• Core Courses
• Electives

Governance & Anticorruption: An Introduction* (Fall 2004)
SEE MATERIALS

Governance and Anticorruption: An Introduction (Fall 2004) is designed for Bank staff who have to assess and tackle real-life problems on governance and corruption in their assistance strategies and country programs, and aims to equip them with a set of relevant and useful tools. It will explore ways of understanding the local environment and its implications for governance and present various methods for analyzing and assessing the severity and type of corruption, the quality and transparency of decision-making, and the nature of accountability mechanisms. It will also introduce different mechanisms through which civil society efforts can be harnessed to help improve policy making and policy implementation processes and, as a consequence, help combat corruption.

Introduction to Survey Methodologies: Application to the World Bank’s Governance Work (Spring 2005)

This course is designed for Bank staff who use or plan to use survey-based information gathering procedures in their governance work. It will: (1) provide an overview of survey work done in the area of governance in different parts of the Bank; (2) discuss challenges to different information collection methodologies in different countries; (3) identify core elements of the survey process; and (4) address some of the issues of multi-lingual and multi-country surveys. The course will include panel and topic presentations, practical exercises (including a group exercise in survey design), and will discuss some of the recent developments in the survey field and their implications for Bank work in developing countries.

Core Course on Judicial Reform (Spring 2005)
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Co-sponsored by the Legal Department, this two-day course will cover court and case management, IT, performance indicators, project supervision, and the other issues that arise in preparing and managing a judicial reform project. Various types of analytical work required either for project preparation or to advance the country dialogue will also be addressed.

PREM-OPCFM Budget Management & Financial Accountability Course (Fall 2004)
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This learning activity aims to give staff a better understanding of the components of sound budget execution, as well as their inter-relationships. Past public expenditure work in the Bank has focused on analyzing sectoral allocations and more recently on institutions budget formulation. Relatively less attention has been paid to budget execution, a critical area for implementing plans and achieving program outcomes, as well as for the governance areas of accountability, transparency and anti-corruption. Bank lending programs will increasingly need to address issues of budget execution and financial accountability.

Reforming the Civil Service (Fall 2004)

This course deals with the reform and administrative modernization of the civil service. It addresses the major issues of civil service size, structure, performance and pay. What is the ‘right’ size for a country’s civil service? It will outline objectives and achievements of changes to civil service structure such as arms length service delivery agencies and administrative decentralization. The course explores what pay level can motivate civil servants and yet be affordable. It discusses new findings on the drivers of civil service performance. effective statutes and various experiences in implementing the different laws.

Public Expenditure Analysis & Management (Fall 2004)
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Public Expenditure Analysis and Management is relevant for understanding the links between policies, budgets and development outcomes. The course covers a range of public expenditure-related topics, spaning policy and management. Public expenditure policy covers issues of the aggregate level, financing and sustainability of public spending, as well as analysis of public expenditure policy in terms of the efficiency and equity impact of spending in selected sectors. The three level framework for assessing the quality of expenditure management through diagnostic analysis of budget formulation, budget execution and systems of accountability for public expenditure is explored. Recent PERs are used to illustrate good practice in analysis as well as building government support for implementation of budget reforms. On the final day, participants are formed into multi-disciplinary PER teams with each group given an assignment to prepare a PER concept paper to be presented to/critiqued by an expert panel.

Decentralization and Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations (Spring 2005)
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This course highlights the crosscutting nature of decentralization by offering modules focused on macro, sectoral and governance issues. The course begins with an overview of global experience and a framework for decentralization, examining the fiscal, political and administrative aspects of decentralization, expenditure and revenue assignment, and the
design of intergovernmental transfers. In addition to the traditional public finance approach, sessions also draw on sectoral applications, as well as operational experience to explore the impact of institutional and accountability arrangements on reducing poverty and strengthening economic performance.

Practical Issues of Tax Policy Administration in Developing Countries (Spring 2005)
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This learning activity builds on previous Bank work on tax policy and tax administration in developing countries. It addresses key issues in tax reform, such as: (1) Tax reformers facing pressures to keep the tax system simple. (2) When does a VAT work efficiently in a developing country. How can the conflict between broadening the tax base of VAT and reducing regressive elements of the tax be solved? (3) How should a tax system respond to the situation of special sectors of the economy, such as agriculture and small businesses? (4) How should administrative reforms complement a tax policy reform? and (5) What are the key trends in tax administration reform?

ELECTIVES

Workshop on MTEFs (Fall 2004)
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This session on country experiences and practical lessons in developing and implementing Medium- Term Expenditure Frameworks. Some 45 countries are in some stage of implementing MTEFs. To date, there are few success cases that can be clearly identified and many more that have fallen by the side of the reform road. From all of these experiences, lessons are emerging on better means of implementing these reforms, as well as some prerequisites before MTEF’s should be considered. The workshop aims to draw out these lessons, and provide practical guidance in thinking through sequencing issues, developing, and implementing budget management reforms.

Making Government Accountable by Making it Transparent (Spring 2005)
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For government to be accountable, citizens must know what their government is doing and how it is doing it. This course will provide an overview of the principal laws that ensure governments conduct their business transparently: Freedom of information, asset and
income disclosure, libel, and campaign finance. The course will review the key provisions required for effective statutes and various experiences in implementing the different laws.