Person:
Beschel, Robert P.

Global Practice on Governance
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Governance, Public sector management, Anticorruption
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Global Practice on Governance
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Last updated: January 31, 2023
Biography
Robert P. Beschel, Jr., is currently the Global Lead for the World Bank’s Center of Government Practice. He has written extensively on policy coordination and public sector reform and worked on Center of Government issues in a diverse number of countries. In 2010, he was recruited by the Office of Tony Blair and the Government of Kuwait to serve as Deputy Director for Policy (and subsequently as Director for Policy) in the newly created Technical and Advisory Office of the Prime Minister. Beschel has managed the Governance Systems Unit and headed the Governance and Public Accountability Cluster in the Bank’s Public Sector Anchor. He headed the Secretariat for the Governance and Anticorruption Council—the body that oversees the World Bank’s practice on issues of governance, integrity, and anticorruption. He oversaw the World Bank’s work on governance and public sector management in the Middle East and North Africa region from 2004 to 2010 and helped to lead the World Bank’s governance work in South Asia from 1999 to 2004. He served as the principal author for the Asian Development Bank’s Anticorruption Strategy in 1998.

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Publication
    Public Financial Management Reform in the Middle East and North Africa : An Overview of Regional Experience
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012) Beschel, Robert P. Jr.
    One of the most important functions that governments perform is mobilizing financial resources and deploying them to achieve their objectives. According to the most recent World Bank data, governments throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region spent approximately US$407 billion dollars in 2007 in delivering their policy, regulatory and service functions. This report is divided into two volumes. The first volume summarizes the results and presents the conclusions of this analysis. The second provides the individual economy case studies and templates upon which many of these conclusions are based. This report seeks to reflect upon this experience and better understand the nature of the Public Financial Management (PFM) challenges confronting the economies of the MENA region. Turning to the substance of these reforms, it asks where are they performing well and where are they struggling? To what extent are these economies dealing with common problems stemming from similar administrative traditions and comparable levels of development, or unique challenges grounded within their own particular historical or bureaucratic experience? The analysis also seeks to understand the type of PFM reforms that have been implemented across the region in the last decade, including where these reforms have gone well, where they have not, and why.
  • Publication
    Bringing Government into the 21st Century: The Korean Digital Governance Experience
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-06-21) Karippacheril, Tina George; Kim, Soonhee; Beschel, Robert P. Jr.; Choi, Changyong; Karippacheril, Tina George; Kim, Soonhee; Beschel, Robert P. Jr.; Choi, Changyong; Yoon, Jeongwon; Lee, Jungwoo; Lee, Jooho
    This volume—a collaborative work between the World Bank’s Global Governance Practice and a team of researchers working with the Korean Development Institute—is dedicated to the proposition that there is much that can be learned from a careful and nuanced assessment of Korea’s experience with e-governance. It seeks to draw lessons both from the large reservoir of experience as to what has worked, as well as the more limited and isolated examples of what has not. In particular, it seeks to achieve two objectives. The first is to accurately understand, capture and distill the key dimensions of Korea’s e-governance experience so that it can be properly understood and appreciated. Towards this end, some of the world’s leading experts on Korea’s e-governance experience have been engaged in its preparation, and their conclusions have been carefully vetted and reviewed by other leading scholars of the role of IT systems within government. The goal is to avoid flip generalizations or characterizations, such as “political will is important” or “it is important to embed e-governance within a broader strategy to develop a domestic IT industry,” but to truly understand the complex interplay between differing political, economic and bureaucratic interests and how they shaped decisions about developing the technological and human infrastructure that would support Korea’s successful thrust to be the world’s leading nation in this area. The second is to ponder the lessons learned and what did and did not work from Korea’s experience for other developing countries seeking to strengthen the role of information technology within their public sectors.
  • Publication
    Non-monetary Awards for Public Sector Programs and Institutions : Survey of Selected International Experience
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 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.
  • Publication
    International Experience with Civil Service Censuses
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-01) Beschel, Robert
    Since the early 1980s many developing counties have tried to count and contain the number of civil servants as part of public sector reforms-including reforms funded by the World Bank. These initiatives, variously described as censuses, enumerations, headcounts, staff audits, payroll verifications, and payroll reconciliations, have been conducted in widely varying contexts, pursuing many different objectives and using a range of methodologies. But a recent survey by the World Bank and the International Records Management Trust shows that many such exercises have had limited success. How can these efforts be made more effective? Such censuses should have clearer objectives, use more appropriate methodologies, and pursue long-term improvements in payroll and personnel systems.