Highlights

The absence of a centralized knowledge system means that business units must develop their own knowledge systems, with some thriving and some falling behind. Operational knowledge is the best organized, and country knowledge is the least organized, with sector knowledge in between.

Global units’ knowledge production often lacks strong operational applications.

Teams and managers must go above and beyond the linear model’s formal knowledge requirements by using informal exchanges of tacit knowledge and creating their own spaces for learning. Teams rely on trust funds because there are no dedicated budgets for knowledge outside of project design requirements.

Tacit knowledge and informal exchanges are preferred by many staff and managers because it is a valuable and easy-to-access source of practical knowledge. The World Bank’s few knowledge and learning staff focus on explicit knowledge sharing but do not support transfer of tacit knowledge and do not have the remit to support World Bank–wide knowledge management.

Certain instruments, such as Multiphase Programmatic Approaches and Program-for-Results, have knowledge mandates that better suit them to learning. Other instruments, such as development policy financing and investment project financing, lack knowledge mandates and rely on motivated task team leaders to drive learning.

This chapter examines the broader World Bank knowledge ecosystem’s inputs and assesses how well they support effective learning. The chapter identifies key knowledge enablers and reviews the World Bank’s knowledge ecosystem. The knowledge ecosystem refers to the resources, opportunities, capacities, and client engagements that support effective learning conditions for staff and projects. The ecosystem for knowledge is nonlinear and multidimensional, with many more entry points for knowledge and spaces for learning than in the formal linear model (figure 3.1). The chapter is organized around several of these inputs: it examines the knowledge ecosystem’s resources, its client and partner contributions, and its learning opportunities and capacities. The chapter finds that some teams and units run knowledge systems that go above and beyond the linear model’s formal knowledge requirements to create effective learning conditions. However, the World Bank has no minimum standards, provides little guidance, and creates few incentives and mechanisms to ensure excellence in knowledge sharing and use.

Figure 3.1. Ecosystem for Learning in Lending

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Figure 3.1. Ecosystem for Learning in Lending

Source: Independent Evaluation Group.

There are several inputs, or knowledge enablers, that create effective learning conditions within the World Bank. These enablers, which also define this chapter’s subsections, include knowledge ecosystem’s resources, its client and partner contributions, and its learning opportunities and capacities. Two of the evaluation’s case studies illustrate how these knowledge enablers contribute to successful knowledge management in practice:

• The China Green Agricultural and Rural Revitalization PforR capitalized on knowledge from three decades of prior engagements and the client’s learning culture. The World Bank spent an unusually large amount of administrative budget on a series of studies that recommended investments and policy reforms to make Chinese agriculture more sustainable. The program design incorporated these recommendations. During implementation, the World Bank collaborated with the Agricultural Development Bank and other Chinese institutions to leverage local expertise, ensure client learning, and scale up lessons into a national program, largely financed by the government, thereby multiplying the influence of the World Bank–supported learning. World Bank researchers collaborated with the Chinese institutions to publish a joint report on China’s experiences in rural poverty reduction (World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council of China 2022).
• The Tanzania Sustainable Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Program, also a PforR, used knowledge to incentivize results by linking payments to verified outcomes. During intense discussions on program outcomes, the World Bank team and the local governments explored implementation lessons and identified performance improvements. Lessons from the past World Bank– and United Kingdom–funded projects informed institutional reforms aimed at systemic change within the water sector. The proactive TTL used trust fund–supported studies that explored approaches to promoting private sector participation in sanitation service delivery. The program used the studies’ findings to define a model for engaging private sector service providers in support of community-based water organizations.

