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Evaluating Country Programmes
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institutional development and sustainability of achievements at the country level,
subsuming them into the overall outcome rating. The transparency of explicit rating
of Bank assistance at the sectoral level varied widely, depending on the quality of
the input received from team members. In most cases, although the guidelines
issued by the task manager called for explicit ratings of Bank and Borrower’s performance,
these were not provided or were inadequately justified by the team members.
Nowadays, OED management has made it mandatory that we rate explicitly
the standard OED categories of outcome, institutional development, and sustainability
of Bank assistance, as well as Bank and Borrower performance.
Finally, although we started with the aim of measuring the efficiency (cost
related to results) of the Bank assistance programme, in practice we could not go
beyond a limited analysis of cost for a number of relevant categories and a comparison
with other country programmes.
Production timetable
The production of the approach paper took about a month during January/
February 1997. Only limited work was carried out since then until the eve of the
three-week field visit during May/June. At the end of June, a change of task manager
took place, leaving a gap in coverage of Bank assistance for private sector development
and financial sector strengthening. The subsequent eruption of the East Asia
crisis required an in-depth look at Bank assistance to at least the financial sector.
Coupled with summer vacation plans of other team members, the mobilisation of a
new consultant to produce a background piece for the CAR pushed the timetable
for completion of a first integrated draft of the CAR to January 1998. Subsequent
revisions to incorporate comments from within OED and the region pushed the production
of the final report for distribution to the Executive Board to March 2. The
report was then discussed on March 11 by the Board’s Committee on Development
Effectiveness, together with a “policy ledger”, distilling the CAR’s important recommendations
and containing formal management response on them. Finally, on
March 24 the Board discussed the CAS progress report presented by the region,
which took into account the findings and recommendations of the CAR.
Impact
To maximise the CAR impact, OED issued to all senior Bank managers a 2-page
“Country Brief” in advance of the CODE meeting (this is one of our “fast-track products”
to provide quick upward feedback to senior Bank management on OED findings).
And after the CODE meeting, OED published a 4-page “Precis”, which is also
posted on its external web site. The Overview volume with minor updates and revisions
reflecting comments subsequently received from the Central Bank is also in
the final stages of printing for public dissemination.
OECD 1999