More than 80 percent of Papua New Guinea's population lives in rural areas. Most of these people depend on subsistence activities such as smallholder farming and fishing as well as alluvial mining and betel nut sales for their livelihoods.
... See More + One of the main barriers to shared growth and development in rural areas is poor quality and lack of access to information and communication technologies (ICT). In fact, access levels are some of the lowest in the world. Service delivery is extremely low due to high prices and limited investment in access networks. In mid-2007, total tele-density was just four percent countrywide and zero percent in the majority of rural areas. Private operators and aggressive competition in the mobile sector has resulted in increased coverage and access. Despite this, access is still limited in many parts of the country. The objective of the Rural Communications Project is to facilitate improved access to affordable and reliable telecommunications in rural and remote areas of Papua New Guinea. The project will provide telecommunications access to nearly 500,000 rural Papua New Guineans and facilitate broadband internet access in rural district centres that currently do not have any form of internet services.
See Less -
Monitoring technologies and pay for performance contracts are becoming popular solutions to improve public services delivery. Their track record is however mixed.
... See More + To show why this may be the case, this paper develops a principal agent model where agentsapos; motivations vary and so does the effectiveness of monitoring technologies. In such a set-up the model shows that: (i) monitoring technologies should be introduced only if agentsapos; motivations are poor; (ii) optimal pay for performance contracts are nonlinear/non-monotonic in agentsapos; motivations and monitoring effectiveness; (iii) investments aimed at improving agentsapos; motivations and monitoring quality are substitutes when agents are motivated, complements otherwise; and (iv) if the agentsapos; quot;typequot; is private information, the more and less motivated agents could be separated through a menu of pay for performance/non pay for performance contracts, such that only the less motivated choose the pay for performance ones.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS7128 DEC 01, 2014
The objective of the Fostering Productive Innovation Project for Kazakhstan is to promote high-quality, nationally relevant research and commercialization of technologies.
... See More + There are five components to the project, the first component being development of the knowledge base for innovation. The component aims at promoting high-quality, nationally relevant research and development and advanced human capital activities through the provision of Junior Researcher Group Grants, Senior Scientist Group Grants, and PhD Research and Training Grants. The second component is the innovation consortia. The objective is to promote collaboration among existing scientific research institutes and design bureaus and scientific and engineering profile laboratories in Kazakhstan (i) in respect of research and development activities for purposes of improving the productive sectors of the Borrowers economy, through the provision of Productive Sector Consortia Grants, and (ii) in respect of the delivery of social services, including improving the livelihood of the urban and rural population, through the provision of inclusive innovation consortia grants. The third component is the consolidation of the technology commercialization cycle. The objective is to complement the existing financial instruments and solutions suitable to different stages of start-up company development. The fourth component is the strengthening coordination of the national innovation system; enhancing the capacity of the existing institutional structures. Finally, the fifth component is the support project implementation. The component will support the Project Implementation Unit (PMU) in carrying out the project management, monitoring and evaluation, awareness raising activities, and capacity development.
See Less -
The World Bank conducted this study of the potential for Open Transport Data in St. Petersburg as part of the preparations for the Improvement of Urban Transport Systems Project in Russia.
... See More + It is principally intended for use by the St. Petersburg transportation authorities, the Federal Ministry of Transport and the Project Implementation Unit in considering and implementing open data as part of the new systems being developed as part of the Project. There are already good examples of transport information systems in St. Petersburg. Most of this information is not currently available for external use, but in the cases where it has been made available, for instance by the Agency 'Organizer of Transportation' for real-time bus information; this has been welcomed and well-used by citizens and authorities, despite some current limitations. Within the St. Petersburg component of Improvement of Urban Transport Systems Project there are plans for more transport information systems, including parking information, traffic management and passenger information systems. The conclusion of this report is that the social, economic and environmental benefits of the St. Petersburg project would be enhanced by the greater availability and use by travelers and others of the information collected by these planned systems. Making the information available as Open Transport Data and allowing it to be used for development of innovative third-party applications would be a relatively easy and cost-effective way of leveraging the planned investment to ensure that the information reached the largest number of travelers. Doing so will maximize the desired behavioral changes that drive the benefits and improve the overall return on investment.
See Less -
The objective of the University of Guyana (UG) Science and Technology Support Project for Guyana is to strengthen the four science and technology faculties at UG through infrastructure, research and curricular improvements while building the basis for improved facilities management and future growth.
