GAC Measures in Sector Operations – Experience in South Asia Region Presentation By Tahseen Sayed, Operations Adviser, Bangladesh

South Asian context Post-independence well organized bureaucracy: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan Over the decades: Increasingly weak governance Increasingly poor performance and weakening of public institutions Rising corruption Rising politicization of public sector Increased citizen dissatisfaction leading to rising NGO and private sector

Political variations in region Political systems are mixed ranging from: Federal and unitary structures Stable democracy Periods of military rule Quasi democratic Several countries undergoing period of political instability impacting on reforms

Are system-wide reforms necessary or can GAC be ring fenced? Can sub-national governments adopt reforms changing the service structures in the absence of larger national reforms? Can a sector operate in isolation of other sectors? Can sector-specific reforms be instituted? Can GAC measures succeed in a sector without systemic reforms?

Bangladesh and Pakistan experience Local Governance Community Driven Development Sector Governance

Bangladesh experience: Local Governance Project Bangladesh Expanding direct and discretionary resources to the Union Councils, the lowest tire of local government. The project now covers the entire country. Each year after undergoing external audit process, the Union Councils with clean audit findings receive expanded block grants directly. The Councils have greater discretion in deciding their spending priorities and held accountable for service delivery. The Councils plan, finance and manage priority schemes and adopt ‘open budget’ meetings.

Ring fenced CDD approach – can it be scaled up? Mobilized village level groups and build participatory mechanisms for community control, and consensus building Provided access to resources to finance sub- projects The Bangladesh CDD project has participatory M&E where village levels groups monitor their own performance DFGG measures – third party monitoring

Result based program in Pakistan Education Sector Broad Systemic Reforms: Fiscal/Fiduciary  New teacher recruitment policies  using criteria for new infrastructure  school management committees  Anchored in cross sector reforms: fiscal, fiduciary and decentralization Data, MIS and Implementation Systems  Use of data for decision making, needs identification  Periodic third party validation Performance and need based conditional grants

GAC Challenge in Education Key management issues: i) distant from point of service delivery; ii) quality and capacity of managers Major structural reforms in education management tier have not happened though some efforts made through decentralization Teacher issues: recruitment procedures; re-certification system; accountability; and absenteeism (25% India; 17% Bangladesh; 18% Sri Lanka and Pakistan) Who hires teachers: central, state, local governments; school committees Bangladesh: Management of secondary schools by NGOs/private (only 4% are public); 90% of teachers’ salaries provided to SMCs

How ambitious can we be? Fundamental public administration reforms/civil service reforms require change across government But headway can be made within a sector Key to measure results and evaluate impact