How DPMG Builds the Institutional Capacity of Development Organizations

Besides improving the performance of an active investment portfolio, DPMG evaluations can have broader and longer-term effects. Whether assessing projects before they begin, as they are being implemented, or when they have closed, the results often provide benefits that flow well beyond the individual project.

Improving Policies and Processes

Evaluations reveal how effective the organization's policies and processes are and how they might be modified to increase the impact of its investments. Here are two examples:

• More Comprehensive Accountability. The World Bank's definition of portfolio did not include recipient-executed trust funds or risk-sharing (guarantee) agreements between the Bank and private lenders that mobilize about $20 billion of resources. Therefore, these funds and operations were not being subjected to the Bank's typical quality reviews. On QAG's advice, the World Bank's senior managers redefined the portfolio, expanding the scope of the Bank’s accountability.
• Improving Risk-Based Management. Although the World Bank's task teams identified risks to projects before they started, QAG found that these risks were not being systematically monitored after the projects were approved. It also found that regions of the Bank with the lowest project success ratings sometimes had low risk ratings at entry. These findings revealed two persistent and related problems: the under-estimation of risks from the start and the failure to monitor the same risks as the projects were implemented. In response, the Bank implemented QAG's recommendations under the Investment Lending reform and shifted to a risk-based management of the portfolio.

Training Staff

DPMG trains the client's task teams in principles of project design and implementation that raise the odds of success.

In some cases, DPMG provides clients with training materials, such as case studies and practice exercises, which clients can use to conduct their own training. In other cases, DPMG's experienced staff conducts the training. For example, to help clients develop sound logic models that flow from funding to outcomes, DPMG uses increasingly complex practice exercises that clarify the logic of causal chains and train staff in the reasoning required to produce plausible project designs.

One core member of the DPMG was the Director of the World Bank's Department that trained members of governments in a range of skills. Another core member assessed the effectiveness of World Bank-financed training activities in all sectors, establishing the key conditions for effective training in the process.

Developing Quality Assurance Systems

DPMG helps clients set up and manage their own portfolio quality assurance systems, consistent with the accountability rules that their governors have established. Depending on the clients’ interests, DPMG can help clients set up processes for reviewing the quality of the designs of their projects before they enter the portfolio, for assessing the portfolio when projects are still implementing, or for evaluating closed projects against systematic performance criteria. It can also help clients set up organizational feedback loops that increase the chances that the results of quality assurance reviews get integrated into the organization's policies and procedures.

Comprehensive Assessments of Organizational Effectiveness

DPMG helps clients take stock of all aspects of their operations as these affect how well they can deliver on their mandates. It analyzes policies and practices such as the alignment of the organization’s strategic plan with its activities, its performance measurement systems, its human resource policies, its service delivery systems, the ways in which it is financed, its governance, its budgeting process, and its clients’ views about the value that the organization adds to them.