all six regions of the Bank and in over 40 countries helping to improve evidence based decision making through monitoring and evaluation . She is the co-author of Ten Steps to Results Based Monitoring and Evaluation System, now in its fifth printing and available in seven languages. This handbook is used by academic institution, national governments, and developing partner’s worldwide to better understand the principles and practices of results based M&E. She also co-authored Making Monitoring and Evaluation Systems Work, published in June 2010. Her most recent book, Fail Safe Management was published in 2013. Earlier, Ms. Kusek was a senior advisor and director in two cabinet agencies during the Clinton-Gore Administration in the United States, helping to design and implement the Government Performance and Results Act that is the hallmark of the US’s strategic and program planning model.
Publication Search Results
1 - 6 of 6
-
Publication
Fail-Safe Management : Five Rules to Avoid Project Failure
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-05)Project failures are not confined to the development world. In 2004 Hartman and Ashrafi found that the project failure rate is above 60 percent for construction, engineering, and other technology projects, despite all the advances in project management theory and practice. This book's interest, however, is in the very large percentage of projects not subject to events beyond the control of project managers. In this regard, attention to the possibility of failure is the best guarantee of success. Understandably, public managers may be uncomfortable with such an inherently negative approach to managing public projects, which are, after all, designed and intended to produce a public good or to solve a public problem. The point is not to be pessimistic but realistic in managing public projects. Anticipating and solving problems can avert compounding those problems and the failures that result. And this book delivered five rule to avoid project failure: i) make it about the how; ii) keep your champions close but your critics closer; iii) informal networks matter-work with them; iv) unclog the pipes; and v) build the ship as it sails. -
Publication
Ten Steps to a Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation System : A Handbook for Development Practitioners
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004)An effective state is essential to achieving socio-economic and sustainable development. With the advent of globalization, there are growing pressures on governments and organizations around the world to be more responsive to the demands of internal and external stakeholders for good governance, accountability and transparency, greater development effectiveness, and delivery of tangible results. Governments, parliaments, citizens, the private sector, Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), civil society, international organizations, and donors are among the stakeholders interested in better performance. As demands for greater accountability and real results have increased, there is an attendant need for enhanced results-based monitoring and evaluation of policies, programs, and projects. This handbook provides a comprehensive ten-step model that will help guide development practitioners through the process of designing and building a results-based monitoring and evaluation system. These steps begin with a 'readiness assessment' and take the practitioner through the design, management, and importantly, the sustainability of such systems. The handbook describes each step in detail, the tasks needed to complete each one, and the tools available to help along the way. -
Publication
Assessing Country Readiness for Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation to Support Results Informed Budgeting
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-01)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. -
Publication
Assessing Country Readiness for Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation Systems
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-06)Countries across the globe are facing pressures to reform their public sectors. An effective, efficient public sector is vital to sustainable development, economic growth, and citizens' well-being. Similarly, assessing government performance is crucial in determining a country's progress toward its development goals, whether defined by the Millennium Development Goals, a Policy Reduction Strategy Paper, a Country Assistance Strategy, or another policy statement. It is also important in analyzing a government's accountability to its citizens, by providing evidence on promised government performance. Focusing on performance can also be an effective public sector management tool, informing resource allocation decisions and monitoring of whether public initiatives are achieving expected results. As a result governments at all levels are under pressure to move beyond tracking inputs-and toward measuring results. -
Publication
Logged On : Smart Government Solutions from South Asia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015)Logged On looks at mobile and smart phone technology through the lens of good government management. How will developing governments deliver goods and services that citizens care about? How will government in these countries leapfrog over traditional public management reforms to help reach out to and collaborate directly with the citizen? This book provides example after example where this has happened and how mobile technology has helped provide solutions to old problems. Our astounding revelation that mobile technology is helping to fight corruption in Pakistan, improve health delivery in Bangladesh, provide access to government by the ordinary citizen in India, and help monitor elections in Afghanistan. If this Is possible in some place in poor South Asian countries considered the most poor in the world, then how can these examples be spread to further in these counties or in other countries? Logged on provides a look back on conventional solutions that have mostly not worked and why mobile solutions are taking hold. The book offers a model called Smart Proactive Government based on a Feedback model being used in Punjab, Pakistan. The book also offers five solutions that are present in every successful mobile and smart phone example that the authors reviewed. -
Publication
Making Monitoring and Evaluation Systems Work : A Capacity Development Toolkit
(World Bank, 2009)There are constant and growing pressures on governments and organizations around the world to be more responsive to demands from internal and external stakeholders for good governance, accountability and transparency, greater development effectiveness and delivery of tangible results. Governments, parliaments, citizens, the private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society, international organizations, and donors are all among stakeholders interested in better performance. As demands for greater accountability and results have grown, there is an accompanying need for useful and useable results-based monitoring and evaluation systems to support the management of policies, programs, and projects. Governments and other organizations have many different kinds of tracking systems as part of their management toolkits: good human resource systems, financial systems, and accountability systems. They also need good feedback systems. A results-based monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system is essentially such a feedback system; it is a management tool to measure and evaluate outcomes, providing information for governance and decision making. Many management systems have been missing a feedback component to enable them to track the consequences of actions. Building an M&E system gives decision-makers an additional management tool by providing feedback on performance as a basis for future improvement.