The Bank should continue to work with its global partners to develop shared understanding and information about the role and nature of GRPPs in the new aid architecture, from the inception and establishment of new programs through their independent evaluation and impact assessment.
Original Response: Partially Agreed. Management will continue to work with global partners to develop a shared understanding of the role of GRPPs, in line with the Paris and Accra agendas. Management notes that this work will not translate into a specific product such as an over-arching global partnership strategy, but rather complement and inform planned work on GRPP selectivity and improving links to country-level objectives (see below).
Management update noted. No further comments.
Progress on implementing the Management Framework for World Bank Partnership programs and FIFs has continued in FY15 (refer to MAR Recommendation 70, 71 and 72). The Bank also established in FY15 the Consultative Group on Operational Policies (CGOP). The CGOP serves as a platform for dialogue on the design of future partnership arrangements that contributes to an effective use of the multi-bilateral ODA-channel and that allows for (i) a reduction of transaction costs; (ii) a continuation of the robust fiduciary standards built during the past decade of rapid trust fund growth; and (iii) for maximizing the leverage of the additional resources trust funds can bring to sustainable development. It provides a platform for a structured dialogue between the World Bank Group and development partners on common operational challenges in the management of trust funds and partnerships. Issues discussed last year included the new policy on Trust Fund Cost Recovery (refer to recommendation 67), ongoing directions in trust fund reforms, and results and reporting. Moving forward, Management will present to the Board in FY16 a paper on External Funds, including Trust Funds and global partnerships, to take stock of all the reforms implemented since 2013, the evolving global landscape of development finance, and share the Banks vision for their contribution to meeting the Banks twin goals.
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.
So far, Management has focused primarily on the Bank's own systems for strategic engagement, oversight, and management of the GRPPs in which the Bank is involved. As far as IEG is aware, there has not been much, if any,follow-up to the international workshop on "Improving Institutional Engagement in Global Program Partnerships: Policies and Practices" that was sponsored by UNICEF, WHO, and the World Bank and held in February 2010 just outside Geneva.
Management has made substantial progress in working withglobal partners, as well as internal stakeholders,to develop a shared understanding of the role of GRPPs, including those supported by Financial Intermediary Funds (FIFs). AManagement Framework forWorld Bank Partnership programs and FIFs has been prepared, was circulated for OVP review on May 17 andis scheduled to be presented to the Board on July 9. The Framework benefited from extensive consultations, internally and externally.It aims to provide the basis for more consistent decision-making regarding the Bank's participation in global and regional PPs supported by FIFs, Trust Funds, and external grants (DGF), by: (a) Providing principles for engagement in new and ongoing PPs, including FIFs; (b) Strengthening the Bank's oversight of its own engagement and filling gaps in current practice, through the introduction of a life cycle approach that addresses new and ongoing PPs/FIFs; and (c) Introducing an approach to assessing and managing risks and rewards associated with Bank engagement in PPs and FIFs, facilitating greater transparency and increasing understanding of any limits on Bank participation or accountability.
Management has made substantial progress in working with global partners, as well as internal stakeholders, to develop a shared understanding of the role of GRPPs, including those supported by Financial Intermediary Funds (FIFs). A Management Framework for World Bank Partnership programs and FIFs was presented to the Board on July 9, 2013 and significant progress was made during FY13 and FY14 in implementing the Framework in the context of the wider WBG change process. Implementation of the Framework has benefited from extensive consultations, internally and externally. Specifically, a web-based Partnerships toolkit for staff has been developed and detailed staff guidance notes on FIFs have been prepared for roll out in FY15.