Paper Id:- 67

Title:- ‘Managing Crisis in Information Technology’: A Business Survival

Strategy
Authors:- G. P. Sahu, Rajeev Srivastava, Omdeep Gupta

Abstract:- Information technology has become an important part of the business

world. IT is involved in communication and business processes across departments
making the uses dependant on the technology to perform their work. In this paper
the authors are focusing on how companies prepare themselves for crisis that can
affect information technology within the businesses, and what types of crisis they are
worrying about.
This paper contributes to the field of crisis management and shows that the growing
usage of information technology in businesses demands focus. Preparation and
planning is the first step in avoiding a crisis from happening.

Paper Id:- 70
Title:- E-governance through Semantic web
Authors:- Anamika Rana, Amit Prakash Singh

Abstract:- In Many countries the government organizations have a very distributed

structure. Different organizations that are organized at different levels provide
different services to the citizens. The level of a government's service is one main
factor that can affect its international competitive power. Several developing
countries are realizing the role of ICT (Information & Communication Technology)
can play in the governance sector and are putting into practice innovative e-
governance models that may be technologically simple but are drastically changing
the way information is distributed in the society. This paper depicts a model of e-
governance. The main objective is to implement e-governance in an easy and cost
effective way to suit with existing ICT infrastructure to provide better information
and service delivery of government to the people. The complexity of government-to-
constituent interactions needs to be analyzed comprehensively.

Title:- DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF NANOROBOT USING ARTIFICIAL

INTELLIGENT TECHNIQUES
Authors:- G.SUGU MARAN, R.MANI KANDAN

Abstract:- Currently robotics plays vital part in the research and development of
industrial and manufacturing processes, biomedical applications and so on. With the
growth of technology, machines are doing most of the work which are used to be
carried out by humans. The need of robots for carrying out work in future is evident.
Recent advances in nanotechnology lead to nanorobots, in present time all
researchers and scientist highly focus on good intelligent mobile nanobot which are
effectively used as nano medicine. Future medical nanotechnology has been
imagined to employ nanorobots injected into the human body to perform treatment
on a cellular level. But the problem is obstacle avoidance, optimal path planning, self
localization and speed controlling of mobile nanobot. Every nanobot placed inside
the human body will encounter immune system as obstacles during flowing within a
human body. Thus nanorobot must use strategy for avoiding and escaping from such
immune system. To avoid obstacles during movement trajectory, self organized
trajectory planning is required. This study proposes to use advanced soft computing
approach like adaptive PSO, which is motivated from the simulation of social
behavior of natural species, as a feasible approach for selforganized control of
nanoscale robots to avoid obstacle throughout the movement trajectory, and
also we find out an efficient path of the nanobot using this approach at each instant
of time, the algorithms ensure that under any circumstance, there would not be any
collision of the nanobot with any of the dynamically changing obstacles. etc. The
algorithms works on a grid of definite size with known positions of obstacles. This
grid may be formed by scanning the surroundings. We assume that the nanobot can
make a limited number of moves, restricted to moving forward a unit step or tuning
a unit direction. The soft computing tools calculate the most efficient next move.
When these algorithms were simulated, the results obtained emphasized the
following i) Travelled without collision ii) Reached the appropriate destination.The
simulation analysis has shown that self organized control over throughout the
movement can be achieved by using proposed approach. This was true even when
the nanobots placed in highly chaotic environment.

itle:- e-Governance: Issues in Implementation

Authors:- Atif Iqbal, Rajiv Bagga

Abstract:- The paper is a contribution to the ongoing debate on the. An appropriate

mechanism is being prepared for good governance particularly in the developing
countries like India with the involvement of Information Technology in the system of
the government and for the betterment of the society. It focuses on the practices
and solution for e Governance implementation and the issues related to its
implementation. It highlights the benefits and challenges of implementing e-
governance while considering factual speciality, pecularities, growing impact of
Information Technology and need of developing and developed countries

itle:- NIC E-GOVERNANCE : A TOOL FOR RESOURCE DEPLOYMENT DURING

GENERAL ELECTION 2009
Authors:- Pabitrananda Patnaik, Subhashree Pattnaik

Abstract:- National Informatics Centre, the backbone of e-Governance applications

inIndia is a leading organization of developing and implementing e-Governance
applications in the country. It has been successful in the area of Information and
Communication Technology through its competent professionals and state of the art
technology. Election, which is a tightly time bound and sensitive task needs some
tool for removing the biasedness in deploying the resources during the election. For
this purpose, Election Commission of India takes necessary measures at every stage
of election to conduct it in a free and fair manner. It needs the use of computerized
systems to make it error free and unbiased resource deployment. That’s why the
randomization techniques are used for successful execution of the work in deploying
the resources. This study focuses on how the General Election 2009 could be
successful in deploying Polling Personnel, EVMs and Micro Observers in the state of
Orissa using NIC e-Governance for conducting the simultaneous election of
Parliament and Assembly constituencies. Further, the key findings of the study is
that, e-Governance applications can be successfully implemented in all the critical
areas of administration in India .

Paper Id:- 83
Title:- Green Computing
Authors:- Sukritha S, Anup K M
Abstract:- Environment is on verge of global panic as this century belongs to the
extensive use of computers. With the increase in power consumption and the circuit
speed there is a proportional increase in the heat emission also. They contribute
more than the other greenhouse gases in global warming. In order to tackle this
issue a vision has been put forth to create a green society and economy. The
creation of ‘Green Computing Era’ where environmental friendly computer related
systems would be found which not only helps in minimizing the impact of global
warming but would also be effective and efficient.