... See More + The main changes to the project and rationale are: 1) revisions to the results matrix to complete data that was not available at Appraisal, to align it with more realistic targets, and to better reflect project activities. Specifically, the changes are: (i) introduction of baseline and targets for two PDO-level indicators; (ii) revision of targets for one PDO-level indicator; (iii) update targets for six intermediate results indicators; (iv) substitution of one intermediate results indicator with a new one that better reflects Project activities; and (v) deletion of two intermediate indicators; 2) revisions to the disbursement estimates to reflect the delays in Project effectiveness; and 3) removal of section five from the Financing Agreement to remove redundancy and increase clarity regarding the use of funds.
See Less -
In the Western and developed world, New Public Management reforms aimed to overhaul business as usual. The reforms brought the notion of performance contracts into government, assigning clear responsibility and accountability for service delivery and regulation.
... See More + New public management also initiated efforts to give greater voice to clients, particularly through the creation of citizens charters and other explicit and contestable commitments to delivery standards. Finally, new public management pushed government to focus on core services, rather than be involved in everything, from social services to mining and car manufacturing, as had been the case in many countries. New Public Management and other traditional reform tools designed for application in advanced countries were not able to answer this challenge. Large groups of citizens in emerging economies and low-income countries are still deprived of reliable public services in the areas that matter most, including access to clean water, hygiene and sanitation, health, and education. The sheer magnitude of the task of building, in a very short time, the kind of public services that took developed countries decades to create, and the lack of ideas about how best to use those facilities, have combined to sustain an intolerable situation. Then the Arab world was rocked by revolution. Led by the young and technologically savvy, people across the Middle East and North Africa rose up to demand their human rights, essential services, and democratic governance. Instantaneous access to information through the Internet helped to mobilize the masses, uniting them in their demands and facilitating their activism. Although the revolution caught the world by surprise, the use of social media as a communication and rallying tool did not. People all over the world today use social media and mobile phone technology to share news, express themselves, and fight back. Facing corrupt and sometimes brutal governments, the Internets social media outlets might be the only trusted communication link citizens have with one another and with their government. This publication includes three chapters: a new citizen government alliance; learning what makes government work in the 21st century; and solutions.
See Less -
Publication 92222 OCT 27, 2014
Bhatti, Zubair K.; Kusek, Jody Zall; Verheijen, Tony
The term quot;open dataquot; is generally understood to be data that are made available to the public free of charge, without registration or restrictive licenses, for any purpose whatsoever (including commercial purposes), in electronic, machine-readable formats that ensure data are easy to find, download and use.
... See More + National Statistics Offices (NSOs) have the potential to play a pivotal role in the implementation of open data initiatives. As producers and curators of data, the objective of making high quality data more accessible and usable is consistent with their guiding principles. NSOs indicate, in research conducted in support of this report, that one of the difficulties they encounter is that the technology they use to publish - or electronically distribute - data for public use is not compatible with open formats. They also indicate that common software packages used for open data portals do not accommodate the data formats and metadata they produce. Two key concerns related to data dissemination products are addresses: (1) Can such products designed primarily for NSOs satisfy requirements for an open data initiative?; and (2) Can such products designed primarily for open data satisfy the requirements of NSOs? Furthermore, data reuse, both by data experts and the public at large, is key to creating new opportunities and benefits from government data. The following recommendations are made to improve the overall utility of data publication platforms to NSOs and the open data community: improve technical documentation; ensure public Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and endpoints are interoperable; presentation of metadata and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) must conform to W3C standards; natural language search and metadata faceting should be standard; structural metadata and hypercube support are core NSO requirements; dashboards and visualisations are necessary for user engagement; and develop data engagement tools for improving data-quality and reuse.
See Less -
Accurate measurement of stock levels, turnover, and profitability in microenterprises in developing countries is difficult because the majority of these firms do not keep detailed records.
... See More + This paper tests the use of radio frequency identification tags as a means of objectively measuring stock levels and stock flow in small retail firms in Sri Lanka. In principle, the tags offer the potential to track stock movements accurately. The paper compares the stock counts obtained from RFID reads to physical stock counts and to survey responses. There are three main findings. First, current RFID-technology is more difficult to use, and more time-consuming to employ, than had been envisaged. Second, the technology works reasonably well for paper products, but very poorly for most products sold by microenterprises: on average only about one-quarter of the products tagged could be read and there was considerable day-to-day variation in read-efficiency. Third, a comparison of survey responses and physical stock-takes shows much higher accuracy for survey measures. As a result, the study concludes that this technology is currently unsuitable for improving stock measurement in microenterprises, except perhaps for a few products.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS7064 OCT 01, 2014
de Mel, Suresh; Herath, Dammika; McKenzie, David; Pathak, Yuvraj
This report analyzes Africaapos;s current performance in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) research, as well as future trends. In March 2014 several African governmentsapos; ministers agreed on a Joint Call for Action in Kigali to adopt a strategy that uses strategic investments in science and technology to accelerate Africa toward a developed knowledge-based society within one generation.
