WASHINGTON, September 15, 2014— In an effort to track progress toward its goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity, the World Bank Group today launched a new website that allows users to check in real time whether the institution is succeeding in reaching 12 key targets, including the expansion of financial access to the poor and increasing funding for the poorest and most fragile countries.
The website, which will be updated continually, is being run by the President’s Delivery Unit, which tracks strategic priorities for the institution.
“We need to make sure we’re getting delivery right with a much more rigorous and systematic focus on how we’re performing in the field and inside our organization,” said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. “This delivery unit will help us internally to make sure we’re on track, and will also allow the people we serve to follow us more closely and make sure we are delivering on our promises.”
In October 2013, Kim called for the creation of a delivery unit in a speech to representatives of the Bank Group’s 188 member countries, saying he wanted to focus on the organization’s performance and to share data and lessons within the institution and with the rest of the world.
The President’s Delivery Unit (PDU), which started work last December, now has built a site that allows users to monitor performance, and it provides a forum to identify planning or implementation issues related to World Bank Group priorities. The site incorporates voices and inputs from partners across all of the Bank Group’s business units and teams.
The PDU website’s initial 12 targets include issues involving climate change, business performance, and energy, among many subjects. It will complement other results measurement systems in the Bank, including the Bank’s Corporate Scorecard and the IDA Results Measurement System. The targets are set through a collaborative process, and they must be driven by data that is collected regularly from many parts of the Bank Group.
All 12 indicators on the website are linked in some way to the twin Bank Group goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity among the bottom 40 percent of the population in developing countries. Kim will use the information inside the Bank as a way of checking whether key initiatives are succeeding.
Melanie Walker, senior advisor to the President and director of the PDU, said, “Dr. Kim has been clear that his priority is to refocus our institution around the 2030 timeframe to meet our twin goals. This effort allows us to track our progress but also adapt and iterate as we learn. Through this tracking tool, we invite our stakeholders to help hold us accountable.”
