GovEnable: Locally Co-Created Solutions to Government Service Delivery Challenges

GovEnable: Locally developed solutions to government service delivery bottlenecks.
Through GovEnable, local reformers come together across sectors to co-create tailored solutions to pivotal local public financial management challenges that impede delivery of government services. Challenges include consequential issues for citizens – challenges like bottlenecks to getting development money to where it is needed for effective delivery of health and education programs.

The World Bank helps the reformers devise solutions, provides assistance to define ways to engage stakeholders who need to be part of those solutions, and offers financial support for implementation. 

Taking Action
GovEnable design clinics run by the World Bank are the first step in catalyzing collaborative reform. The clinics bring financial management professionals together with senior officials from other affected government agencies. The education ministry is part of solving education-related issues, for example. Together they constitute a reform team.

World Bank teams with technical expertise relevant to the local challenges also participate in the clinics—but as facilitators, not as solutions providers in the traditional sense. The GovEnable program delivers training for them to take on this role which enables local stakeholders to come up with their own solutions.

GovEnable program co-creation session
It’s in the clinics that problems start to be unpacked, solutions produced, and implementation plans made. The clinics are a combination of co-creation and learn-by-doing. Reform teams apply GovEnable frameworks to a real issue in real time.  They get experience in new ways to identify, understand, and solve problems. They leave the clinics with new capabilities and empowered to solve their own challenges.

This is only the start. Critically, participants also design a process to engage other key stakeholders who are not in the room. The aim is to create working coalitions with those stakeholders and further develop the reform plan and translate it into action and results.

GovEnable consists of three elements:

  • GovBottlenecks promotes reform design which is led by local stakeholders. It involves identifying and diagnosing complex delivery challenges by breaking them down into more distinct and tractable governance bottlenecks, identifying their causes, analyzing stakeholders, and developing solutions.
  • GovFacilitate promotes collaborative reform processes. It involves experimentation, learning, and adaptation, as local reformers leverage convening power to facilitate engagement among stakeholders to work together to achieve results.
  • GovForResults promotes sectoral and governance operations, which deliver more sustainable results. It involves development partners, including World Bank teams, designing flexible operations that support reforms to address governance constraints by using and strengthening local financing systems and institutions for better service delivery.

Progress
GovEnable is gathering pace. We have run design clinics in five countries to date and also conducted training for World Bank teams to facilitate and support co-creation rather than come with pre-developed solutions.

The initiative’s country work includes locally co-created problem-solving and solutions development, which will lead to collaborative implementation by reform teams and that can be supported by World Bank operations.   

Country projects underway include:

  • Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • Kenya
  • Nigeria
  • Pakistan
  • Tunisia

We are also focused on engaging World Bank management and teams, to raise awareness across the World Bank and to help teams apply the GovEnable approach to existing projects to boost impact. Work on that front has included:

  • An initial internal training for World Bank teams to enable them to apply the GovEnable framework in their projects.
  • A suite of tools and resources for World Bank technical teams.
  • An intranet site with background, tools, and resources for World Bank teams.

An externally facing platform for GovEnable resources will be launched in early 2024. A resource pool of practitioners is being built and an Academy of GovEnablers is being formed. Most importantly, the aim will be to expand implementation of the framework to more countries.

GovEnable is a framework for making financing and institutions work for service and infrastructure delivery in sectors. It helps empower government and stakeholders to solve complex challenges in a collaborative, flexible, and sustainable way. GovEnable can be applied in a variety of development contexts, including improving public finance for service delivery in sectors such as health, education, and infrastructure; strengthening institutional performance; and promoting effective gender and climate action.
Contact Gov Enable

Get in touch if you'd like to know more about GovEnable and how to apply it in your work. And let us know if you'd like to be contacted when we launch new GovEnable tools.