The Matrix System at Work - Independent Evaluation Group - World ...

CHAPTER 2
THE STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT OF SECTOR AND COUNTRY PRIORITIES
2.38 The Bank itself has acknowledged these tensions, most recently in the 2009
CAS Retrospective, which noted that “there remain tensions between strategic
objectives of the Bank of a sectoral nature, such as support for infrastructure, gender,
and climate change, and the need to align with the country’s own vision and
priorities, which may or may not prioritize the Bank’s strategic objectives.” 28 But
instead of highlighting successful approaches for integrating corporate or sector
priorities, it went on to discuss only processes that ensure CAS alignment with the
country’s own development strategy and goals.
2.39 The challenge in preparing a CAS is to bring together a series of tasks from
many different sectors into a coherent, properly sequenced, and relevant package of
support. But the fact that sector strategies tend to be prepared independently from
each other, without buy-in from staff working in related sectors adds substantial
complexity to the process, and results in “silo-ized” strategies as one sector director
put it. For example, both the 2007 health, nutrition, and population strategy and the
2003 water supply and sanitation strategy emphasize the deep interrelation between
the two sectors. But neither strategy indicates criteria for determining when
intersectoral coordination or a multisector approach is desirable. Although the
health SSP foresaw the CAS as the instrument for coordinating intersectoral action
to improve health outcomes, this has not occurred consistently. 29
2.40 Aligning country strategies with sector strategies is further complicated by
the fact that individual SSPs can sometimes act as lobbying documents for
devoting more resources to that sector, as one sector director put it. Thus, the
aggregation of these sector strategies does not provide good guidance for defining
Bank priorities. Sector priorities emerge in country programs more often through the
direct involvement of sector staff on the country teams than as a result of the SSPs.
2.41 It is not surprising, then, that country directors adopt sector priorities into a
CAS only when it already suits the client. SSPs are usually out of date when a CAS
is being prepared; they can sometimes conflict with each other; they are relatively
vague; and they are not backed by specific goals or budget. As one sector manager
noted, the world would have been the same without the sector strategy in her sector.
2.42 Three primary factors determine whether a sector strategy will be adopted
into a CAS. First and foremost, those sector strategies perceived as reflecting more
“real” corporate priorities and initiatives than others are prime candidates; in
interviews sector and country managers are quick to distinguish among them. These
strategies feature prominently in major speeches by the Bank’s president and are
often associated with special mechanisms, such as senior management monitoring
or special budget allocations. Corporate priorities, such as environment (in
30