... See More + The World Bank and Elsevier are partnering on this report to examine the research enterprise over a decade from 2003 to 2012 of three different geographies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): West and Central Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa. The research performance of these regions is compared to that of South Africa, Malaysia, and Vietnam; the latter two countries had a comparable research base to the SSA regions at the beginning of the period of analysis. This report presents four main developments over the past decade in research in SSA: 1) sub-Saharan Africa has greatly increased both the quantity and quality of its research outputl; 2) SSA research output in STEM lags that of other subject areas significantly; 3) SSA, especially East Africa and Southern Africa, relies heavily on international collaboration and visiting faculty for their research output; and 4) research collaboration in Africa features a number of particular characteristics that are critical to understand for the design of successful policies. Following an overview, this reportapos;s introductory chapter introduces the underlying database and the main methodological approaches and concepts used in the report. The next chapter provides a broad overview of the research enterprise in the different regions and across different subject groupings by using a variety of metrics to examine the quantity, usage, and quality of research output. What types of knowledge and how much are being generated by SSA researchers? By whom and how much is that knowledge being used? Chapter 3 focuses on key aspects of research collaboration for the Africa regions. How frequently do researchers in the different regions co-author articles with international colleagues or colleagues in non-academic institutions? How impactful are those co-authored articles, and with which institutions do researchers collaborate the most? The final chapter focuses on the mobility of researchers to and from the different regions.
See Less -
The objective of the Rural Communication Project for Papua New Guinea (PNG) is to improve access to telecommunications infrastructure and services in rural and remote areas of PNG.
... See More + The purpose of this restructuring paper is to support the introduction of the following changes to the Papua New Guinea Rural Communications Project (IDA credit 4791-PG) under a level two restructuring: (1) officially transfer Project management from the Department of Communication and Information (DCI) to the National ICT Authority (NICTA); (2) reallocate Credit proceeds between category one and two to reflect additional demand for policy and regulatory advisory services; (3) redefine scope of the second Universal Access Scheme (UAS) Demonstration Project for the provision of internet; and (4) extend the project closing date for 2 years to August 31, 2017.
See Less -
The Government of Panama and the private sector recognize the importance of information and communications technology (ICT) as an enabler of national development.
... See More + This ICT sector policy note seeks to identify opportunities and challenges for growth of the ICT sector in Panama, particularly on rural access to broadband services and on cybersecurity, and potential for spillover impacts across other sectors. It provides a brief overview of the ICT sector in Panama and outlines a series of strategic actions and recommendations aimed at leveraging ICT as an engine of growth by targeting connectivity infrastructure, policies, regulation, e-Services, public data, and skills. The report is organized as follows: section one presents ICT sector in the economy. Section two deals with offer for connectivity. Section three presents demand. Section four describes the sector status from the cybersecurity point of view. Based on these analyses, section five identifies challenges that are hindering the growth of the industry, and section six presents policy options to overcome them. Finally, the World Bank describes the ways it can support those policy options in section seven and presents a set of joint activities in section eight.
See Less -
The development objective of the E-Society and Innovation for Competitiveness (EIC) Project for Armenia is to address constraints to competitive e-Society and enterprise innovation in Armenia by strengthening the underlying infrastructure and enabling environment.
... See More + The restructuring will comprise of following changes: (i) reallocation of loan proceeds in the amount of United States (U.S.) 4 million dollars from category 2(a) to category 1 of eligible expenditures as defined in the loan agreement; (ii) change of scope in component 1: national broadband sub-component (1.1) will be scaled down to a rural broadband sub-component; (iii) change of scope in component 2: removing idea generation mini grants (activity 2.1.1) adding Vanadzor technology center to sub-component 2.2 (currently just Gyumri technology center) adding grants program for Vanadzor (sub-component 2.2) seed and early stage venture fund (Activity 2.1.2): U.S. $300,000 will be reallocated from category 1 goods, works, consultants' services, training, and incremental operating costs for the project to category 2(d) sub-financing for sub-project under part B.1(b) of the project (seed and early stage venture fund) to be financed 100 percent from loan proceeds. Remove innovation brokerage activity 2.1.3 and managerial secondments sub-activity 2.3.1.ii; (iv) a 16-month extension of the project closing date along with restructuring; and (v) environmental and social risks of works to be undertaken for the rehabilitation of premises for Vanadzor technology center are modest.
See Less -