Better Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing for Development Results

Better Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing for Development Results

Remarks at the International Roundtable

John B. Taylor

Under Secretary for International Affairs

United States Treasury

World Bank

Washington, DC

June 5, 2002

Good evening. Thank you, Jim Wolfensohn, for the kind introduction. It is a pleasure to be here tonight to say a few words about the very important work you all are doing at this conference on measuring the results of development assistance.

Measuring results is a very important priority for Secretary O’Neill at all the multilateral development banks. In fact, it goes beyond the development banks. Measuring results is a very high priority for the entire Bush Administration. President Bush is insisting that we measure results in all government programs, domestic as well as international. For Secretary O’Neill, measurement of results encompasses all aspects of Treasury’s mission, from closing our books, to worker safety, to combating terrorist financing. So I want you to know how vital your work is to us. We appreciate the effort the World Bank and its shareholders are putting into this endeavor.

By measuring results we can focus our efforts on what really matters: helping poor people around the world escape from poverty and lead better lives. The approach helps us cut through bureaucratic layers, ignore non-essentials, and concentrate on development problems that must be solved. It is a way to maximize the benefits of our funds.

We talked a lot about measuring results on the recent trip of Secretary O’Neill and Bono to Africa. The first time I met Bono I gave him one of my textbooks on economics. Economics, of course, is all about maximizing the benefits one can achieve with limited resources. When Bono boarded the plane to Africa, he told me he had read my book. And after spending some time with him, I knew he did read it. Like the rest of us, he has a sense of curiosity that showed how much reducing poverty and helping the poor meant to him. It means a lot to me too. And it means a lot to Secretary O’Neill. That is why we care about measuring results.

How should you go about measuring results of development assistance in practice? I would like to use an example of what I have in mind. The example is from Nemat Shafik, the World Bank’s Vice President for Vice-President for Private Sector Development, Infrastructure and Guarantees.

There is a local NGO in Bangladesh called the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, or BRAC. BRAC wanted to teach mothers in remote rural areas how to administer oral rehydration salts to children suffering from diarrhea. Absent such therapy, children frequently die from diarrhea.

BRAC worked with instructors who taught mothers how to administer the oral rehydration salts. Like us, the people at BRAC were interested in measuring results. They could have simply based the measurements on the number of mothers that the instructors taught. But they went further than this. They went directly to see of the mothers learned the technique. Instead of paying the instructors for every household they visited, BRAC actually went to the households to see whether the mothers that the instructors taught were administering the oral rehydration treatments properly. The instructors were paid according to whether or not the mothers they taught were actually able to perform the action. The result was more mothers being able to give the medicine and fewer children dying from diarrhea.

I think this example illustrates how a focus on results has to permeate every level of what the World Bank and others do in development. If we focus on these very simple measures, we can really get to the heart of the matter. I like to compare it to monetary policy, where you have a single target of inflation and you craft policy on the basis of achieving that result. Sometimes you may have two objectives (growth/low inflation) that may conflict; then there has to be a weighting to come up with a single performance measure. But if we can hone in our focus on simple areas – the areas that really matter to the living standards of poor people around the world – we can do a lot for development.

Measuring results is a key part of our contribution to IDA-13. As you may know, President Bush has proposed an increase of 18 percent in our contribution to the IDA-13 replenishment. A portion of this increase is based on measurable results in the second and third years, $100 million and $200 million, respectively. This is very important to us. Based on what our very capable team at Treasury working on IDA-13 has told me, it is also an increasingly integral component of the World Bank’s own work. We welcome that. We would also encourage other donors to come on board and consider attaching a portion of their contributions to the outcomes that have been identified. Now I know a large part of it is just getting the system up and running – after all, it is very difficult to ask for much after only one year. I think a lot has already been accomplished. I hope others will build on this approach and support through their contribution to IDA-13.

I understand that you are also working on measurements of policy performance at this conference. Policy performance is a key component of the Millennium Challenge Account, President Bush’s proposal to dramatically increase U.S. bilateral assistance to the poorest countries based on quantitative and qualitative measures of policy performance. At every stop on our trip to Africa, people asked about this new initiative.

I had the chance to talk to mid-career, public servants and other students at the University of Ghana a little bit about the program. Essentially, there are three policy components: ruling justly, investing in people, and promoting economic freedom. We are now working on a set of criteria based on these ideas and we are looking closely at which countries, for example, have reduced barriers to trade and provide education for their people.

Let me conclude by saying how very much I appreciate being here and having the opportunity to talk to you about this initiative. Joanne Salop has been doing great work and I thank her and her staff for taking this on. I am certain it will be an effort that will help increase the effectiveness of our work. Thank you.