The objective of this activity is to implement a perceptions survey to examine the attitudes and perceptions of the various stakeholder groups towards OBA and GPOBA activities, and how these influence their readiness to adopt OBA approaches in their projects and programs.  The specific objectives of the survey are to:

• explore what our stakeholders perceive as the benefits of, facilitating factors, and barriers to adopting OBA in infrastructure and social service sectors in low-income countries;
• obtain feedback from our stakeholders on how well GPOBA is fulfilling its mandate to i) test and verify OBA standards in mature sectors through subsidy funding; ii) provide technical assistance for OBA schemes and OBA facilities; iii) act as a center of expertise on OBA through dissemination of best practices, knowledge and learning, communications, and monitoring and evaluation;
• ascertain what factors are critically important for motivating stakeholders’ intentions or readiness to adopt OBA approaches, in order to identify the key focus areas for GPOBA’s communication efforts and outreach; and
• Identify and recommend specific actions that can be taken by GPOBA to promote the adoption of OBA approaches.

The success of this activity will be measured by i) level of participation in the qualitative survey; ii) level of participation in the quantitative survey; and most importantly, iii) quality of the feedback collected in both components and degree to which it is used to inform GPOBA’s strategy and communications activities for FY11.
 

Both phases of this activity - 1) qualitative focus group discussion to explore themes about client/stakeholder perceptions relating to OBA and GPOBA, focusing in particular on TTLs of output-based aid projects in the World Bank Group and 2) cross-sectional (snapshot) survey designed to investigate how perceptions influence readiness to adopt OBA - have been completed.

The remaining deliverables are scheduled to be completed as follows:

• Analyze results   04/18/2010
• First draft of report   04/25/2010
• Final report   05/02/2010
• Presentation to donors and partners at PCM 05/11/2010

N/A

GPOBA is being requested to fund the entire activity, which is a core activity in line with GPOBA’s strategic objective of increasing the adoption of OBA approaches by donors, IFIs and developing countries.

Cathy Russell