Paper Id:- 84
Title:- Farmers Automatic Crops Selling Machine: FASAL
Authors:- Sarang Pitale

Abstract:- Today E-Governance is playing a vital role in improving the government

processes and enhancing the internal and external communications of government
by the relevant use of Information Technology and Internet. Agriculture provides the
principal means of livelihood for over 58.4% of India 's population. Most of the
people are depending upon the farming and they are illiterate also. They don’t even
know that at what amount they are selling their crops, broker’s use this lose point of
these farmers and forge both farmer and government. The proposed scheme can
solve this problem by automating the selling process of crops directly to the
government at fix rate

itle:- E WASTE MANAGEMENT - AN OBLIGATORY COMPONENT OF E-

GOVERNANCE AT THIS HOUR
Authors:- Sanghita Roy, Manigrib Bag

Abstract:- After the epoch of this millennium there was a spurt of the use of IT
infrastructure in India denoting a sort of IT revolution. Most of the industrial units
and service sector opted for the IT resources which includes the hardware, software
and data resources. Due to product explosion the hardware and software changed
the morphology, facilities etc. during the passage of time and thereby making most
of the older IT equipment or hardware as obsolete. This activity cumulatively
generated a huge pool of junk hardware which is termed as e-waste. An
environment friendly recycling methodology for the disposal of e-waste has become
a necessity now. Most of the developed nations including USA have already prepared
the framework and also guided us to a benchmark already made there. The
international conventions have created reinforcement for the same which is to be
finetuned according to the requirement perceived in India in various sectors. It is
perhaps the right time to figure out the modus operandi for the e-waste
management strategically suiting the different sectors of industries, not only to
comply with the world trend but also to maintain the environment in situ and thereby
helping the sustenance of endemic flora and fauna.

itle:- Leveraging India Post Rural Network with ICT – Lessons from
disbursement of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme Wages
through Post Offices
Authors:- Sandhya Rani K, Dr. P M Sarvanan
Abstract:- e - Governance and e Government involving the use of a range of
modern Information and Communication Technologies and reforming the governance
systems and structures offers tremendous scope for effective, efficient service
delivery and to promote democracy1. To achieve the financial inclusion agenda to
make growth sustainable, inclusive and equitable, appropriate policies, programs and
institutional structures for delivery become critical. India Post has a vast physical
presence of post offices that play an important role in the disbursement of the
National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme wages. This paper makes a case for
the urgency of enabling the post office to become a viable ‘last mile’ institutional
connectivity with appropriate ICT solutions, policy changes, for facilitating electronic
payment/transaction modes in

tPaper Id:- 95
Title:- E- GOVERNANCE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS USING RFID
Authors:- Amirthasaravanan A, Vivekanandan K

Abstract:- Educational sector is an important place where we need the proper e-

Governance and good infrastructure. A good infrastructure can be processed by
technology. However, a lot of institutions are realizing the need for bringing e-
Governance and technology from the paper-based procedures to their infrastructure
and to the classroom. And one can now find educational institutes equipped with
some of the world's best technologies like RFID to support e-Governance. Here the
RFID is incorporated along with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).SOA is
extendible, flexible and fits well with the existing legacy systems. Replacing legacy
systems and processing with new system & technology is not only costly but also
introduces risk of malfunctioning. In this context, the traditional software
architectures prove ineffective in providing the right level of cost effective and
extendible Information systems across the organization boundaries. SOA provides a
relatively cheap and more cost-effective solution addressing these problems and
challenges. And here Prototype is developed considering major use cases involved in
educational institutions. The system is taking care of maintaining attendance record,
securing restricted areas, tracking the assets and the people, Fast and secures
access in library and Tracking vehicles.

he remote corners of the country. It also emphasizes the need for changing the
business processes and ways of working of Post offices inIndia to bring in new
productivity and a higher level of efficiencies.

Paper Id:- 178

aper ID: - 4
Title:- Information Technology Implementation Prioritization in E-
governance Implementation: An Integrated Multi Criteria Decision Making
Approach
Author:- Debendra Mahalik

Abstract:- ICT revolution has changed the way business is done and e-governance
is not an exception. The computerizations of government process, if implemented in
one go may result in failure. This result in researchers and planner attention for
prioritize the components of e-governance implementation. IT implementation
prioritization is a major issue before the planner as there is no clear cut formula to
solve this problem. This paper examines different implementation issue with respect
to e-governance in a typical University education system. Two multi-criteria decision
making methods (MCDM) viz. analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for
order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) are used in the paper to
solve the IT implementation prioritization problem.

