101587

Development Evaluation and Aid Efficiency




by
James D. Wolfensohn
President
The World Bank Group
November 6, 2002


MR. WOLFENSOHN: Well, thank you very much, Greg, and let me first off
congratulate you on assuming the leadership of this group and wish you
every possible success. I know you'll do a terrific job, and I don't
want to say it's a huge improvement on Bob Picciotto, because Bob will
think he's just come home again if I'm rude to him.

[Laughter.]

MR. WOLFENSOHN: Bob, as you know, is living a luxurious life in London
at this moment and thought he'd got rid of me, but he's back, and it's a
great pleasure to see you. I must say that, Bob, and since I was unable
to be at your farewell party, though I saw you before and had other
chances, I would just like to say publicly how deeply appreciative I was
of the work, I am of the work that you did when we were working together.

I remember our first interface. I remember the way in which you
responded and the changes you made in OED, to which you referred in your
Today article, and I think you did a terrific job, and I'm extremely
grateful to you for the contribution that you've made.

It was clearly a very lasting contribution and perhaps the most
significant contribution in the 30 years of the existence of OED.   So,
again, thank you so much.

I'm delighted to be here because the agenda for the next years is going
to be significantly about the issue of development effectiveness. It has
been raised. I see Bill Schuerch there. I think it's not unknown in the
U.S. Treasury that this is a subject that might require some attention.

But it's also, Bob, not unknown here, I would like you to know. And our
board and indeed our management is deeply concerned with this issue, and
I think we're in a very good position to move forward on it, because the
activities of OED have given us a very base on which we could move from
the assessment of projects, the evaluation of them, to implementation in
various ways of the results that we found.

OED has come a long way from being something that was just historic in
terms of its observations to be something that is active in terms of the
way it influences current activities, and we've gone a long way in terms
of bridging the gaps towards assessment, even without, as Bob Picciotto
has often pointed out, without an adequate database on some of the things
that we were seeking to measure.

But we are now moving to a new area, an area of evaluation which is not
just against our own projects and our own expectations of those projects,
but against a new dynamic of how does what we're doing relate to the
Millennium Development Goals? And that has an impact, not just on the
evaluative function, but it has a significant impact on the way we
conceive the work that we're doing.

Is our work limited to projects within the purview of the Bank, or how
does our work relate to the totality of work that is being done in the
development field? How do we look at having a more coordinated effort
between the Bank, other institutions, of the multilateral and bilateral
institutions, the regional banks, civil society and private sector for
that matter, all working within the framework that is set by government
to meet the goals that are now agreed internationally, so that if we are
having a development project in education, how do we now evaluate that
project, not just against our own immediate goals, but against the goals
of meeting a larger set of expectations that have been agreed by the
international community?

And since we'll get significantly blamed or credited with results if the
Millennial Development Goals do not occur, people will come back and say,
well, the World Bank obviously didn't do its job, even though we're only
a small part of the development paradigm.

So, as we move forward, Greg Ingram and his team have to expand what it
is you're looking at in terms of the evaluation of our own activities to
include not just the immediate focus but how it is that we play a role as
part of an integrating function in the development community, and how it
is that what we're doing fits into and assists and helps scale up the
efforts towards the Millennial Goals.

So, it's shifting ground, but a new challenge for OED in the coming
years, because the questions that are going to be asked are not just did
your project do satisfactorily, but how did you impact--since we're the
Bank, how did you impact the achievement to the Millennial Goals?

So if we're comfortable on where we've been, we have a new set of
challenges for where we're going, and I'm sure Greg and all of you
involved will be able to assist us.

So, again, I want to thank you for the effort in the past. Say that I
think we've obviously made tremendous progress. There's been a great
integration of OED and QAG, of course, with the operations, and I wish
you good fortune as we go forward in taking on this new challenge that's
been sent to us by the Development Committee and indeed by the global
community at large.

So I look forward to hearing these presentations, and I pass it back to
you, Greg, and I'm going to sit in the audience. Thank you very much.