Resources

Trust fund financing boosts knowledge and learning. Trust funds allow World Bank staff to carry out analytic work, deliver technical assistance, engage clients, and organize joint learning with clients when administrative budgets are insufficient. This analytic work informs project, program, and prior action designs; builds capacity and facilitates other engagements with clients, partners, and civil society organizations; and enables the World Bank to provide technical assistance and collect data. At least 60 percent of the evaluation’s case studies—that is, 19 out of the 32 projects for which the team collected trust fund information—used one or more World Bank–executed trust funds to support project preparation and implementation. Nine projects had three or more trust funds. The Madagascar Nutrition MPAs had nine World Bank–executed trust funds. DPF operations generally do not rely on trust funds, although much of the analytic work that helped teams identify policy actions had been financed through such funds. According to TTLs, trust-funded studies helped inform projects that lacked prior operations to learn from.

Larger country programs tend to have access to more human and knowledge resources than smaller programs. Teams in countries with larger programs, including China, Kenya, Mexico, and Tanzania, could draw on knowledge from several prior or parallel operations, many in-country staff, and existing analytic work. IEG’s global footprint evaluation found that the World Bank concentrates the largest share of field-based professional staff, including managers and program leaders, in a few countries with a country director presence. It also reported that “case studies from smaller countries without country directors almost always revealed examples of an important project or business line in a Country Partnership Framework underachieving or being delayed because the right expertise was not available in the country” (World Bank 2022a, xvi). Small countries in this evaluation’s sample, such as Belize and the Marshall Islands, lacked such knowledge resources. For example, Belize’s Climate Resilient and Sustainable Agriculture Project would have benefited from cross-support from another GP to design a project component, but that GP had neither lending nor ASA in that sector from which to draw knowledge and was unable to assist with cross-support.

Clients and Partner Contributions

Learning with clients is a common practice and useful for building trust. Nearly all task teams in the cases shared knowledge with clients and fostered joint learning, often using informal approaches to share tacit knowledge, such as safe spaces, calls and meetings, workshops, and so on. TTLs explained that this learning often built on prior relationships with clients that had been established during previous projects or technical assistance. Study tours were one method for client learning, adding value to project identification and preparation. For example, a case study project used a multiyear, sequenced learning approach with study tours and a report on global best practices to help Chinese clients identify a new approach to cleaning heavily contaminated sites, eventually leading to a financing project that scaled up this approach nationally. Similarly, Moldova’s Tax Administration Modernization Project held workshops with taxpayer associations and others to identify reforms for an IPF project to support. In Benin, missions enabled the monitoring and evaluation specialist to build local capacity and stronger management information systems for nutrition. However, much of this learning is not formalized. For example, joint learning at the project level is rarely documented—review meeting minutes, project Concept Notes, and PADs rarely mention it. However, experienced TTLs emphasized that learning with clients helps them develop close personal and professional relationships built on trust.

PforR and MPAs have explicit mandates for continuous World Bank–client learning, although budget norms do not reflect this. The PforR’s annual DLI verification process uses data about progress toward achieving the DLIs to foster dialogue and learning between World Bank teams and their counterparts. This occurred in all six samples PforR operations. The sample’s three regional, or horizontal, MPAs involved active World Bank–client exchanges on lessons and implementation challenges. The cross-country nature of MPAs facilitated such exchanges. As a result, some Regions are promoting MPAs and structuring client-oriented learning agendas around them. However, budget norms for MPAs and PforR are the same as for regular IPF, despite MPAs’ and PforR’s larger learning mandates. TTLs for regional MPAs argued during interviews that they should be allocated more budget because they cover more countries. Some of the MPAs used trust funds to compensate for the scarcity of administrative budget.

The level of a client’s capacity can affect knowledge generation and use. At least eight of the cases showed low client capacity hindering knowledge and learning during implementation. A team leader for projects in Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon noted that clients with higher capacity implemented project activities faster and more efficiently, leaving time to develop a knowledge program with trainings, innovations, and study tours. The two Chinese cases stood out as examples of this, leading the World Bank to produce widespread analytic work and organize study tours and workshops with global experts. Lower-capacity clients spend more time on troubleshooting implementation challenges, leaving neither the client nor the World Bank the time to promote knowledge—for example, in the small island state, the Marshall Islands, the limited client capacity reduced the World Bank team’s ability to pursue learning with the clients. Nevertheless, there were cases of strong learning with clients in several low- and lower-middle-income countries (for example, Kenya’s Devolution Support PforR) and, conversely, of challenges to learning in upper-middle-income countries. For example, a project in Türkiye produced many diagnostic reports but found that it was hard for the client to absorb these.

