An Evaluation of the World Bank's Trust Fund Portfolio

CHAPTER 4MANAGEMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITYproposals responding to published criteria and organizes a process toselect the ones to receive funding. This method has four weaknesses.a. Not anchored in good practice. The Bank has not established astandard approach for proposal review and selection. Rather,the process and rules are individually designed for each trustfund, largely on the basis of donors’ preferences. The Bank hasnot established criteria or standards for efficiency,transparency, or quality assurance of these selection processesand there has been little effort to assess and learn fromexperience of what works well and less well. 15b. Inefficient and nontransparent selection procedures. Theapplication process for most such funds is inefficient becauseit typically entails many iterations—for example, conceptpaper preparation and review; application; review; resubmission;approval by a Bank committee; and, in somecases, submission to the donor’s capital. Randomly selectedtask team leaders for FY10 Bank-Netherlands PartnershipProgramme grants, for instance, said the process took aboutone year from initial concept to grant approval, which theycharacterized as “arduous” and “extremely long.” It is alsonontransparent and frustrating, since task team leaders maynot attend the review meetings and do not receive commentsdirectly from technical reviewers.c. Weak quality assurance. In most cases the selection processinvolves a committee of senior network and regional staff.Because these staff may serve on several selection committeesand do not have time to research each proposal, it can bedifficult to ensure a high-quality, objective review process.Those involved with the program advocate for particularactivities, while those who are supposed to exerciseindependent judgment do not have enough information to doso in a meaningful way.d. Impairs accountability. The call for proposals process dilutesthe Bank’s accountability at three levels:4.14 Country: Even though the relevant country management unitis supposed to sign off on individual proposals, it cannot manage—indeed, it may not even be aware of—the aggregate resources andobligations that emerge from the various trust funds’ separateselection processes. Since proposals are approved unpredictably andat various times throughout the year, they cannot readily be factoredinto any annual planning exercise.4.15 Network: For the large CFP-managed trust funds, CFP staffmay independently assess proposals’ conformity with donor criteria.In some cases this results in their overriding even the outcomes ofnetwork-managed processes approved at the vice-presidential level. 1654