IEG
Global Partnership Programs:
Addressing the Challenge
of Evaluation
Christopher Gerrard
Global Programs Coordinator, IEG-World Bank
March 31, 2006
www.worldbank.org/ieg/gppp/
Global Partnership Programs – An
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Important & Growing Line of Business
• What are Global Partnership Programs?
• Why are they growing?
• How important have they become?
– The World Bank is involved in about 110 global
programs and 40 regional programs, which together
spent around $3 billion in FY05
• What do we know about them?
– UNDP, Office of Development Studies (1999, 2003, 2006)
– UN Vision Project on Global Public Policy Networks (2000)
– International Task Force on Global Public Goods (2005)
– IEG Review of the Bank’s Involvement in Global Programs
(2002, 2003, 2004)
Bilateral Donors Are the Principal
Partners at the Governance Level
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Donors participating in more than 15 programs
Canada
U.K.
U.S.A.
Netherlands
France
Norway
EU
Switzerland
Japan
Sweden
Germany
Denmark
Italy
Australia
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Number of Programs (Global & Regional)
70
Are Global Programs an Efficient
Use of Scarce ODA?
• “Letting a thousand flowers bloom” in the 1990s
provided opportunities to learn about using global
programs to address the challenges of globalization
• But selectivity and oversight have been weak
• Most have been donor-driven
• Most are advocacy/technical assistance programs
supporting national public goods – although global
public goods programs still command the major share
of expenditures
• Global-country linkages have been weak – and
incentives to foster such linkages also weak
• The bottom line: Undermanaged partnerships pose
significant reputational risks for program partners
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The Number of Global Program
Evaluations Is Increasing
• There is also growing acceptance that evaluation and
audit should be viewed as functions of the programs’
governing bodies
• But there is no agreed-upon methodology – either
substance or process
• And so different donors, including the Bank, are acting
on their own:
– The Bank’s Development Grant Facility requires
evaluations every 3-5 years
– IEG is now including global programs in its regular
evaluation and reporting practices
– The Bank’s Quality Assurance Group (QAG) has
initiated quality-at-entry reviews
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Many Evaluation Challenges Remain
• Programs vary in size, scope, duration, objectives,
activities, complexity, and number of partners
• How to apply results-based evaluation methodologies
to advocacy and technical assistance, as opposed to
investment programs?
• How to aggregate country and global-level activities?
• What do relevance, efficacy, and efficiency mean in the
context of global programs?
• What to do when programs do not have adequate
internal monitoring processes to assess results?
• How to assess the quality and effectiveness of
governance and management?
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A Common Set of Evaluation
Principles Would Be Desirable
• Similar to the OECD Principles of Corporate
Governance
• Governments are demanding accountability – if we
don’t do this together, we will continue to do it
separately
• The lack of agreed-upon principles – both substance
and process – is hampering efforts to assess
relevance, efficacy, and efficiency of programs
• And leading to over-evaluation and duplication in some
cases
• Why should the Bank – by default – define what
constitutes generally accepted principles for the
evaluation of global programs?
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A Proposal
• To establish a working group, under the auspices of the
DAC Evaluation Network
• To develop generally accepted principles for the
evaluation of global programs – both substance and
process
• A suggested membership, drawn from:
– OECD members (including the OECD secretariat)
– UN organizations
– MDBs (including World Bank)
– Foundations
– Developing countries
– Global programs (management)
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Background Slides
Why are global programs growing?
• Growing awareness of the need for collective
action to provide global public goods
– R&D on food crops and diseases of the poor
– Mitigating & adapting to global climate change
– Mitigating the spread of communicable diseases
• But also:
– Dissatisfaction with traditional aid mechanisms
– New actors, advocates, and constituencies
– New ICT technologies for facilitating networks
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Other major reviews of global
partnerships
• UNDP, Office of Development Studies: Global
Public Goods (1999), Providing Global Public
Goods (2003), and The New Public Finance
(2006)
• U.N. Vision Project on Global Public Policy
Networks (2000)
• IDS (Sussex) and Swedish Ministry for
Foreign Affairs, The Future of Development
Financing (2004)
• International Task Force on Global Public
Goods (2005)
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An important and growing
line of business for the Bank
• The World Bank is involved in about 110 global
programs and 40 regional programs, which
together spent around $3 billion in FY05
• About $1.9 billion from Bank-administered
trust funds
• About $140 million from the Development
Grant Facility (DGF) and $20 million from the
Bank’s administrative budget
• Global programs also provide supplementary
resources of about $100 million a year to the
Bank’s administrative budget
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International organizations contribute
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legitimacy and expertise
International orgs. participating in more than 6 programs
UNDP
WHO
OECD
FAO
UNEP
UNICEF
IFAD
UNESCO
ILO
UNCTAD
UNFPA
UN-Habitat
0
10
20
30
40
Number of Programs (Global & Regional)
50
Gates Foundation is bringing a
corporate perspective to evaluation
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Foundations participating in more than 3 programs
Gates
Rockefeller
Ford
Conservation
International
McArthur
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Number of Programs (Global & Regional)
There are a few large and
many small programs
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Cumulative Share of Total Expenditures
100%
80%
CGIAR
60%
GEF
40%
GFATM
20%
0%
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
60
65
70
75
Number of Programs (Global Only)
Most programs are advocacy/knowledge/technical assistance programs
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Knowledge sharing
& dissemination
Supporting national-level
policy, institutional reforms
& capacity-building
Global
advocacy
Networking and
Technical Assistance
Donor coordination
& priority setting
Implementing international
conventions, rules,
standards, & norms
Financing R&D
for new products
& technology
Financing
Investments
Financing country-level
investments to deliver
global public goods
Financing country-level
investments to deliver
national public goods
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Number of Programs (Global and Regional)
Environment and Health have largest
number of programs
Vice Presidency
ESSD
HDN
INF
WBI
In-House Secretariat
External Secretariat
Independent Legal Entity
Other
PREM
DEC
FSE
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Number of Programs (Global Only)
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What is the World Bank Doing?
Selectivity & Oversight
Strategy
Governance, Management
& Financing
Evaluation
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Strengthening selectivity & oversight
• Bank established a central unit in 2004 – the GPP
Group in the CFP Vice-Presidency – which is:
– Putting in place new business processes for
global and regional programs.
– Refining and overseeing the application of
Bank-wide criteria for selectivity and oversight
– Assisting thematic Networks and geographical
Regions in program design, financing, and
progress reporting
– Clarifying roles, responsibilities, and
accountabilities of Bank staff serving on global
program boards
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Focusing on key strategic issues
• Proactively managing the proliferation of
theme-driven advocacy/knowledge programs
• Forging better linkages between global
programs and developing country priorities
• Seeking new sources of financing for GPG
programs – beyond ODA allocations
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Working with partners to improve
governance and management
• To strengthen shared accountability for
results at the program level
• To enhance effective representation of
developing countries on global program
boards
• To develop and implement guidelines on
conflicts of interest
• To view evaluation and audit as functions of
the governing body, not program
management
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