Organization
World Bank
Report Year
2015
1st MAR Year
2017
Accepted
Yes
Status
Active
Recommendation

Strengthen rewards and leadership signals at all levels of the organization to reinforce the importance of self-evaluation. For example, this can be done by promoting use of the knowledge generated from self-evaluations by teams, practices, and senior management, and by balancing the current excessive focus on outcome ratings and disconnects with more deliberative use of monitoring and self-evaluation information by teams and managers (applies to World Bank and IFC).abc

Recommendation Adoption
IEG Rating by Year: mar-rating-popup N NT NT NT Management Rating by Year: mar-rating-mng-popup M NT NT NT
CComplete
HHigh
SSubstantial
MModerate
NNegligible
NANot Accepted
NRNot Rated
Findings Conclusions

Demand from the Bank Group Board and management for knowledge and evidence to enhance development effectiveness has not been matched by a corporate learning culture. Managerial signals emphasize business volume more than they do results, performance, and good self-evaluation tensions over ratings and disconnects distract from learning and there is room to more consistently infuse existing learning, strategic, and planning processes with evaluative evidence. The Board has a role also to reinforce these signals.

Original Management Response

World Bank Management agrees on the critical importance of explicit or implicit signaling that affects incentives and institutional culture for example, the focus on business volume rather than results and learning. Management will explore ways to rebalance messaging and signals that cascade down to operational staff (e.g., through corporate review meetings and annual Memorandum of Understanding for performance monitoring) to strengthen institutional focus on results as well as learning and adaptation throughout the project cycle. Such signaling should also promote greater openness to discussing operations' failures and shortcomings, and should encourage the use of such learning to maximize development effectiveness.

IFC Management supports this recommendation about increasing incentives for staff to use the results and knowledge generated by self-evaluation to improve operations and strategies. IFC has been enhancing its evaluations and feedback loops in line with business needs as part of the enhancements to the results framework.

Action Plans
Action 1
Action 1 Number:
0387-01
Action 1 Title:
3(a): Focus on design of Results Frameworks & M&E
Action 1 Plan:

WB Action 3.1: Develop a methodology to assess quality of RF/M&E design for IPF at entry stage, carry out initial review and present results to Senior Management and GP/Regional Management [FY18]
WB Action 3.2: Explore the possibility of including assessments of quality of RF/M&E design at entry stage in portfolio reviews at corporate/GP/regional levels, for attention and action by Management [FY18]
WB Action 3.3: Explore the possibility of including an indicator on quality of M&E at entry in the Corporate Scorecard and IDA RMS [FY19]

Action 2
Action 2 Number:
0387-02
Action 2 Title:
3(b): Greater use of existing knowledge
Action 2 Plan:

WB Action 3.4: Promote the use of the Global Delivery Initiative’s Global Delivery Library and its DeCODE knowledge repository to identify and address common delivery challenges based on actual project experiences [FY19]
WB Action 3.5: Complete and roll out the automatic generation of “knowledge packages” to inform project design when new projects are initiated in the project portal [FY19].
WB Action 3.6: Develop repository of impact evaluations conducted by the WB for easy access by operational teams [FY18]

Action 3
Action 4
Action 5
Action 6
Action 7
Action 8
2020
IEG Update:
No Updates
Management Update:
No Updates
2019
IEG Update:
No Updates
Management Update:
No Updates
2018
IEG Update:
No Updates
Management Update:
No Updates
2017
IEG Update:

While the actions proposed by management in response to this recommendation are very promising, implementation is at a very early stage for 3(a) for example, it is as yet unclear if the methodology for assessing the quality of RF/M&E design for IPF at entry will be applied at scale and, if so, how it might be used. IEG also has not seen the proposed methodology for this assessment. On several aspects of 3(b), implementation has not yet started. IEG rates this as negligible only because of the very early stage of implementation.

Management Update:

This is an adaptable MAR, where progress is assessed against the outcome direction, and the actions are indicative for each fiscal year, and can be updated each year.
For outcome direction 3a (focus on design of results frameworks and M&E), the indicative actions are sequential.
WB Action 3.1: A methodology has been developed to assess quality of RF/M&E design for IPF at entry stage initial review of a sample of IPFs approved in FY16 have been carried out and preliminary results were discussed with internal team at OPCS [FY17] The work is under progress results for a larger sample will be presented to GP/Regional Management and then to Senior Management [FY18]
WB Action 3.2: The assessments criteria for the quality of RF/M&E design at entry stage is developed and being tested on a sample of projects. Various options will be explored to include the assessment criteria in portfolio reviews at corporate/GP/regional levels once the assessment criteria become functional and endorsed by Senior Management [FY19]
WB Action 3.3: The assessments criteria under development will feed into developing an indicator on quality of M&E at entry that can be included in the stack of CSC and IDA RMS indicators list once becomes functional and endorsed by Senior Management [FY19]
For outcome direction 3b (greater use of existing knowledge), the indicative actions are parallel.
WB Action 3.4: No progress on has been made in FY17.
WB Action 3.5: Coordination initiated to further exploit the use of 'knowledge packets' the KG Team currently developing that pop up when a TTL initiates a PCN in the portal.
WB Action 3.6: A thorough inventory of impact evaluations (IEs) was conducted to capture as much as the IEs conducted across the Bank both by Trust Funds and Bank operations [FY17] Based on the lesson learned from the inventory exercise, a proposal is under review to develop a centralized repository of impact evaluations conducted by the WB for easy access by operational teams [FY18].

Management has placed due attention and taken concrete actions towards achieving the objectives of more focus on design of Results Frameworks & M&E. The development of the assessment criteria and the assessments of sample projects conducted to date are important steps towards creating an institutional incentive to this end. Multiple discussion has been done so far, including with the senior management in OPCS, to enrich the assessment criteria and gear the effort towards the desired objective. It is also part of the work plan to involve important stakeholders, including IEG, and solicit feedback at the appropriate time to ensure its functionality, scalability and wider acceptance by the larger task team across the Bank. Management sincerely believes that the effort excreted to date are far more than negligible.