Paper ID :- 5

Paper ID:-11
Title:- Strategic use of IT in the tourism Industry: A case of
incredible India
Author:- Sancharan Roy

Abstract:- Tourism is the largest service industry in India , with a contribution of

6.23% to the national GDP and 8.78% of the total employment in India . The intense
competition in today’s business environment means that tourism and hospitality
industry have to work hard to maintain and develop their competitiveness. The
success of a business, to certain extent, depends on its ability to acquire and utilize
updated information to assist its management and marketing processes. Hence,
Information Technology (IT) assists organization to manage information dynamically
and influences business competitiveness through assisting decision makers to make
appropriate investments and decisions. Incredible India (URL:
www.incredibleindia.org ) has widely adopted IT to reduce costs, enhance
operational efficiency, and most importantly to improve service quality and customer
experience. This paper describes the website’s background, analyzes the functions
and services that are offered by the website, and evaluates the website’s
usefulness.

per Id:- 40
Title:- E-GOVERNANCE A BOOST TO INDIAN DEMOCRACY
Authors:- Preet Inder Singh, Richa Gupta

Abstract:- E-Governance is the public sector’s use of Information and

Communication Technologies (ICT) such as Internet, Local Area Networks, mobiles
etc., with the aim of improving information and service delivery, encouraging citizen
participation in the decision-making process and making government more
accountable, transparent and effective and to promote democracy.
It is hoped that it will also reinforce the connection between public officials and
communities thereby leading to a stronger, more accountable and inclusive
democracy. E-governance is neither just about government web-site and e-mail, nor
is it just about digital access to government information or electronic payments.
Rather, it will bring forth new concepts of citizenship, both in terms of needs and
responsibilities. This paper tries to bring forward the goals, components and stages
of e-governance. The paper also discusses the origin and analysis current status of
e-governance in India as well as, it throws light on the benefits of E-governance and
the challenges before E-governance.
ABSTRACT
‘OUTSOURCING OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ENABLED
SERVICES TO INDIA’
Scholar: Ranjana A Gera Supervisor: Prof. M. Ishtiyaq
Department of
Geography
Faculty of Natural
Sciences
Jamia Millia
Islamia

Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) are business services that are provided
over
telecommunication and data networks. When one country outsources the business
processing
functions to another country, it is referred to as cross-border or offshore ITES. The
international
trade in business services has given rise to Information Technology Enabled Services
(ITES)
industry or Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. Since ITES is a global
phenomenon, the
present work has attempted to study the world distribution of this industry with special
reference to
South and South-East Asia. India has emerged as the most important ITES destination in
the world
based on English speaking capability of its educated workforce. The present thesis deals
with the
characteristics and spatial distribution of ITES industry in India. Further, ITES industry
has created
many employment opportunities in India and has become an important part of Indian
economy in
ten years of its existence. Despite this, it is plagued with high rates of attrition.
Moreover, the
attrition rates are highest in call centers among all kinds of work that constitute ITES. It
indicates
that integration of a country’s economy with global economy has far reaching
implications for local
economic and social organisation. Therefore, the present work has made a modest
attempt to
understand the economic and social implications of call center jobs in India.
The study is structured at global, regional, national and city level. The spatial
distribution and
characteristics of ITES have been studied at global, regional and national level. While at
regional
level South and South-East Asia is the study area, at the national level the study focuses
on ITES
industry in India. The social and economic implications of call center jobs are studied at
the city
level. The present research is based both on primary and secondary data. The study of
ITES
industry in world in general and South and South-East Asian region including India in
particular is
based on the secondary sources of information. The analysis of economic and social
implications of
the call center jobs is based on the primary survey conducted in the National Capital
Region of
Delhi.
Some major findings of the present research work are as follows:
• The study has recognised seven segments of Information Technology Enabled Services
- Customer
Interaction Services (call center), Back Office Services, Transcription, Data
Digitisation/Processing,
Content Development, Research and Analytics, and Education and Advisory.
• It has been found that the offshore ITES industry is located in 46 countries, including
both
developed and developing countries. India is the most important ITES destination in the
world,
providing 37% of total offshore ITES in 2007. Other countries which have significant
share are
Canada, Philippines, Ireland, Mexico and China. Altogether these six countries delivered
91% of 2
outsourced ITES in 2007. Thus, despite a widespread distribution in the world, a large
part of total
offshore ITES is provided by a few countries.
• The distribution of ITES industry in South and South-East Asia and
state-wise distribution in India has been explained with the help of three determinants –
economic
development, human resource development and technological development. It has been
found that
ITES, being skill and technology intensive industry, follows existing patterns of
development.
• The ITES industry in India consists of both Indian and foreign
companies, the later playing an important role in employment generation. The service
composition
of ITES in India is highly diversified. Indian ITES companies provide the services
pertaining to all
above mentioned service segments. Yet, customer interaction services (provided through
call
centers) form the largest segment, followed by finance and accounting that is a sub-
segment of back
office services. Indian ITES industry mainly serves English speaking countries; USA is
the most
important client followed by UK. ITES industry is a people intensive industry that
provides jobs for
persons with a wide range of educational background and skills. About 700 thousand
people were
employed in Indian ITES industry in 2007.
• The study of economic and social implications of the call center jobs
reveals that these jobs are not sustainable for a long time despite being financially
rewarding. The
nature of employment and work in call centers adversely affect the sustainability of these
jobs. For
lack of job security and paucity of career growth opportunities, call center jobs are mostly
considered as short-term employment rather than a full-fledged career opportunity. As the
offshore
call centers serve clients located in different time zones, the working hours are
unconventional.
Night work involves adjustment of body clock as well as social activities and therefore
affects
health and social life of people who become a part of global workforce. Thus the study
identifies
reasons for attrition in call center industry.
The present study has put forward certain suggestions to improve the sustainability of
ITES
employment for people and also to improve the sustainability of ITES industry itself. The
development of skills and controlling attrition are the prime issues related to the
development of
human resources for ITES industry. The formal education system should respond to the
skill
development needs of the industry. The employment and work practices in ITES
companies
should be oriented to tackle the reasons for attrition. There is a need to develop health
standards and safeguards for call center employees to avoid the ill effects on physical
and
psychological health of employees. The social perception of jobs in ITES industry also
needs to
be improved by social awareness programmes.
In order to reduce dependence on few outsourcers, ITES services in languages other
than
English need to be developed. At present only few ITES companies provide services in
languages other than English, especially European languages. As a strategy to deal with
the
vagaries of an Industry that is largely based on global capital and market, the domestic
ITES
industry should be simultaneously developed so that the displaced persons can find the
job. The
revenues of domestic ITES have grown in recent years as there has been increase in
spending
on IT and ITES in banking, insurance, telecom, and government sectors. The
development of
e-governance in India can go a long way in creating jobs for the man power trained for
ITES
industry.