Many GPs and some Regions have formal client capacity development initiatives to overcome these challenges. These are structured approaches, often financed through trust funds. The World Bank units invest in capacity development because it complements their lending programs and promotes development outcomes. The Health, Nutrition, and Population GP runs the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage—a network of practitioners and policy makers who codevelop knowledge and solutions to country-specific health challenges. Health, Nutrition, and Population also has a flagship client learning program on health systems. The Social Protection and Jobs GP has a long-standing Global Forum on Social Protection issues and core courses on safety nets at the global and regional levels. The Water GP has a field leadership training course to help water utility managers drive cultural change in their organizations. The Transport GP has Leaders in Urban Transport Planning and other capacity development initiatives. The East Asia and Pacific Region has knowledge hubs in the Republic of Korea and Malaysia that work with clients to build their capacity to manage World Bank projects. These hubs also collaborate with the Asian Development Bank on client capacity-building projects in Viet Nam, Myanmar, and other Asian countries. The Knowledge Compact seeks to elevate capacity development as a business line on par with lending and set up a new World Bank Group Academy (World Bank Group 2024). Previously, the World Bank Institute had a similar mandate. Academy programs have the potential to elevate capacity development and lead to greater recognition and incentives for knowledge management and instructional design.

Nearly half of sampled World Bank teams collaborate with development partners on learning initiatives. All GPs have formal knowledge partnerships with reputable organizations in their sectors, according to interviews with GP global unit managers and the GPs’ intranet pages. For example, the Education GP partners with the United Nations Children’s Fund; the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; and the International Labour Organization. The case studies show that development partners often provide instrumental knowledge to World Bank teams for project design and some strategic knowledge. The partners can also raise co-financing. The reference analysis discussed in chapter 2 and appendix D shows that a healthy two-thirds of PADs’ citations are to sources authored by individuals, clients, and organizations other than the Bank Group. The case studies also show that the World Bank learns with bilateral donors through multidonor trust funds and, in some instances, collaborated with the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral development banks. For example, the Amazonas case study demonstrates that the World Bank collaborated with the Inter-American Development Bank in Brazil on learning. The World Bank has few formal requirements on external collaboration, such as with the International Monetary Fund on policy lending and debt issues, with associated review processes. Apart from this, much knowledge collaboration appears to happen organically or in the context of trust funds, outside the formal lending process requirements. Approximately 45 percent of the case studies showed the World Bank partnerships with think tanks, academic institutions, and development organizations as enablers for knowledge generation and use. In Tanzania, the lessons from a United Kingdom–funded PforR operation informed the World Bank’s own PforR operation. In Belize, the World Bank collaborated with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture and Belize’s Ministry of Agriculture to identify climate-smart agriculture practices and investment opportunities.

Opportunities and Capacities

The World Bank has many business units with strong knowledge capacity. All units in World Bank operations produce knowledge to some extent, and knowledge generation is a core mandate for GP global units, IEG, cross-cutting theme groups, Gender Innovation Labs, the Development Economics Vice Presidency, many trust-funded partnerships, and others. Most of the World Bank’s knowledge generation focuses on sectoral knowledge packaged as reports, data, and tools. Many of the GPs organize this knowledge in a logical structure with clear priorities and focus areas that correspond to the GPs’ lending business lines. GPs are sometimes helped in this process by the World Bank’s umbrella trust fund reforms that consolidated financing for knowledge into strategically aligned funds, thereby reducing knowledge fragmentation. For example, the Health, Nutrition, and Population GP consolidated 187 financing streams into five broad funds that align with the focus areas of Health, Nutrition, and Population (box 3.1). IEG’s Knowledge Flow and Collaboration Under the World Bank’s New Operating Model continues to ring true; it found that the creation of the GPs in 2014 improved knowledge flow and staff mobility, mobilized expertise for clients, and sometimes deepened expertise in relevant areas (World Bank 2019a).

