The Bank should not formally engage in new GRPPs that do not have well-articulated governance arrangements, theory of change, monitoring and evaluation framework, and resource mobilization strategy at the outset
Original Response: Partially Agreed. Management agrees that all partnerships should have well-articulated monitoring and evaluation frameworks and appropriate governance arrangements at the outset. These issues are currently being addressed in the Partnership Review Note (PRN) prepared for new GRPPs and that process will be strengthened in line with the partnership management framework noted above (see response to Recommendation 2). Management does not agree that resource mobilization strategies should be required for every partnership. Instead, the requirement would depend on the nature of the partnership. We agree resource mobilization strategies should be required at the outset where financial exit While Management recognizes the intent behind the recommendation, it does not agree with the requirement for well-articulated theories of change. As international priorities and the aid architecture evolve, partnerships will need to retain need some degree of flexibility to evolve in response. Requiring elaborate ex-ante plans is impractical given the number of actors involved in many partnerships and may actually undermine one of the objectives behind partnerships: timely response to global challenges. Instead, Management will explore how partnerships might implement regular internal reviews, linked to results frameworks, to achieve the underlying objective. from the partnership is an end objective, as is the case of the DGF. Explicit resource mobilization strategies are less appropriate in other cases. Some partnerships may be created to respond to a very specific issue and should sunset when the objective has been met, or be mainstreamed into other existing funds. Resource mobilization requirements would also need to be considered in the context of subsidiarity principles, increasing fragmentation of the aid architecture, and competition for resources.
Management had originally agreed that "all partnerships should have well-articulated monitoring and evaluation frameworks and appropriate governance arrangements at the outset". Reviewing the evidence cited in Management's MAR update and provided subsequently, IEG takes note that:
-DFI carries out quality review of all new trust fund proposals
-a sample of new FIFs and MDTFs have reasonable results frameworks in place at entry
-processes ensure that all major FIFs have articulated governance arrangements.
See the response to recommendations 66 and 70 on the Management Framework for Partnership Programs and FIFs. The Bank continues to work towards greater internal governance around resource mobilization. In FY15, Management endorsed a Strategic Resource Mobilization Framework and embarked upon the first Strategic Fundraising Plan exercise, which aims to integrate external resource mobilization into the corporate business planning cycle (W process). The DFI VPU has also been working on the design of internal governance around early stage fundraising, has established an ADM framework for Trust Funds (Bank Procedure for the Approval of Trustee Level Trust Funds) and revised the cost recovery framework for Trust Funds.
Additional Information:
The Bank Guidance on Initiation of Financial Intermediary Funds approved in 2015 explicitly requests that Managements review of new FIFs includes a discussion on the governance structure, which is to be described in detail in the Concept Note.
In terms of results, the Trust Fund Handbook requires teams to prepare a strong results oriented design at the TFP stage, noting that in the case of large programmatic funds, the results framework described in the TFP would be of a more general nature, with a more detailed one to be endorsed by the Program governance structure after program establishment. All 40 partnership programs approved in FY15 did have clear results framework, a feature that is systematically reviewed by DFi as part of the clearance process for Trust Fund Proposals (see, as an illustration, the results frameworks for the following programs: the multi-donor trust fund for the Extractives Global Programmatic Support, the Africa Transport Policy Program, the Jobs Umbrella MDTF, the Indonesia Infrastructure Finance Development TF, the Results in Education for All Children, the Early Learning Partnership, and the Kenya Devolution Partnership facility).
Management's actions in response to IEG's evaluation are a work in progress. IEG agrees with Management's ratings as indicative of where more work is currently being done those areas rated 'substantial as opposed to medium. IEG reserves judgment on the outcomes of this work, such as the preparation of the new Partnership Program Management Framework (PPMF) and the revision the DGF eligibility criteria, until these are completed and start to be implemented by the Network and Regional VPUs responsible for partnership programs and by the programs themselves. Overall, IEG is pleased to see that Management is doing a substantial amount of work on implementing its policy agenda to promote effective partnership arrangements in comparison with the previous 23 years.
