World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for the Poor Connection Speed:    : World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for the Poor : 10/30/2003 : 53    : English / : World :  Human Development     : Shantayanan  Devarajan Ritva Reinikka | Related Material | Recommendations |Related B-SPAN Videos |    Services such as health, education, water, sanitation, and electricity are essential for human development. Yet, in many developing countries, the poor have only limited access to these services. The World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR) 2004 addressed why this breakdown in service delivery occurs. It also cited examples of where services do work and how these examples may be used as models for improving access, quantity, and quality of services elsewhere. The launch of the WDR 2004 featured presentations by two members of the team responsible for the report, Shanta Devarajan, Director of the WDR 2004 team and Chief Economist for the World Bank’s Human Development Network and Ritva Reinikka, Co-Director of the report and Research Manager in the World Bank’s Development Economics Research Group. The event was moderated by Mamphela Ramphele, the World Bank’s Managing Director, who noted the important role of service delivery in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). She also stressed the urgency of addressing these issue in order to reach the MDGs by 2015. Devarajan described a number of key findings from the report. He noted that public service delivery can be profoundly political. In this context policymakers play an important role ensuring that doctors, teachers, and other service providors are accountable. Devarajan noted that policymakers are often unable to monitor the groups responsible for service delivery due to remoteness and isolation of communities. He stated that in such cases, it is especially important for the clients of services to be able to participate in the monitoring process. He also highlighted the importance of information and transparency for service delivery improvements. He then cited the example of Uganda, where only 13 cents of every dollar allotted for primary schools actually made it to the schools. However, once this information became public via newspapers, citizen action and monitoring improved the figure to 80 cents of every dollar. Afterward, Reinikka described how the WDR 2004 may affect World Bank operations and research activities. She noted that for several years there has been a growing realization that service delivery issues must be addressed. However, until now there was no consensus on how to go about addressing these issues. Reinikka noted that the WDR 2004 conceptualized how these initiatives fit together and provided a framework for identifying appropriate tools to help countries focus on improving service delivery. She noted that this framework is being applied to various World Bank programs including country assistance strategies, public expenditure reviews, and poverty strategies. On the research front, the WDR 2004 serves as a stepping stone for a larger research agenda. She noted that research is already taking place in the World Bank’s public sector, social development, and human development departments. She then described how the WDR 2004 consultation process with multiple stakeholders from around the world played a vital part in shaping the final version of the publication.  RELATED MATERIALS   World Development Report 2004 RELATED B-SPAN EVENTS Human Development (150)