The World Bank’s knowledge generation is not necessarily aimed at operational needs. This is most clearly the case for global units’ knowledge generation. These units often have strategic motives for their knowledge production, for example, to inform a new or growing business line or respond to corporate priorities, such as climate change. A review of GPs’ intranet pages shows that they produce valuable notes and reports on many operationally relevant topics, such as inclusion, citizen engagement, Paris Alignment, and climate co-benefits. Many of these knowledge resources respond directly to current management priorities. According to IEG’s interviews with managers, responding to implementation challenges or demands from clients and regional staff were infrequent motives for global units’ knowledge production.

As a result, global units’ knowledge often lacks strong operational applications. Managers in “knowledge-producing” units are concerned about weak uptake of the knowledge they produce, according to IEG’s interviews. In interviews, many managers were concerned that much of the knowledge their units produce is too supply driven and unused by regional staff who seem to be unaware of this available knowledge. Most interviewed managers were aware that the traditional model of producing reports and disseminating them to regional staff and clients through webinars, newsletters, briefs, blogs, and intranet pages is not leading to much application of this knowledge in operations. Yet this approach remains prevalent around the World Bank, including in many GP global units. There were exceptions, of course, including in the Water GP and the Africa Gender Innovation Lab (box 3.2). A project on early childhood education in Honduras benefited from knowledge support from the Global Partnership for Education. Similarly, an experienced TTL of environmental projects listed the trust funds that are useful knowledge sources and others that are not. However, overall, the evaluation’s project case studies did not show much use of the global units’ knowledge. TTLs interviewed for the case studies were partially aware of the global units’ sectoral expertise but were not aware of the entire range of global unit knowledge and expertise available to them.

Staff’s motivation to pursue knowledge and learning often determines the level of knowledge and learning the World Bank generates. The World Bank holds staff accountable for project design and disbursements more than for fostering knowledge use, engaging clients in learning, and achieving influence. IEG interviewed many TTLs who saw themselves as part of a learning culture and, seemingly driven by intrinsic motivation, went beyond their official duties and the linear model’s requirements to learn and share knowledge. The World Bank gives TTLs discretion over the extent to which their lending projects harness and apply knowledge, subject to meeting certain minimum requirements at design as mentioned in chapter 2. Proactive, motivated TTLs did this by securing trust funds and other resources, participating in knowledge exchanges and communities of practice, and engaging with clients and partners to conduct analytic work, share knowledge, and learn together. In addition, IEG interviewed many managers who championed knowledge sharing and use by setting up knowledge sharing modalities. The Knowledge Compact seeks to bolster this staff motivation and the organization’s knowledge culture, although the pathways it intends to follow remain unclear. IEG’s evidence and experience from World Bank practitioners suggest that giving rewards and prizes is not the best way to boost staff’s intrinsic motivation, but creating incentives, managerial signals, and systematic and predictable opportunities to share knowledge can be much more valuable (Ijjasz-Vasquez et al. 2024).

The World Bank’s knowledge ecosystems for country and technical knowledge are largely decentralized. The lack of structure and support for knowledge ecosystems stands in sharp contrast to the linear model’s prescribed processes and the World Bank’s well-structured approach to organizing operational knowledge. In the linear model, well-defined entry points and assigned roles ensure that operational knowledge—such as instrument choice or design of DLIs—is given due consideration at specific moments. The Operations Policy and Country Services Vice Presidential Unit has codified the relevant operational knowledge and organized it on the intranet and through a help desk, staff trainings, on-the-job coaching, and team leader accreditation. The World Bank has no similar knowledge requirements for country and sector knowledge, apart from formal staff training organized under the “Open Learning Campus.” GP global units have knowledge mandates but no guidance on how to best fulfill those. Units tend to follow their own knowledge management practices, led by managers with sectoral rather than knowledge management specialties.