• Governance Concept
It is the quality of 'governance' in a society that alone can ensure achievement of these
development goals. "Good governance", said Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, "is
perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting
development". The 'governance' or 'good governance' issue, conceptually speaking, is of
recent origin. The World Bank and other international donor agencies have been
suggesting
that the state has so far taken almost the entire burden of 'development' which has
affected
adversely its own resource position, and more crucially, overstatization has led to
overdependence on the state's bureaucratic apparatus and a gradual atrophy of traditional
societal involvement in local collective problem-solving. Governance, in this context,
stands
for a new institutional visioning beyond formally constituted 'government'. Robertson
Work
of the UNDP has explained governance comprehensively as 'the system of values,
policies
and institutions by which a society organizes collective decision-making and action
related
to political, economic and socio-cultural and environmental affairs through the
interaction of
the state, civil society and the private sector'. Elaborating it further, Work views
governance
in terms of 'the complex mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens
and
groups articulate their interests, mediate their differences and exercise their legal rights
and
obligations'. In the vocabulary of conventional development administration, the
governance
concept is a salutary new entrant, as it helps enlarge the ambit of administrative function
by
bringing about a convergence of multiple actors: the state (government), the private
sector
and the civil society. The contemporary decentralization discourse has drawn sustenance
from the concept of governance. In practice decentralization has been looked at as
facilitative of community participation including participation of women and the poor,
creative people's response to local problem-solving and participative and accountable
local government .
 e-governance
Design & Development of e-governance Model

SHEELA PRIYA & R.RADHAKRISHNAN, M.E, Ph.D

Abstract

Hi tech Information and communication technologies can make a significant contribution to the
achievement of good governance goals. The main aim of these technologies is to design the e-
governance model for improving and strengthening government processes (e-administration),
connecting citizens (e-citizens and e-services), and building external interactions (e-society). Web
enabled network technology provide a wonderful opportunity to implement e-governance model in
web environment. e-government is a form of e-business in governance and refers to the
processes and structures pertinent to the delivery of electronic services to the public (citizens and
businesses). The network is fiber-based, and the software architecture is 3-tier browser-based.

Keywords: G2C (Government to Citizen)), G2G (Government to Government), G2B (Government

to Business)

Introduction

In e-governance all interaction with government can be done through one counter 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week, without waiting in lines. In the near future this will be possible if governments
are willing to decentralise responsibilities and processes, and if they start to use electronic means
such as the Internet. Each citizen can then contact the government through a website where all
forms, legislation, news and other information will be available. e-governance define application
of electronic meansin

• the interaction between government and citizens and government and businesses, as
well as
• internal government operations

The spread of information and communication technology (ICT) brings hope that government can
transform their activities through web enabled environment. e-government is the use of ICT to
promote more efficient and effective government, facilitate more accessible government services,
allow greater public access to information, and make government more accessible to citizens.

e-governance Model

The three main target groups that can be distinguished in e-governance concepts are
government, citizens and businesses. The most common interactions in e-governance, G2C,
G2B and G2G, are presented schematically in Figure 1. Gartner, an international consultancy
firm, has formulated a four-phase e-governance model. This can serve as a reference for
governments to position where a project fits in the overall evolution of an e-governance strategy.

According to Gartner, e-governance have the following four phases:

1.Information

2.Interaction

3.Transaction

4.Transformation

In the first phase, e-governance means being present on the web, providing the public (G2C &
G2B) with relevant information. The format of the early government web sites is similar to that of
a brochure or leaflet. In the second phase, the interaction between government and the public
(G2C & G2B) is stimulated with various applications. People can ask questions via e-mail, use
search engines, and download forms and documents. With phase three, the complexity of the
technology is increasing, but customer (G2C & G2B) value is also higher. Complete transactions
can be done without going to an office. Examples of online services are filing income tax, filing
property tax, extending/renewal of licenses, visa and passports and online voting. The fourth
phase is the when all information systems are integrated and the public can get G2C & G2B
services at one (virtual) counter. The model presented can serve as a reference for governments
to position where projects fit in the overall evolution of their e-governance implementation.
Abstract:

Corporate governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws, and

institutions affecting the way a corporation is directed, administered or controlled.
Corporate governance also includes the relationships among the many stakeholders
involved and the goals for which the corporation is governed. The principal
stakeholders are the shareholders, management, and the board of directors. Other
stakeholders include labor(employees), customers, creditors (e.g., banks, bond
holders), suppliers, regulators, and the community at large.

