Where should procurement fit into new World Bank 'global practices?'

The operational procurement team at the World Bank is joining the bank’s governance “global practice” as a part of internal reorganizations. As Devex reported in December, the team — which is responsible for generally overseeing roughly $26 billion worth of goods and services that the bank’s loans buy around the world every year — will be beefed up with groups of technical experts in financial management team and other areas of public sector management. READ:Can the World Bank’s ‘global practices’ meet country needs? Proponents of the move say that it will better align the procurement team with those institution-strengthening counterparts as the Washington, D.C.-based institution moves to improve client-country procurement systems and do more of its procurement through those local institutions. It also jives with a lot of thinking that procurement reforms are an important entry point for more general governance and service delivery reforms. But the move to governance could isolate the procurement team from other technical areas. At a procurement conference hosted on Wednesday by the World Bank, Jeffrey Gutman, former vice president for operations policy and country service, explained that while he understands the “intellectual logic” of the move, it’s unclear if the change will help or hinder the team in its interactions with the other technical offices. “I think we learned the hard way, that (procuring) pharmaceuticals is different than textbooks which is different than roads, which is different than IT, and that we need to have an effective engagement within those global practices as to how procurement relates to what they are trying to do, and the reorganization has placed the body of your network of people in one spot,” he said. READ: Is the World Bank too focused on project approval? In a recent paper for the Brookings Institution, Gutman argued that in order to make procurement processes more focused on the development outcomes that are their ultimate goal — rather than just strict compliance with procurement rules — it is essential to involve sector specialists. Therefore, he noted on Wednesday, the procurement team needs to be able to “branch out” to work with those technical teams under the new organizational model. “I’m not saying re-re-organize,” he said. “But I do think we need to find a way to integrate into the global practices on the technical side to be able to truly design appropriate solutions for those technical sectors, and that is going to be of critical importance not just to the transactions that we do, but to how we work with the countries themselves.” Read more development aid news online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive top international development headlines from the world’s leading donors, news sources and opinion leaders — emailed to you FREE every business day. See more: - Where does research fit into Jim Kim’s ‘solutions bank’? - Awaiting revamp, World Bank staff holds breath - World Bank procurement team to join governance ‘global practice’