Background Paper No. 5
                       Country Governance Advisors in the South Asia Region:
                       Experience and Implications for Global Practices

                       Charles Undeland and Naseer Rana (SASGP)

Functions

SAR has five Governance Advisors (GAs) based in the field covering Afghanistan,
Bangladesh/Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka/Maldives. Three advisors are GHs and are
designated formally as Governance Advisors (Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan) while the other
two are technically GG level Sr. Governance Specialists. The function of Governance Advisor in
Nepal has de facto been carried out by two other Sr. Governance Specialists (one in country and
one Delhi-based).

GAs’ functions are essentially the same across countries though there is no particular unified
TOR. These functions are:

   •   Political intelligence. This involves providing up-to-date reporting on political and
       governance trends and advising teams (and mostly the CMU) on how these impact
       operations and AAA;

   •   Support for GAC in operations. Serve as a resource on institutional development issues
       (e.g. RTI, use of country systems) as well as providing cross support on risk assessment
       and mitigation. GAs are key members of country operational management teams that
       review portfolio performance, risk, and learning on GAC. In India, this role has
       explicitly included approval of Governance and Accountability Action Plans and in other
       countries involvement in the review of GAAPs (mainly Nepal and now Bangladesh). In
       individual cases, it has involved working with INT on projects.

   •   Analytical work on governance, particularly in sectors. Political economy analysis,
       institutional effectiveness assessments

   •   Engaging the client, civil society, and other DPs on governance issues.

In addition, GAs work on specific operations or AAA as part of their governance/public sector
work. This has involved TTL-ing SILs, PforRs, and AAA. This work is often interconnected
with the GA functions.

In practice the amount of time spent on these functions varies greatly depending on demands
from the CMU and to a lesser extent other sectors. A rough estimate is that the India GA spends
over half of his time on the above functions largely due to the volume of GAAPs, while the
others spend considerably less than half their time on the GA functions. There remains great but
not always fulfilled potential for richer horizontal engagement with sectors; in some instances
GAs are closely working on institutional assessments and other strategic analyses of governance

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hurdles to sector work, but this is ad hoc and largely a result of circumstances and perhaps
personalities.

               Pros of the Model                                Cons of the Model
•   Proximity to the client allows for           •   Cost (though can be mitigated by with
    addressing more proactively GAC issues,          other activities for advisors
    particularly institutional/country systems   •   Limitations in what support can be
    development                                      provided (only so much one person can do
•   Provides consistency in addressing GAC           or know; in country knowledge is important
    issues across portfolio                          whereas advisors tend to be expatriates)
•   On demand expertise available to CMUs        •   Not always valued by sector teams
    and sectors                                      (expectation that GAs simply do
•   Vehicle for transfer of GAC-relevant             ORAFs/GAAPs)
    experience/lessons learned across country    •   Lack of discrete work products can be
    teams                                            demotivating


Implications for Global Practices

There is a solid business justification for country-based governance advisors as part of the
Governance practice. The openings for working on governance in many countries require deep
country specific understanding and the ability to cultivate relationships which can only happen
with a field presence. Governance advisors have thus been able to focus on the institutional
development element of GAC which is where the center of attention should be in the new
Governance practice (though recognizing the continue role of addressing fiduciary issues). For
instance, India’s GA is working on regional performance management CoP while the Pakistan
program has developed multiple provincial governance institutional building operations and a
more nuanced approach to governance in sectors. The role that they play for amassing and
deploying knowledge on GAC issues can contribute substantially to the quality of WBG
engagement in countries, both through work in sectors and in contributing overall to improving
public sector management.

The cross-cutting potential benefits of the work, as well as the strategic importance of
governance to country engagement, have prompted cases of placing Governance Advisors in
CMUs (as was previously the case in India) or country services. This placement has tended to
make the role of GAs more as ‘enforcing’ adherence to GAC in the portfolio, with particular
attention to fraud and corruption issues. While there are merits to a country management focus,
but SAR’s experience suggests that it would be preferable to have GAs placed in a Governance
practice while retaining a close support role for CMUs.

There are no particular issues with coordination that would require an overarching structure
outside of the knowledge/experience sharing and human resource management that is planned
within the Practice. The GAs are engaged in promoting GAC conditioned by country context.

Challenges and Risks

The challenge in having the position is the elastic nature of the services provided. The time

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spent on political intelligence may be very little; in countries perceived as relatively well
performing on governance and Government concern with the issue is weak, such as Sri Lanka,
there is less of a role in working with the portfolio. For smaller country programs or where
governance is assessed as less of a priority (though this is rare and always debatable), it may be a
luxury to have a GA. Yet having a single advisor for more than a few countries would dilute the
benefits associated with the position. This issue can be mitigated if the GA function for a small
number of countries is combined with other public sector work for the individual, as has
occurred in SAR. On the other hand, when there is a crisis related to governance, the GA
functions crowd out other activities. Finding a balance in some cases may be difficult.




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