This article reveals various reasons for failure of Corporate Governance, Corporate
Governance conists of, various examples of Corporate Governance Failures like
Enron, Satyam, Cadbury, Wal-Mart, Xerox and why Corporate Governance failed in
such big organizations. Article also describes various mechanisms of Corporate
Governance like (1) Company's Act (2) Security law (3) Discipline of capital market
(4) Nominees on company board (5) Statutory audit (6) Codes of conduct etc. Some
factors that influence the Corporate Governance like Owernership structure,
Structure of company board, Financial structure, Institutional Environment etc.
Various systematic problem in Corporate Governance and Recent Corporate
Governance failures.

Key words: Corporate Governance, Governance, Satyam, Enron, Wal-Mart,

Mechanism,
Polly Peck and Coloroll

Corporate governance is a multi-faceted subject. An important theme of corporate

governance is to ensure the accountability of certain individuals in an organization
through mechanisms that try to reduce or eliminate the principal-agent problem. A
related but separate thread of discussions focuses on the impact of a corporate
governance system in economic efficiency, with a strong emphasis shareholders'
welfare. There are yet other aspects to the corporate governance subject, such as
the stakeholder view and the corporate governance models around the world.

There has been renewed interest in the corporate governance practices of modern
corporations since 2001, particularly due to the high-profile collapses of a number of
large U.S. firms such as Enron Corporation and Worldcom. In 2002, the U.S. federal
government passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, intending to restore public confidence in
corporate governance.

Factors influencing corporate governance

1. The ownership structure

The structure of ownership of a company determines, to a considerable extent, how

a Corporation is managed and controlled. The ownership structure can be dispersed
among individual and institutional shareholders as in the US and UK or can be
concentrated in the hands of a few large shareholders as in Germany and Japan. But
the pattern of shareholding is not as simple as the above statement seeks to convey.
The pattern varies the across the globe.

Our corporate sector is characterized by the co-existence of state owned, private and
multinational Enterprises. The shares of these enterprises (except those belonging to
a public sector) are held by institutional as well as small investors. Specifically, the
shares are held by

(1) The term-lending institutions

(2) Institutional investors, comprising government-owned mutual funds, Unit Trust of
India and the government owned insurance corporations
(3) Corporate bodies
(4) Directors and their relatives and
(5) Foreign investors. Apart from these block holdings, there is a sizable equity
holding by small investors.

2. The structure of company boards

Along with the structure of ownership, the structure of company boards has
considerable influence on the way the companies are managed and controlled. The
board of directors is responsible for establishing corporate objectives, developing
broad policies and selecting top-level executives to carry out those objectives and
policies.

3. The financial structure

Along with the notion that the structure of ownership matters in corporate
governance is the notion that the financial structure of the company, that is
proportion between debt and equity, has implications for the quality of governance.

4. The institutional environment

The legal, regulatory, and political environment within which a company operates
determines in large measure the quality of corporate governance. In fact, corporate
governance mechanisms are economic and legal institutions and often the outcome
of political decisions. For example, the extent to which shareholders can control the
management depends on their voting right as defined in the Company Law, the
extent to which creditors will be able to exercise financial claims on a bankrupt unit
will depend on bankruptcy laws and procedures etc.

Mechanisms of corporate governance

In our country, their are six mechanisms to ensure corporate governance:

(1) Companies Act

Companies in our country are regulated by the companies Act, 1956, as amended up
to date. The companies Act is one of the biggest legislations with 658 sections and
14 schedules. The arms of the Act are quite long and touch every aspect of a
company's insistence. But to ensure corporate governance, the Act confers legal
rights to shareholders to

(1) Vote on every resolution placed before an annual general meeting;

(2) To elect directors who are responsible for specifying objectives and laying down
policies;
(3) Determine remuneration of directors and the CEO;
(4) Removal of directors and
(5) Take active part in the annual general meetings.

(2) Securities law

The primary securities law in our country is the SEBI Act. Since its setting up in
1992, the board has taken a number of initiatives towards investor protection. One
such initiative is to mandate information disclosure both in prospectus and in annual
accounts. While the companies Act it self mandates certain standards of information
disclosure, SEBI Act has added substantially to these requirements in an attempt to
make these documents more meaningful.

(3) Discipline of the capital market

Capital market itself has considerable impact on corporate governance. Here in lies
the role the minority shareholders can play effectively. They can refuse to subscribe
to the capital of a company in the primary market and in the secondary market; they
can sell their shares, thus depressing the share prices. A depressed share price
makes the company an attractive takeover target.

(4) Nominees on company boards Development banks hold large blocks of shares
in companies. These are equally big debt holders too. Being equity holders, these
investors have their nominees in the boards of companies. These nominees can
effectively block resolutions, which may be detrimental to their interests.
Unfortunately, the role of nominee directors has been passive, as has been pointed
out by several committees including the Bhagwati Committee on takeovers and the
Omkar Goswami committee on corporate governance.

(5) Statutory audit

Statutory audit is yet another mechanism directed to ensure good corporate

governance. Auditors are the conscious-keepers of shareholders, lenders and others
who have financial stakes in companies.

Auditing enhances the credibility of financial reports prepared by any enterprise. The
auditing process ensures that financial statements are accurate and complete,
thereby enhancing their reliability and usefulness for making investment decisions.