IEG also interprets these ratings against what Management agreed in the cases where Management did not fully agree with IEG's recommendations. For example, IEG recommended that the Bank should develop a formal policy on engaging with GRPPs a recommendation with which the majority of EDs who commented on the recommendation agreed. IEG hopes that the preparation of the Partnership Program Management Framework will end up being the first step towards a formal policy. IEG remains doubtful that the Bank's accountability for governance, management, and results of the GRPPs in which it is involved will be sufficiently accepted and exercised Bank-wide in a decentralized Bank in the absence of a formal policy, like, for example, OP/BP 14.40 on trust funds. IEG sees a particular and pressing need for a formal policy on hosting the management units (secretariats) of GRPPs in the Bank in order to address the existing confusions regarding their status.
IEG agrees that systems, databases, and business processes for engaging with GRPPs should be linked to the ongoing work on Trust Fund and DGF reforms. There should be one reliable Bank-wide system for tracking GRPPs and the sources of funds that finance their activities. However, trust funds and DGF grants are not programs in and of themselves, although they have often been labeled as such. They are dedicated sources of funds to support GRPPs and other activities agreed between the donors, the Bank, and other partners. They are like the fuel in an automobile. And like a car and its driver who steers the car towards a destination, it is the programs, their governance and their management that produce the results with the aid of the fuel provided by trust funds, DGF grants, and other resources dedicated to the programs. Partnerships are first and foremost about building relationships among the partners, and IEG found in its recent evaluation that past systems, databases, and business processes had put excessive emphasis on the funding of the programs to the relative neglect of forging strong institutional relationships among the program partners.
The essence of partnership programs, as opposed to other activities that trust funds and DGF grants support, is shared governance. IEG continues to recommend that the PPMF should focus, at least in the first instance, on partnership programs with shared governance, for the three reasons given on pages 1214 of our evaluation: (a) such programs challenge the Bank's traditional programmatic and financial accountability mechanisms; (b) the Bank is dedicating increasing amounts of senior management time to their governance; and (c) the Bank expects the programs activities to be appropriately linked to the Bank's country operational work. In addition, the Bank can reasonably expect more requirements from such programs when they are established, such as a charter or some other constitutive document which defines the partnership.
Everyone in the Bank, including IEG, is dependent on the systems and databases that Bank Management establishes to keep track of the Bank's activities, in this case GRPPs. Since Bank Management appears to have decided to include partnerships without shared governance in the Bank-wide database, IEG would ask that those partnership programs with shared governance should be readily identifiable, and extractable from the database. This involves each program answering a simple question: Is the consultative group, program council, or steering committee, etc. that has been established to oversee the program a collaborative or a consultative body Do the members of the body have shared responsibility for programmatic oversight and shared accountability for results (collaborative), or does one partner, i.e. the Bank in the case of in-house programs, simply listen to what the other partners have to say while continuing to make the major governance and management decisions and to accept accountability for results (consultative). Authority and accountability should be aligned. Each partnership should have to declare on which side of this collaborative-consultative fence it stands, so that the Bank can avoid the continuation of situations in which it has little or no authority but most of the accountability.
IEG also hope that processes will finally be put in place to ensure that TTLs provide both CFP and IEG with electronic copies of recently completed evaluations within one month of their completion, and that copies of these evaluations will be easily accessible on the Bank's intranet. IEG has recently shared its own database of recently completed evaluations of GRPPs with CFP as a foundation on which to build this system.
These are some of the things that IEG will be looking for when the new Partnership Program Management Framework is presented for Bank-wide review and to the Board.
This report, which is an assessment of the Bank's engagement in a subset of partnership programs of global and regional scope, was issued in spring 2011. The Management Response expresses appreciation for IEG's work in this area, and indicates that most of the recommendations are partially to substantially agreed. Some of IEG's recommendations contain sub-recommendations, some of which Management plans to fully adopt and some not. Hence, the actions to be taken under these recommendations in the coming years may respond more to the spirit than the letter.
