Governance and Anticorruption Strategy: moving forward
12 February 2007
Consultation period closed on January 26. Management to update the current draft in preparation for a March 20 Board of Directors meeting.
The consultation process
The consultation process closed on Jan. 26. Apparently over 3200 people participated through both face-to-face meetings and the online system. The Board of Directors praised Management for the successful consultation process, in spite of lingering civil society concerns about the timeliness of notification, posting of feedback and guarantees of its incorporation.
Moving forward
Management presented the Board of Executive Directors with the consultation feedback on January 30. Management will incorporate feedback into another draft of the strategy by March 1. The 3/1 draft will be discussed by the Board of Directors on 3/20. The updated strategy will then go to the Board of Directors during the Spring Meetings.
Apparently each ED received a big binder with printouts of all of the meeting summaries. Managing Director Juan Jose Daboub presented key findings with a powerpoint presentation (available on the Bank’s website: http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/comments/governancefeedback/).
Suggested directions
Managing Director Juan Jose Daboub suggested the following priorities moving forward:
- Staying engaged in poorly governed countries. Intensify support to country teams to find creative ways of transferring resources to reach the poor. Use country dialogue to work with government and other stakeholders to develop a GAC reform agenda. Address GAC concerns in a systematic and disciplined manner upstream in the CAS process, to ensure consistent treatment.
- Engaging broadly and mitigating fiduciary risk. Scale up engagement with domestic stakeholders in ways that help to strengthen country systems and mitigate fiduciary risk. Take steps to ensure closer collaboration between Bank and IFC on the private sector GAC agenda.
- Monitoring and harmonizing. Intensify support for country monitoring and evaluation. Promote in-country harmonization on GAC agenda among donors, to be discussed in all CASs. Convene a global GAC conference jointly with other donors.
Related initiatives:
- The Bank's Disclosure Policy will undergo review in 2007.
- The Department of Institutional Integrity (INT), the institution's internal corruption and fradu watchdog, will undergo an external review led by Paul Volcker in 2007.
Resources