The World Bank Organizational Environment for Promoting CDD

3.1.3 The World Bank Organizational Environment for Promoting CDD

56. The World Bank CDD program was developed through the joint effort of four sector networks: social development, human, development, poverty reduction and economic management, and infrastructure. 73 This cross-sectoral partnership, along with the strong endorsement by the then World Bank President, James Wolfensohn, 74 laid the foundation for the CDD program in the latter half of the 1990s. Since then, several features of the World Bank organizational environment have been important in allowing a rapid expansion of its CDD initiatives.

57. Organizational Structure. Having been reorganized as a matrix structure with staff mapped both to thematic sectors/networks and regions and with a strong emphasis on cross-sector collaboration in setting up project task teams, it has been easy to support CDD initiatives (which, as noted, are

predominantly multisectoral) in the World Bank. 75 Its decentralization to client countries has also increased its ability to undertake CDD programs. 76

58. Human Resources. There are more than 140 social development staff at the World Bank spread across different regional departments, and several CDD projects are now being undertaken by rural and public sector governance specialists as well. The organization has a CDD “anchor” housed in the Social Development Department of the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Network vice- presidency. The role of the anchor is to provide technical support and continuously update the knowledge and learning tools related to CDD for operational staff. It also maintains an up-to-date website and online help desk for wider dissemination of CDD principles and experience. This includes several case studies of CDD projects, thematic papers on the link of CDD to different focus areas (such as post-conflict and disability) and, recently, reports on proposed and ongoing rigorous impact evaluations of various CDD projects across different regions.

59. The World Bank Institute (WBI). The WBI, the capacity-building arm of the World Bank, has also been an important enabling feature for the use and spread of the CDD approach. The learning program on Community Empowerment and Social Inclusion (CESI) of the WBI hosts a learning tool library of resources related to CDD and regularly undertakes capacity-building programs for DMC

governments, civil society, and community representatives on CDD methods in several DMCs, 77 as well as training workshops for World Bank staff. Recently, the WBI CESI program also developed and piloted

73 Davis (2002). 74 The CDD approach also encompasses many features of the Comprehensive Development Framework proposed by President

Wolfensohn to be the underlying architecture of World Bank operations. 75 However, coordination problems continue to exist as revealed in the staff survey done by the World Bank OED (2005)

evaluation. More than a third (36%) of staff interviewed were dissatisfied with the coordination across sectors within the World Bank on CBD/CDD projects. See Annex H.

76 World Bank OED (2005). Approximately 3,000 of the 10,000 staff now live and work in client countries. Considering that of the 10,000 only about 60% work on operations, almost half the operational staff of the World Bank are now in

decentralized country offices. 77 An example is the “Developing Capacity to Scale-up CDD in Africa” program that has trained more than 900 participants—

from government ministers to community representatives—representing 35 African countries in 14 activities in 2003–2005.

a “capacity enhancement needs assessment” methodology to measure the capacity of communities to take on CDD/CBD operations; the methodology can be used as a diagnostic tool in future operations. 78

60. New Lending Instruments. As noted earlier, the World Bank has also enabled the proliferation of CDD operations by introducing new lending instruments (APLs and LILs), which are more flexible and allow for greater experimentation and adaptation to local requirements.

61. Strategic Thinking in Support of CDD. While little has been done to change formal operational policies to support CDD interventions in the World Bank, there is growing strategic thinking that supports

a greater use of the approach. This includes the social development strategy for the World Bank, the recently developed local development framework, the empowerment sourcebook, the decentralization sourcebook, the rural development strategy, and the governance strategy. The World Bank’s policy on fiduciary management for CDD projects currently leaves decisions about what communities are required to do in terms of fiduciary requirements, to the CDD project’s appraisal team, which gives some flexibility to task managers in developing simple and realistic requirements at the ground level.