Given so much to do, and so few resources to do it, which reform interventions seem most promising in the present institutional environment of Bangladesh's public sector organizations?

To assess this, the impact of each potential reform intervention was checked on officials' perception of corruption. For example, if work / performance standards were documented, how much would change officials' perception of pervasive corruption?

The following figure summarizes the elements of institutional environment that have statistically significant effect on officials' perception of the degree to which corruption prevents the agency from achieving its mission.

Notes: (1) Only the statistically significant results are included in this figure. The pay offs are in terms of the percentage increase in numbers of staff reporting performance improvements in consequence of improvements in the institutional environment

The regression analysis suggests that first and foremost the institutional challenge is one of protecting the bureaucracy from politics. This figure shows that when officials who believe that politicians from outside the organization stop interfering in day-to-day decisions, the perception of corruption will fall by almost one-third (31%). Similarly, reduced interference by politicians from inside the organization and senior officials, and practices to ensure that recruitment to Class I jobs is merit-based will reduce the perception of pervasive corruption.

Politicization is fundamental to explaining poor performance. Reducing politically motivated interventions from external political actors would have the single largest impact, with reduction in the political interference from senior officials a close second. Consistent with the message of "Government that Works", delegation and a reduction in the micro-management provided by senior officials would also have a significant impact. The regression suggests that a further approach to insulating the bureaucracy, merit-based recruitment for Class I staff, would also have a significant impact on performance.