1. Managing Public Expenditure Work over Time and across Sectors
Charles Humphreys
PREM Learning Week
17 June 2002

2. Why public expenditure work?
Entry point to entire agenda of public sector reform (civil service, decentralization, service delivery, PEM, regulatory functions, security…)
Entry point for enhanced multisector organization of Bank work

3. Why integrate? Public expenditure is a government-wide issue
Intersectoral competition for allocations
Expenditure management systems (nomenclature, releases, systems, reporting, auditing)
Role of center in establishing framework for performance (measurement, evaluation, accountabilities)
Public expenditures get translated into public service (“performance”) in spending departments
Design of sector programs
Day-to-day implementation, and financial management

4. Morocco Public Expenditure Work
Problem: excessive centralization and civil service rigidity
Approach: Joint Bank/Government working groups to define institutional reforms, delinked from financial support
Outcomes: “déconcentration” starting with Health, greater civil service mobility
Lessons: Modular approach, sustained over time, need for public sector reform and sector skills, capacity to act as integrators

5. Disciplining Bank public expenditure work
Starts with CAS – definition of multisector, multiyear activities (Strategy for P

6. Principles of performance budgeting
Unified, consolidated budget
Management by (strategic) program
Use of performance indicators, monitoring and evaluation
Multi-year perspective for both budgets and indicators
Competitive allocation between sectors
Decentralized financial management
Ex-post and performance audits

7. Gödel’s trap: same principle of what we do applies to what we want to be done
Public sector reforms that the PER is supporting are themselves based on the idea that the administration works best when it finds ways to leverage ownership and knowledge in the delivery of public services.
PS reforms in Morocco: (i)decentralization of decisions to leverage local knowledge and ownership; and (ii) performance-based management to use information on impact as the key to the system

8. Participatory approaches as method to leverage knowledge
Agents
K-factors
Bank
Counterpart
Final clients (poor)
Knowledge
International experience
Reform design
Country knowledge
Procedural,juridical and administrative.
Historical
Needs priorities
Micro conditions
Skills
General diagnostic
Strategic framing
Process management
Identifying concrete problems
Economy of juridical means
Local activism: voice, vlonteer work, etc..
Common sense
Connectivity
Convocation power
Brings Discipline incentive
Better internet connections