GAC Measures in Sector Operations – Experience in South Asia Region

1. GAC Measures in Sector Operations – Experience in South Asia Region Presentation By Tahseen Sayed, Operations Adviser, Bangladesh

2. South Asian context • Post-independence well organized bureaucracy: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan Over the decades: • Increasingly weak governance • Increasingly poor performance and weakening of public institutions • Rising corruption • Rising politicization of public sector • Increased citizen dissatisfaction leading to rising NGO and private sector

3. Political variations in region Political systems are mixed ranging from: • Federal and unitary structures • Stable democracy • Periods of military rule • Quasi democratic Several countries undergoing period of political instability impacting on reforms

4. Are system-wide reforms necessary or can GAC be ring fenced? • Can sub-national governments adopt reforms changing the service structures in the absence of larger national reforms? • Can a sector operate in isolation of other sectors? Can sector-specific reforms be instituted? • Can GAC measures succeed in a sector without systemic reforms?

5. Bangladesh and Pakistan experience Local Governance Community Driven Development Sector Governance

6. Bangladesh experience: Local Governance Project Bangladesh • Expanding direct and discretionary resources to the Union Councils, the lowest tire of local government. The project now covers the entire country. • Each year after undergoing external audit process, the Union Councils with clean audit findings receive expanded block grants directly. • The Councils have greater discretion in deciding their spending priorities and held accountable for service delivery. • The Councils plan, finance and manage priority schemes and adopt ‘open budget’ meetings.

7. Ring fenced CDD approach – can it be scaled up? • Mobilized village level groups and build participatory mechanisms for community control, and consensus building • Provided access to resources to finance sub-projects • The Bangladesh CDD project has participatory M&E where village levels groups monitor their own performance • DFGG measures – third party monitoring

8. Result based program in Pakistan Education Sector • Broad Systemic Reforms: Fiscal/Fiduciary • New teacher recruitment policies • using criteria for new infrastructure • school management committees • Anchored in cross sector reforms: fiscal, fiduciary and decentralization • Data, MIS and Implementation Systems • Use of data for decision making, needs identification • Periodic third party validation • Performance and need based conditional grants

9. GAC Challenge in Education • Key management issues: i) distant from point of service delivery; ii) quality and capacity of managers • Major structural reforms in education management tier have not happened though some efforts made through decentralization • Teacher issues: recruitment procedures; re-certification system; accountability; and absenteeism (25% India; 17% Bangladesh; 18% Sri Lanka and Pakistan) • Who hires teachers: central, state, local governments; school committees • Bangladesh: Management of secondary schools by NGOs/private (only 4% are public); 90% of teachers’ salaries provided to SMCs

10. How ambitious can we be? • Fundamental public administration reforms/civil service reforms require change across government • But headway can be made within a sector • Key to measure results and evaluate impact