The acronym PFM stands for Public Financial Management: But what does public financial management really mean? Matt Andrews, Marco Cangiano, Neil Cole, Paolo de Renzio, Philipp Krause, and Renaud Seligmann have published a new paper on demystifying the concept of public financial management (PFM), drawing on their experiences as specialists in different contexts and with…Continue Reading This is PFM
Common Core Math: when the how undermines the what
written by Salimah Samji Without the how, the what remains fiction — often compelling fiction. Development is littered with examples of projects/reforms that have failed because no one systematically thought through how the project/reform would actually be implemented given the local capacity and context. The common assumption is that if you design a technically sound…Continue Reading Common Core Math: when the how undermines the what
Helping REAL Capacity Emerge in Rwanda using PDIA
written by Matt Andrews What do you do if your government has been pursuing reforms for years, with apparent success, but your economy is still not growing? What do you do if the constraint seems to be the limited capacity of government organizations? What do you do if this capacity remains stubbornly low even after…Continue Reading Helping REAL Capacity Emerge in Rwanda using PDIA
Putting indicators to work in local governance reform
written by Michael Woolcock “What gets measured is what gets done.” It’s perhaps the most over-cited cliché in management circles, but on a good day an array of thoughtfully crafted indicators can indeed usefully guide decision-making (whether to raise/lower interest rates), help track progress towards agreed-upon objectives (to improve child nutrition), and serve to hold…Continue Reading Putting indicators to work in local governance reform
BSC video 28: Problem-driven sequencing
Most problems in the public sector are wicked hard and need to be deconstructed before they can be solved. In this video, Matt Andrews, builds upon the maternal mortality example and the ishikawa diagram to illustrate how you can sequence a reform in a contextually sensitive way, by involving the stakeholders to create a strategy…Continue Reading BSC video 28: Problem-driven sequencing
Getting Real about Governance and Governance Indicators
written by Matt Andrews Many have asked me how I personally think about governance and assess governance when I visit countries. I have a new working paper that presents my thoughts on this. These thoughts manifest in what I call an ends-means approach to looking at governance. I focus on ends as a starting point…Continue Reading Getting Real about Governance and Governance Indicators
The Chief Minister Posed Questions We Couldn’t Answer
Guest post written by Jeffrey Hammer I was recently at a conference in Lahore, Pakistan sponsored by the International Growth Centre where the keynote address was given by Shahbaz Sharif, the Chief Minister of the province of Punjab, Pakistan (100+ million people). While fun to see old friends and colleagues, the conference was a little depressing in…Continue Reading The Chief Minister Posed Questions We Couldn’t Answer
You cannot Juggle without the Struggle: How the USA historically avoided the “Tyranny of Experts”
written by Lant Pritchett The period between the end of the American Civil War and the end of World War II saw a transformation of America with the rise of dominant large organizations in both the private economy and public life. The economic historian Alfred Chandler’s in The Visible Hand and Scale and Scope documents…Continue Reading You cannot Juggle without the Struggle: How the USA historically avoided the “Tyranny of Experts”
PMRDF: an Innovative State Capability Experiment in India
written by Salimah Samji. Anyone who has ever worked in India knows how hard it is to implement programs. The sheer size of the country makes it impossible for anyone but the government, who is the only one with infrastructure and reach, to provide public services to its citizens. Currently, every district administers typically 100+…Continue Reading PMRDF: an Innovative State Capability Experiment in India
PDIA and Obamacare
written by Matt Andrews Governments often face unenviable tasks that border on the impossible, given particularly thorny political and administrative complexities. Commentators typically deride governments when they fail in their initial attempts to address such tasks. They pen new laws that are less than many had hoped for, and call public agencies inefficient (or worse)…Continue Reading PDIA and Obamacare