Global Initiative for Public Administration Reform (GIPAR)

Public employment and compensation || Leadership, management, and worker motivation || Government structures and systems || Human Resource Management || Government policymaking and coordination

Objectives

The Global Inititiative on Public Administration Reform (GIPAR) is the World Bank’s program of analytical and operational engagments, and global partnerships, on public administration reform. Public administration matters for the delivery of services, the provision of infrastructure, and the effectiveness of regulations. Public administrations also have an impact on fiscal sustainability and the competitiveness of the overall labor market given that the public sector is a large employer. Public administration reform entails:

• Improving the government policymaking process through stronger coordination across organizations and the development of a whole-of-government approach;
• Increasing the capacity of the government’s internal machinery of organizations and personnel through reforms of government structures and systems for designing and implementing policies; and improving leadership and personnel management practices that influence the ability, motivation, and accountability of public sector workers;
• Ensuring that public sector employment and compensation incentivizes performance, is fiscally sustainable and does not distort the overall labor market.  

Activities

GIPAR aims to provide analytical and thought leadership to advance public administration reforms through:

Improving global and country-specific data

The data and analytics arm of GIPAR is the Bureaucracy Lab. The Lab, which is a partnership between the Governance Global Practice and the Development Impact Evaluation Department (DIME), has significantly advanced the evidence base for public administration reform through:

• Global datasets: The Worldwide Bureaucracy Indicators (WWBI), produced by the Lab, is the most comprehensive global dataset on public sector employment and wages, and is being continuously updated; and the Global survey of public servants is an initiative to measure a set of personnel management practices in governments cross-nationally.
• Country-specific diagnostic instruments: Analysis of micro-payroll data to inform wage bill management and public sector compensation reforms; and institutional capability assessments through representative public employee surveys that measure a variety of aspects of personnel management and worker motivation.

Improving knowledge on priority reforms

Sharing new knowledge and experience on public administration reforms is a critical activity to build capacity and strengthen reform efforts. GIPAR supports the development of EFI publications (Insights, Notes, and Results) as well as policy guidance notes, good practice examples, toolkits and blogs on priority topics, drawing on the latest academic evidence, Bureaucracy Lab data, and country examples.

Operational engagements on data-informed reform

GIPAR supports a growing number of public administration reform projects, both lending and technical assistance, as well as supporting operational work within sectors such as health, education, water and agriculture which focus on:

• Improving center of government coordination and implementation mechanisms;
• Better alignment of government structures and resources to needs using functional reviews;
• Improving payroll management and data informed HRM, particularly though GovTech;
• Improving leadership, organizational and human resource managament, competency-based recruitment, training, and staff engagement to increase government capacity and improve service delivery.

Partnerships

Leveraging the World Bank’s convening power, GIPAR mobilizes Global Partners, including from country governments, development partners, private sector, academia and civil society, to develop a broad constituency to support reform. Partners contribute to strengthening the evidence-base and knowledge on public administration reform, through, for example, co-hosting and participating in Public Administration Reform Forums; sharing knowledge and experience through learning events and publications; and supporting the development of global public goods and/or country-level assessments, technical assistance and public administration reform projects.

For more information on GIPAR, please contact Zahid Hasnain and Donna Andrews, at zhasnain@orldbank.org and dandrews1@worldbank.org.