The World Bank’s approach to organizing knowledge has changed over time. At times, it has had action plans or strategies for knowledge with a central knowledge management team led by a director in charge, and at other times, it has left knowledge as an entirely decentralized responsibility. The heretofore limited structure and support for knowledge ecosystems also stands in contrast to the World Bank’s structured approach to the Environmental and Social Framework, data, communications, procurement, and safeguards (table 3.1). Reforms in 2024 created a Knowledge and Learning Department and the World Bank Group Academy for client-facing offerings, thereby creating welcome opportunities for central organization and senior management oversight of knowledge management.

Other multilateral development banks also face challenges with embedding knowledge generation and use into core business processes. A benchmarking study by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Evaluation Department concluded that multilateral development banks (the sample included the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation) face the challenge of trying to embed knowledge and knowledge processes into a lending-oriented business model that has operated well in the perception of senior management without extensive knowledge management practices. The study found that knowledge management action plans and strategies need strong managerial endorsement and follow-through to be successful. Meanwhile, some large foundations have firmly embedded learning into core business processes and the DNA of their organizations. Three private sector firms (American Funds, Deloitte, and Royal Dutch Shell) selected as comparators based on their excellence in knowledge management have also been more successful in building a business case for knowledge management and learning, thereby gaining strong leadership support, creating a receptive culture for knowledge management and learning, and ensuring resourcing (EBRD 2021).

Source: Independent Evaluation Group.

Note: ESF = Environmental and Social Framework; OPCS = Operations Policy and Country Services.

The GPs execute their knowledge mandates unevenly. In 2019, the Knowledge Flow and Collaboration Under the World Bank’s New Operating Model evaluation found that “each GP manages knowledge differently; some are more coherent and strategic than others.… The Global Solutions Groups lack mechanisms for channeling knowledge into country programs…. Differences in leadership attention and funding explain much of the variation” (World Bank 2019a, xiv, ix). This finding continues to ring true. As of June 2024, all 15 GPs have learning weeks and other internal knowledge sharing practices. However, only 8 GPs’ intranet pages have the learning week resources readily available with links that work. All 15 GPs have global leads, and all except 1 GP list the names of the global leads on the intranet, making these staff easy to find. Nine GPs list communities of practice or Global Solutions Groups (others may have communities of practice, but their intranet pages do not clearly list them). One GP, Water, has an integrated help desk (box 3.2); 3 GPs have a dedicated email helpline; and 4 GPs list the email of their knowledge and learning staff. In the remaining 7 GPs, it is unclear whom staff would turn to for help with accessing technical knowledge.

Operational knowledge is the best organized, and country knowledge is the least organized, with sector knowledge in between (table 3.2). This can be explained by the fact that operational knowledge is nonconfidential, essential to the core lending business, and responsibility for organizing it rests with a central unit (Operations Learning and Engagement unit in the Operations Policy and Country Services vice presidency), along with “Country and Operations-mapped” staff affiliated with that unit. In contrast, responsibility for organizing sector and country knowledge rests with 22 GPs and theme groups and about 38 Country Management Units.

Source: Independent Evaluation Group.

Note: ASA = advisory services and analytics; CMU = Country Management Unit; CPF = Country Partnership Framework; DPF = development policy financing; GP = Global Practice; IPF = investment project financing; OPCS = Operations Policy and Country Services; PforR = Program-for-Results; TTL = task team leader.

