Qualified candidates, please send CV and cover letter to Dean Thompson at dthompson@worldbank.org by Friday, January 28, 2011. Note - this position would be supported by a part time research assistant who would be based in Washington, D.C. However, the desired candidate need not be DC based.

Draft Scope of Study on Institutional Arrangements of

Countries Offering Their Development Experiences Elsewhere

Background

The World Bank is developing its support for South-South knowledge exchanges.  More and more developing countries have an interest to share their development successes while others are looking for opportunities to learn from relevant development experience elsewhere.  South-South exchanges allow emerging countries to be active providers of development assistance, rather than mere recipients.  Examples of countries with an interest to share their experience include Brazil, China, Colombia, Indonesia and South Africa.  This interest to share coincides with a desire to learn directly from others' development successes.  Many developing countries are seeking out peer-to-peer practitioner exchanges as an effective means of building local capacity and know-how, leading to country-driven development results.  The World Bank in turn is seeing an increasing demand from its client countries to help them implement effective SSKEs.  As a global development institution that offers financing, knowledge and convening services across 120 countries, the Bank is well placed to provide much greater support for SSKE.  The Bank’s new Knowledge Strategy recognizes the importance of strengthening the Bank’s role as global connector of knowledge. 

WBI has started a number of initiatives to provide a better support framework for SSKE across the World Bank.  To start capturing the broader opportunities presented by the SSKE agenda, WBI has been given the mandate to lead development of a better support framework for SSKE across the Bank.   Accordingly, WBI has created a dedicated unit for Knowledge Exchange (WBIKE), with a strong focus on South-to-South practitioner exchanges.  The unit has been developing a range of support services to equip the Bank’s frontline teams with the tools and instruments that are required to play a more effective connector role, including (1) development of a knowledge portal for South-South Knowledge Exchange, which will contain examples of what works and does not work in the area of practitioner exchanges as well as templates and guidance notes to help teams with a results-oriented design for such exchanges; (2) implementation of the South-South Experience Exchange Trust Fund (SEETF), which is being redesigned to allow grants to fund activities that support on-going Bank engagements in a country, also in response to demands from MICs (and not just IDA-eligible countries); and (3) developing a Bank-wide SSKE brokering mechanism to facilitate mainstreaming of SSKE initiatives among the Bank’s country support services, and to help match offers of SSKE supply with demand for such exchanges by countries in need.

These initiatives require development of case material for World Bank client countries and Bank operational staff on the institutional arrangements put in place by countries offering their development experience elsewhere.  Interviews with World Bank  country teams on the brokering pilot strongly suggest that country clients will be interested not only in ways to market supply offers and demand requests, but also in how to build suitable institutional arrangements to supply knowledge to other countries.

Scope of Study

WBIKE seeks to commission a study that provides an inventory of key approaches, institutional arrangements, and external support mechanisms that countries use to organize and offer country knowledge elsewhere, with a view to providing guidance and good practices applicable in diverse country environments to client countries that may consider approaches and arrangements for offering country knowledge more systematically.

Key areas of such a study include:

• Selection of 6-8 countries that would be object of this study, involving a range of countries from those just starting out to set-up arrangements for external knowledge supply (eg …), to those at more advanced stages of organizing for knowledge supply (eg Brazil, China, …).
• Developing short case studies of the selected countries on their institutional arrangements for offering development knowledge to other countries, covering the following aspects:
  • Motivations for offering development experiences to other countries and their impact on chosen institutional arrangements;
  • Criteria for selecting certain country knowledge areas for offer elsewhere, including considerations of “comparative advantage” or “quality” of supply offers;
  • Methods used by countries to measure the success/relevance of their development experiences offered to other countries and the suitability for application/replicability of such experiences elsewhere;
  • Criteria for selecting possible target countries for supply of country knowledge;
  • Centralized or decentralized nature of organizing for external knowledge supply, including the role of regional/local governments and municipalities;
  • Organizational arrangements and staffing;
  • Financial arrangements, including funding of the chosen institutional set-up and of the actual delivery of knowledge in other countries;
  • M & E arrangements to measure impact and success of knowledge supply; and
  • Use of external multilateral and bilateral support (capacity building and financing) for development of institutional capacity, as well as design and delivery of actual knowledge exchanges.
  • Though potentially difficult to do given limited resources and the novelty of the field, research cases should attempt to identify what constitutes “high quality” institutional support for effective provision of knowledge exchanges, and associated best practices.  If possible, the research should also highlight aspects that have not worked well.
  • Development of a typology of 3-4 institutional arrangements for offering development experiences, ranging from basic institutional support to more advanced institutional arrangements.

Research methods:

• The study is largely based on desk research of available information on country institutional arrangements for knowledge supply.  Sources would include ..
• Such desk research is to be complemented with interviews of relevant World Bank staff with familiarity of the selected country cases;
• [Where necessary, the study may involve interviews with officials of the countries involved which would involve travel to those countries]

Deliverables:

• Master Study/Working Paper, with overview of main findings and lessons, attaching separate country case studies and typology of institutional arrangements.
• “Web” ready material on country case studies and typology for potential use by client countries and practitioners.