The use of impact evaluat ...

This evaluation assesses the effectiveness of the World Bank Group in helping its member countries improve their investment climates, within the context of the World Bank Group's overall mission of poverty reduction and sustainable development.

This report addresses IEG's work over the last year, summarizing findings from its evaluations and discussing the trends that are revealed as they relate to the World Bank Group's work. IEG sees that a sharper focus on results and learning from experience are essential.

The effectiveness and efficiency of a country's public sector is vital to the success of development activities, including those the World Bank supports. Sound financial management, an efficient civil service and administrative policy, efficient and fair collection of taxes, and transparent operations that are relatively free of corruption all contribute to good delivery of public services. The Bank has devoted an increasing share of its lending and advisory support to the reform of central governments, so it is important to understand what is working, what needs improvement, and what is missing. IEG has examined lending and other kinds of Bank support in 1999-2006 for public sector reform in four areas: public financial management, administrative and civil service, revenue administration, and anticorruption and transparency. Although a majority of countries that borrowed to support public sector reform experienced improved performance in some dimensions, there were shortcomings in important areas and in overall coordination. . The frequency of improvement was higher among IBRD borrowers than among IDA borrowers. . Performance usually improved for public financial management, tax administration, and transparency, but did not usually with respect to civil service.

This review provides an independent assessment of the World Bank Group's performance in achieving key development objectives, with a special focus on support for environmentally sustainable development consistent with economic growth and poverty reduction.

This evaluation assesses the effectiveness of the World Bank Group in helping its member countries improve their investment climates, within the context of the World Bank Group's overall mission of poverty reduction and sustainable development.

Development patterns, increasing population pressure, and the demand for better livelihoods in many parts of the globe all contribute to a steadily deepening global water crisis. As stresses on the quality and availability of water have increased, donors have begun to move toward more comprehensive

The '2005 Annual Report on Operation Evaluation' examines the use of information by World Bank managers to improve development results and enhance the effectiveness of the Bank at the country level. It suggests that greater attention is needed to measure and manage development results at the country level. This will require strengthening countries' performance measurement capacity. The Bank is making progress in strengthening the results focus of its monitoring and evaluation, but more attention is needed to improve performance measurement and tracking progress.

The need to promote increased trade, prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, and ensure adequate water resources are some of the development challenges generating interest in increased regional and sub-regional cooperation. This evaluation seeks to provide guidance on when it is desirable for the Bank to support activities on a regional level, and assesses the effectiveness of both regional programs and the Banks role in supporting them. It comes at a time of increasing interest in regional development programs, supported by recent theoretical work on regional public goods and regional trading arrangements, and calls from groups in the international development community for the Bank to provide more support for multi-country programs (both global and regional).

This evaluation represents the first independent evaluation of the PSIA experience. It assesses the effect PSIAs have had on country policies and on Bank operations as well as their contribution to country capacity for policy analysis.