Existing tools to capture and learn from country knowledge have shortcomings, making country office staff the primary repository of such knowledge. IEG’s evaluation of country programs’ outcome orientation found that how the Bank Group aims for outcomes at the country level is sound and, for the most part, country teams practice this model well, but that the Bank Group’s country evaluation product, the Completion and Learning Review, provides a partial picture of Bank Group contributions (World Bank 2020d). The picture is partial because of its overemphasis on those results that can be measured and on results from lending projects. The Completion and Learning Review rarely captures complementarities across instruments or institutions and so cannot establish whether the Bank Group’s contribution to country outcomes amounts to more than the sum of its parts. Because of their timing and limited content, the reviews are rarely used within the institution (World Bank 2020d), a finding echoed in this evaluation’s case studies. This is part of a larger pattern where the existing results architecture mechanisms serve upward reporting more than they support learning, adaptive management, or decentralized decision-making.

There is ample evidence that staff engage with results architecture mechanisms with a “compliance mindset.” Some of the results tools and mechanisms tend to hinder rather than empower teams’ ability to engage in informed risk taking and adaptive management (World Bank 2016, 2020d). Apart from the country engagement products, the main responsibility of the Country Management Units is more to oversee the program than to provide knowledge, and IEG did not come across systematic efforts to foster the sharing of country knowledge except country team retreats. Admittedly, country knowledge is hard to organize because some of it is confidential and not easily codified. The World Bank therefore largely relies on tacit knowledge and relationships of staff located in country offices to understand a country’s context, political economy, governance issues, implementing agency capacity, and other country knowledge, as discussed in chapter 2.

More systematic informal knowledge exchanges, including of country knowledge, could help improve learning conditions for lending teams. Yet knowledge and learning staff dedicate little time to these functions. Most of the World Bank’s knowledge management and learning practices focus on disseminating explicit knowledge; as such, this is what knowledge and learning staff focus on as well. This is according to IEG’s interviews with managers and an electronic questionnaire of knowledge and learning professionals. Similarly, most of this explicit knowledge comes in the form of operational and sector knowledge rather than country knowledge.

The transfer of tacit knowledge is deeply ingrained in the World Bank’s organizational culture. Most staff rely on informal exchanges and transfer of tacit knowledge to gain a large part of the country and sectoral knowledge they need for their work. Previous IEG evaluations established the value of tacit knowledge (World Bank 2014, 2015, 2022a). For example, IEG reported that “interviews and the TTL survey show that informal interactions and idea exchanges among colleagues [were] one of staff’s most important sources for global knowledge” (World Bank 2022a, 59). The sample case studies found that teams highly value tacit knowledge sources and less frequently and prominently mentioned explicit and codified knowledge sources, such as templates, guidelines, document libraries, and training programs. In addition, staff often value opportunities to share knowledge: several of the teams involved in the sample cases described sharing project lessons at events, and several managers described how, for their staff, sharing lessons at events such as learning weeks provides recognition and incentives. Many of the managers whom IEG interviewed recognized the importance of informal exchanges as opportunities to transfer tacit knowledge in World Bank culture and that staff often sought such opportunities instead of their units’ explicit knowledge sharing approaches. All 22 senior knowledge and learning professionals who responded to an IEG questionnaire acknowledged the importance of informal exchanges and tacit knowledge. Responding to the question, “In your experience, what sources of knowledge do staff consult to design and implement their projects?” most replied “peers” or “professional and personal networks.”

Yet the World Bank has not optimized the transfer of tacit knowledge. Knowledge exchanges need not rely on random factors—they can be facilitated and replicated and follow specific models and methods. Many units facilitate the unpacking of tacit knowledge through events, platforms, workshops, learning weeks, communities of practice, and other people-focused approaches, but they do so with uneven attention to instructional design. Managers in GP global units explained that they lack knowledge on the most effective approaches to designing knowledge exchanges, have little professional knowledge and learning support for this, and receive no corporate guidance on how to best organize these exchanges. Most World Bank knowledge sharing processes support internal knowledge sharing rather than sharing with external partners and clients and transfer codified knowledge rather than packaging and transferring tacit knowledge. These knowledge management and learning functions are defined by established knowledge management competencies, but the units apply these unevenly. In practice, knowledge and learning professionals support staff learning, content management, and communications—publishing or supporting newsletters, blogs, and briefing notes and event planning (figure 3.2). These can be helpful support functions. However, knowledge and learning staff are rarely involved in supporting knowledge inputs to the World Bank’s standard lending cycle or communities of practice and other occasions to unpack tacit knowledge, although with exceptions, such as in the Health, Nutrition, and Population GP.