(6) Codes of conduct

The mechanisms discussed till now are regulatory in approach. The are mandated by
law and violation of any provision invite penal action. But legal rules alone cannot
ensure good corporate governance. What is needed is self-regulation on the part of
directors, besides of course, the mandatory provisions.

Systemic problems of corporate governance

• Demand for information: A barrier to shareholders using good information is

the cost of processing it, especially to a small shareholder. The traditional
answer to this problem is the efficient market hypothesis (in finance, the
efficient market hypothesis (EMH) asserts that financial markets are efficient),
 which suggests that the shareholder will free ride on the judgements of larger
professional investors.
• Monitoring costs: In order to influence the directors, the shareholders must
combine with others to form a significant voting group which can pose a real
threat of carrying resolutions or appointing directors at a general meeting.
• Supply of accounting information: Financial accounts form a crucial link in
enabling providers of finance to monitor directors. Imperfections in the
financial reporting process will cause imperfections in the effectiveness of
corporate governance. This should, ideally, be corrected by the working of the
external auditing process.

Recent Corporate Governance failures

As we have discussed before, the creation of corporate regulation is often linked to

perceived failures of corporations and their management to behave in the way
society expect them to. Corporate governance is not an exception to this trend, and,
as with accounting, different countries may well experience difficulties at different
times. For example, the development of British codes of best practice, which began
with the Cadbury Committee, can be related to governance scandals such as Polly
Peck and Coloroll in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, the wave of
corporate scandals, mostly in the USA, at the turn of the century has been marked
not only by the number of cases but also by the effect they have had on investor
confidence and market values worldwide.

The combined impact of various US corporate scandals caused the Dow Jones
Index to drop from a high for 2002 of 10,632 on 19 March to 7,286 on 9 October,
wiping out trillions of dollars in market value. Investor confidence in the fairness of
the system and the ability of corporations to act with integrity was ebbing. According
to a poll in July 2002, 73 per cent of respondents said that Chief Executive Officers
(CEOs) of large corporations could not be trusted (Conference Board, 2003).
Amongst the many negative effects of this was a worsening of the pension funding
crisis caused by the dramatic drop in the value of pension fund assets. It also
increased the cost of capital and caused a virtual cessation in new securities
offerings. The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) claims that while there
has been a lot of strategic guidance for business, there has been too little said about
the need for good corporate governance. These authors emphasize the fact that
successful companies were visionary companies, with a long track record of making a
positive impact on the world. They did more than focus on profits; they focused on
continuous improvement. They took a long-term view and realised that they were
members of society with rights and responsibilities.

However, the long-term view is something of a rarity in many companies. A critical

factor in many corporate failures was:

• Poorly designed rewards package

• Including excessive use of share options (that distorted executive behaviour
towards the short term)
• The use of stock options, or rewards linked to short-term share price
performance (led to Aggressive earnings management to achieve target share
prices)
 • Trading did not deliver the earnings targets, aggressive or even fraudulent
accounting tended to occur. This was very apparent in the cases of Ahold,
Enron, WorldCom and Xerox (IFAC, 2003).

Adelphia manipulated its earnings figures for every quarter between 1996 and 2002
to make it appear to meet analysts' expectations. Some of the better known cases of
financial irregularities are summarised in following table.

Company Country What went wrong

Ahold NL earnings overstated
Enron USA inflated earnings, hid debt in SPEs
Parmalat Italy false transactions recorded
Tyco USA looting by CEO, improper share deals, evidence of tampering and
falsifying business records
WorldCom USA expenses booked as capital expenditure
Xerox USA accelerated revenue recognition

In terms of corporate governance issues, Ahold, Enron and WorldCom all suffered
from

• Questionable ethics
• Behaviour at the top
• Aggressive earnings management
• Weak internal control
• Risk management
• Shortcomings in accounting and reporting

Corporate governance failure at Enron

EVERY time you turn a stone, another worm creeps out. That seems to be the story
of the Enron debacle. Not a day goes by without a new expose of wrong doing in the
company that one begins to wonder if there is anything in our systems and structure
of an enterprise that can prevent such a catastrophe.

Enron is an excellent example where those at the top allowed a culture to flourish in
which secrecy, rule-breaking and fraudulent behaviour were acceptable. It appears
that performance incentives created a climate where employees sought to generate
profit at the expense of the company's stated standards of ethics and strategic goals
(IFAC, 2003). Enron had all the structures and mechanisms for good corporate
governance. In addition, it had a corporate social responsibility task force and a code
of conduct on security, human rights, social investment and public engagement. Yet
no one followed the code. The board of directors allowed the management openly to
violate the code, particularly when it allowed the CFO to serve in the special purpose
entities (SPEs); the audit committee allowed suspect accounting practices and made
no attempt to examine the SPE transactions; the auditors failed to prevent
questionable accounting.

The use of questionable accounting and disclosure practices, their approval by the
board and their verification by the auditors arose from a variety of forces, including:
 • Pressure to meet quarterly earnings projections and maintain stock prices
after the expansion of the 1990s
• Executive compensation practices
• Outdated and rules-based accounting standards

complex corporate financial arrangements designed to minimise taxes and hide the
true state of the companies, and the compromised independence of public
accounting firms.

Corporate governance failure at Wal-Mart

It has co-filed a shareholder proposal over concerns that Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the US
supermarket group, is failing to comply with its own governance standards. Karina
Litvack, head of governance and sustainable investment.