Overall, Management agrees with IEG's message that stronger oversight over partnership programs is warranted, including upfront selectivity and ongoing management of both individual programs and wider portfolios. To achieve this, Management is currently preparing a Partnership Program Management Framework paper, to be discussed by the Board in H2FY12. However, Management's view of these programs is also hat they are closely related to their funding instruments and other Bank operational work. Hence, systems, databases, business process, and strategy development needs to be linked to the ongoing work on Trust Fund Reform and on the Bank's operational and strategic agendas, as opposed to freestanding approaches.
The population of GRPPs identified by IEG includes both internally and externally managed programs, and they are supported by Trust Funds, Financial Intermediary Funds, and the Bank's Development Grant Facility. Intensive work has been carried out on all three types of funding instruments in recent years. The DGF Reform process has resulted in a more dynamic portfolio in line with DGF's intended catalytic role, with exits of longstanding recipients. IEG has recommended revisiting the DGF criteria (the one recommendation to which Management fully agreed), and Management will raise this topic with the DGF Council. The next phase of DGF reform is focusing on better results frameworks for programs receiving DGF grants. A FIF Framework paper is currently under preparation by Management, and FIFs provide the largest volume of funding to the GRPP portfolio. Finally, the Board is regularly briefed on the Trust Fund Reform process, which is also increasingly focused on mainstreaming trust funds into Bank operations and on efforts to improve results and reporting.
The forthcoming new Partnership Program Management Framework will build on this work by creating guidelines for program-level aspects of GRPPs and other similar programs. These guidelines will cover selectivity criteria, the applicability of Bank policies and procedures, managing partnership structures (including secretariats), providing appropriate Terms of Reference for Bank staff involved in governing bodies, and promoting global-country linkages. While much of this work pertains to internal Bank procedures, external partners are also being consulted to prepare this Framework.
IEG agrees with the "life-cycle approach" to the Bank's engagement with Partnership Programs, but questions whether it is appropriate to apply the two-stage approval process to all the programs on CFP's list of 186 programs distributed to the Board in July 2012. Thirty of these are single-donor trust funds and little more than a bilateral arrangement between the Bank and single donor. A previous attempt to introduce a two-stage approval process in 2005 forPartnership Programs failed in part because it was being applied to simple partnerships without shared governance. There should alsobe greater recognition of periodic independent evaluations as important steps in the life-cycle of each program. IEG agrees with the PP andFIF Framework paper (para. 31 on page 19) that more work needs to be done on results frameworks. A good results framework is only one aspect on a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system. Otheraspects include (a) clear and coherent objectives and strategies, (b) measurable indicators that meet the monitoring and reporting needs of program governance and management, (c) systematic and regular processes for collecting and managing data, and (d) feedback loops from ME to decision-making.
As part of the forthcoming Management Framework on Partnership Programs and Financial Intermediary Funds (July 2013), the Bank will implement a "lifecycle approach" to Partnership Programs funded by trust funds, FIFs, and the DGF. Upstream selectivity is a specific focus of that approach, in line with the forthcoming WBG Strategy, and all new programs will have to go through a Concept Review at the design stage, as well as a final Bank approvalof terms agreed with partners, for both program arrangements (through constitutive and other program documents) and funding mechanisms (as is done currently through the Trust Fundand DGF processes).Work continues with OPCS on results frameworks at the program level, in line with progress made on results frameworks for DGF-funded programs and for trust funded activities.
IEG agrees with the "life-cycle approach" to the Bank's engagement with Partnership Programs, but continues to question the strength and appropriateness of governance arrangements and ME arrangements of many Partnership Programs, including newly approved ones.
See the response to recommendations 66 and 83 on the Management Framework for Partnership Programs and FIFs. Management has acknowledged the importance of strategic resource mobilization through a strategic dialogue with development partners. To this end, strategic DP consultations have been held with the Netherlands (Sept. 2013) and with Norway(May 2014), to ensure a WBG-wide and comprehensive review of the tools and best opportunities available to strengten a DPs partnership with the WBG. The first experiences with these consultations have been positive, and management plans to hold several more in FY15.