Figure 3.2. Processes That Knowledge and Learning Professionals Support

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Figure 3.2. Processes That Knowledge and Learning Professionals Support

Source: Electronic questionnaire of 22 knowledge and learning staff.

Note: n.a. = not applicable.

The absence of systematic mechanisms for exchanging knowledge hindered the World Bank’s mobilization of new or existing knowledge. TTL interviews suggested that the absence of such mechanisms limited the integration of new or existing knowledge into projects during preparation and implementation. One TTL cited an instance where Zambia’s government asked for Kenya’s and other countries’ experience in labor-based road works. The staff member was unaware of such experiences but later, when acting for the manager, discovered that a colleague’s aide-mémoire contained it. The example illustrates the lack of systematic knowledge sharing mechanisms even within units. The cases found that teams typically documented the major explicit knowledge inputs they used during the design but not the trust-funded studies and informal client learning engagements they used during the implementation, making such knowledge hard to reuse or build on. This is because the World Bank’s operational filing system focuses on tracking operations’ milestones, implementation challenges, disbursements, and safeguard compliance, and not their knowledge inputs and learning. Conversely, IEG’s Mid-Term Review of the gender action plan found that when gender specialists acted as knowledge brokers, it enhanced the Regions’ and GPs’ uptake of gender knowledge (World Bank 2021). This example shows the value of brokering tacit knowledge.

The World Bank appears to underuse some types of knowledge exchange. Many country teams do not appear to regularly exchange knowledge to enhance staff’s learning about countries’ context, political economy, and implementation environment. There may be room to expand exchanges between knowledge producers in central units and regional staff, clients, and other intended users. Staff have few opportunities to share knowledge about mistakes and failures.

Some business units have developed more systematic knowledge sharing approaches. Three examples that focused on sharing of technical knowledge stood out during IEG’s analysis: (i) the Africa Gender Innovation Lab has refined its approach to translating analytics into operations; (ii) the Water GP continues its long-running focus on brokering and systematizing tacit knowledge; and (iii) the Social, Urban, Rural, and Resilience leadership team cultivated an ecosystem centered on sharing tacit, experiential knowledge, although leadership changes and the COVID-19 pandemic have since reduced the GP’s knowledge sharing efforts. The presence of leadership who championed knowledge and incentivized knowledge sharing was a common element in these three examples (box 3.2).

The World Bank’s few knowledge and learning staff are embedded in units and mostly without the remit to work across the organization. This is according to IEG’s electronic questionnaire of knowledge and learning staff and a light skills mapping. On the basis of a count of staff with “knowledge,” “learning,” or “knowledge management” in their business title, IEG estimates that the World Bank has about 102 professional-grade knowledge and learning staff in operational and corporate units—excluding Information Technology, Human Resources, and IEG—of which half are lower-level analysts or associates. This is a tiny fraction of the World Bank’s more than 10,000 staff. Most of these knowledge and learning staff are mapped to technical units where they respond to the unit’s internal needs with limited line of sight to the World Bank–wide knowledge management needs and policies. Only one Vertical—Prosperity—pools its knowledge and learning staff at the vice presidential unit level, and some corporate knowledge and learning staff may work across. IEG could not identify a single knowledge and learning staff member who managed, connected, or disseminated knowledge streams across the institution or beyond. As such, these staff members could not contribute to breaking sectoral knowledge silos or recommend and implement knowledge-enabling tools and processes across the organization, let alone with clients and partners.