• Despite strong policies on paper, Wal-Mart has struggled to implement its

standards across its US business.
• 'Weaknesses in internal controls have eroded the company's reputation as an
attractive employer and are adding fuel to the fires of Wal-Mart's critics.
• Its failure to deliver on these policy commitments is inhibiting Wal-Mart's
ability to expand into new domestic markets.
• Over 'the past several years', it has become increasingly concerned by signs
of failure in internal controls that have led to government investigations and
class action lawsuits by employees.
• Allegations include requiring employees to 'work off the clock' -- during
breaks and after shifts -- systematic discrimination against women, and
alleged questionable tactics to prevent workers from voting for union
representation.
• It got off to a promising start in 2005 with expectations of a dialogue with the
independent directors on the audit committee. But when this simply withered
on the vine, Wal-mart had little choice but to bring concerns about internal
controls, labour violations and the erosion of the company's reputation to
fellow shareholders.
• Company was not interested in engaging in a productive discussion about how
it builds and supports a compliance culture and, as a result, they have joined
an international group of large filers led by the New York City Employees'
Retirement System to file a shareholder proposal.

Corporate Governance failure at Satyam

It is one of Corporate India's worst unfolding chapters, What could be the reason
behind such a huge collapse? The top level management failed to estimate the
intensity of the gangrene in the organization. Questions also arise on the role of the
auditors,and how such a magnitude of financial fraud could have gone
unnoticed. Corporate governance is a field which constantly investigates how to
secure and motivate efficient management of corporations. It has began as a
corporate governance issue back in December has now turned into a major financial
scandal for the ages in India. The shares of Satyam Computer Services has
plummeted more than 90% in trading at the NYSE today, a stark reminder that
investors must always cover their backs or else get racked even by the big names in
the industry. NYSE today halted trading in Satyam Computer at its bourses in the US
as well as in Europe after the Chairman disclosed financial bungling at the Indian IT
major.

A business will always have two sides, its not necessary to gain profits everytime,
but to sustain in the market the integrity is vital. Every day in some or the other
place there is a merger or an acquisition happening, but due to the projected image
the co-players in the market are dropping out their plans of taking over Satyam.

Undoubtedly there will be intense focus directed at the other Indian IT Services
companies as well.The Satyam corporate governance failure may also make its
competitors bolder in terms of acquiring market share created by its fallout, provided
the indutsry can regain the trust of the same investors that Satyam has deceived.

From this necessarily brief review of the evidence, and particularly of the sources of
failure in financial firms, draw some tentative conclusions. It is important to
recognise, however, the evidence base for firm recommendations on corporate
governance in financial institutions is thinner than one would like, and certainly not
robust enough to offer a standardised set of recommendations valid at all times and
in all places.

Principal conclusions are:

• First, that people are more important than processes. Many of the failed
firms, or near failed firms which we have encountered, had Boards with the
prescribed mix of executives and non-executives, with socially acceptable
levels of diversity, with directors appointed through impeccably independent
processes, yet where the individuals concerned were either not skilled enough
for, or not temperamentally suited to, the challenge role that came to be
required when the business ran into difficulty.
• Secondly, and in spite of first conclusion, there are some good practice
processes worth having. Properly constituted audit committees, and Board
risk committees can play an important role, as long as they are prepared to
listen carefully to sources of advice from outside the firm.
• Third, and this is a foundation stone of the FSA's approach, a regulatory
regime built on senior management responsibilities is absolutely essential. In
some of the cases we have wrestled with, senior management did not
consider themselves to be responsible for the control environment and
indeed, in the old pre FSA regime, were able successfully to claim that they
were not responsible even if the business failed. So our regulation is built on
a carefully articulated set of responsibilities up and down the business. It is
important that they are not unrealistic. We do not expect the CEO to check in
the bottom drawers of each of his traders for unbooked deal tickets. But we
do expect the CEO to ensure that there is a risk management structure and a
control framework throughout the business which ought to identify aberrant
behaviour, or at least prevent it going on unchecked for any length of time.
• One consequence of this senior management regime, fourth point, is that
regulators must focus attention on the top level of management in the firm.
For the major firms we regulate we insist that our supervisors have direct
access to the Board, and that they present to the Board their own
unvarnished view of the risks the firm is running, and of how good the control
systems are by comparison with the best of breed in their sector.
Unfortunately, we find some resistance to this approach. The management of
 some of our firms want to negotiate the regulators assessment, so that when
it reaches the Board it is an agreed paper and sufficiently bland to cause no
debate. Well-structured Board, and a confident management, should welcome
an independent view, even expressed at the Board level, which they may
challenge and contest if they wish. And non-executive directors should find it
helpful to see a knowledgeable view of the institution which does not come
from or through its own senior management.
• Fifth and penultimate point may not be a popular one. Boards should take
more interest in the nature of the incentive structure within the organisation.
I am not talking solely about the pay of the CEO, important though that is to
get right - as some firms in Britain have recently discovered. Talking about
ensuring that the incentives within the firm, and pay is a very powerful one,
are aligned with its risk appetite. A number of our most problematic cases
have their roots in a misalignment of incentives.
• Lastly, no corporate governance system will work well unless there is some
engagement on the part of shareholders. Boards are responsible to
shareholders. That is the received wisdom in Anglo-American capitalism, at
least. But if those shareholders are not prepared to vote their shares, and
show little interest in business strategy, then that accountability is somewhat
notional, and unlikely to be effective. Certainly regulators cannot hope to
substitute for concerned and challenging shareholders, though in some senses
they may complement them.

