Jim Kim is trying to keep the World Bank honest.
That’s why the World Bank president this week said he’s launching a new website that allows the public to track the development institution’s daily progress on a range of key priorities.
“It’s a way to keep people, and fundamentally myself, honest,” Mr. Kim said.
The effort is part of the president’s broader strategy to restructure the bank to ensure the seven-decade-old institution doesn’t fade into irrelevancy in an age of expanding emerging-market wealth, private financing and international consultancies. Mr. Kim’s development institution now has to vie for attention with competitors such as the new infrastructure bank created by the major emerging-market economies Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa.
His strategy: become a more nimble, efficient organization that gets more development bang for the buck. The new “Delivery Unit” website aims to monitor that progress and hold the bank more accountable, not only to its government clients, but also to the poor people it’s supposed to be serving.
Mr Kim’s new “Delivery Unit” has a strong dose of consultancy jargon. It’s not the first time the bank has tried to keep itself accountable. And it remains to be seen whether it will help the bank meet its goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.
But ideally, Mr. Kim says, greater public oversight of his strategic goals and of the bank’s projects should ramp up pressure to deliver.
Nicolas Mombrial, head of the Washington office of Oxfam International, a global poverty-fighting nonprofit, is hopeful. “It’s a good thing for accountability,” he said. Still, he has some reservations and wants to see how the site evolves before passing judgment: “It’s always hard to see if it’s just a PR exercise or it will really change things.”
Mr. Kim said he’s “not setting goals for cosmetic purposes.” For example, he says the data already show the bank isn’t moving fast enough to reduce red tape slowing project financing, a major criticism of the bank for years. Also, he says the bank’s lagging on fueling greater access to financial services around the globe, an accelerant for economic growth.
Melanie Walker, who came from the Gates Foundation to head the monitoring project, said, “We invite our stakeholders to help hold us accountable.” The bank can then “adapt and iterate as we learn.”
Accountability is only as good as the data that’s provided, however. For example, while the bank aims to map 100% of its investment projects by 2015, it’s not yet able to provide an easy-to-follow paper trail for how loan money is spent down to the local contractor.
Mr. Mombrial says his biggest concern is that targets might tempt bank staff to sacrifice quality for quantity and speed. He points to World Bank projects in Honduras that the bank’s watchdog censured for backing a company accused of violence against farmers. Mr. Kim and Ms. Walker say the bank won’t cede quality.
Still, bank-watchers see great potential in the site.
Alan Gelb, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and former director of development policy at the World Bank, says geotagging projects will not only help ensure greater global and local oversight of projects, but track whether World Bank cash is heading to problem areas.
Mr. Mombrial also applauds a feature on the site that allows feedback from the public. He said the bank has previously focused largely on feedback from client governments, but not allowed adequate evaluations from the people that bank projects are designed to help.