Corporate Governance Failure at Cadbury

Adrian Cadbury, successor to and chairman of the Cadbury Schweppes confectionary

group

Mr. Cadbury's visit and interactions with Indian industry triggered the first serious
discussions on the subject of corporate governance. All in all, it seemed like a
promising new way of looking at the evil that was single promoter-run firms in India
then, who, among other things, ran their companies like fiefdoms and were loath to
give up control even if their shareholdings were low.

Recognise that it was a not so competitive environment, the grip of the license raj
was still fairly firm and companies and their promoter/founders could pretty much do
what they wanted, with public money. The real pain of liberalisation was yet to set in
and the Infosys way of boardroom discipline was some way from making its presence
felt.

History it seems is repeating itself. Indian companies have exposed themselves to

billions of dollars worth of forex derivative contracts over the last few years. Precise
numbers are hard to come by and will perhaps never will. What is clear is that
companies have taken financial risks they could or should have avoided.

What is clearer is that there was no compelling reason to take these risks. And to
that extent, it's a failure of corporate governance and must be treated and then
addressed as such. There is of course the other issue of how the Institute of
Chartered Accountants or the accounting regulator figuring out how to treat
derivative losses as they stand on scores of balance sheets today.
How did it happen? Companies have been steadily stepping up their exposure to
currency swaps and the like for at least four years now. Over time, as the stock
markets (which bolster sentiment) have held their own and the prospect of any
downside risk appeared more and more distant with every passing day, chief
financial officers (CFOs) of companies have got braver.

If a company entered into, let's say, a transaction to convert a local currency

borrowing into the Japanese yen or Swiss franc borrowing through the swap route,
then the company is inducing a risk into the system where there is not. No two ways
about that.

Managements ought to have, in the interests of corporate governance, clearly

informed their boards of all foreign exchange exposures, the risks arising out of that
and the measures to mitigate them were something to go wrong.

Moreover, under the relevant Securities & Exchange Board of India regulations, in
the absence of an applicable standard in India for derivatives, the companies' Audit
Committees should have examined international standards and disclosed the losses
in the Governance report and indicated that these would have been provided for had
the country adopted international standards as applicable.

Its possible many companies did keep their boards informed and made the
appropriate references in their balance sheets. Though this does seem unlikely, even
if they did, no one was watching. It's also possible that some companies are in
violation of law. Either way, shareholders must perhaps shoulder some part of the
blame.

To conclude is another Enron waiting in the wings? Not quite but it does raise some
fundamental questions on what companies do with their shareholders' funds. It's also
about how when the good times roll, everyone forgets to look at the figures closely.
There is something in the original Cadbury committee definition of corporate
governance. "Corporate governance is the system by which companies are directed
and controlled."

Getting down to the details of governance, we can focus on five issues

Chairman and CEO: It is considered good practice to separate the roles of the
Chairman of the Board and that of the CEO. The Chairman is head of the Board and
the CEO heads the management. If the same individual occupies both the positions,
there is too much concentration of power, and the possibility of the board
supervising the management gets diluted.

Audit Committee: Boards work through sub-committees and the audit committee is
one of the most important. It not only oversees the work of the auditors but is also
expected to independently inquire into the workings of the organisation and bring
lapse to the attention of the full board.

Independence and conflicts of interest: Good governance requires that outside

directors maintain their independence and do not benefit from their board
membership other than remuneration. Otherwise, it can create conflicts of interest.
By having a majority of outside directors on its Board.
Flow of information: A board needs to be provided with important information in a
timely manner to enable it to perform its roles. A governance guideline of General
Motors, for instance, specifically allows directors to contact individuals in the
management if they feel the need to know more about operations than what they
are being told.

Too many directorships: Being a director of a company takes time and effort.
Although a board might meet only four or five times a year, the director needs to
have the time to read and reflect over all the material provided and make informed
decisions. Good governance, therefore, suggests that an individual sitting on too
many boards looks upon it only as a sinecure for he or she will not have the time to
do a good job.

Reference:

1. For a good overview of the different theoretical perspectives on corporate

governance see Chapter 15 of Dignam, A and Lowry, J (2006) Company Law, Oxford
University Press ISBN-13: 978-0-19-928936-3

2. Corporate Governance International Journal, "A Board Culture of Corporate

Governance, Vol 6 Issue 3 (2003)

3. Crawford, Curtis J. (2007). The Reform of Corporate Governance: Major Trends in

the U.S. Corporate Boardroom, 1977-1997. doctoral dissertation, Capella University.

4. SSRN-Good Corporate Governance: An Instrument for Wealth Maximisation by

Vrajlal Sapovadia

5. Bhagat & Black, "The Uncertain Relationship Between Board Composition and Firm
Performance", 54 Business Lawyer)

6. National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) – Directors Monthly,

"Enlightened Boards: Action Beyond Obligation", Vol. 31Number 12 (2007), Pg 13.

7. Theyrule.net

8. Hovey, M. and T. Naughton (2007), A Survey of Enterprise Reforms in China: The

Way Forward.Economic Systems, 31 (2): 138-156.

9. Business for Development: Fostering the Private Sector . OECD Development

Centre. Paris: OECD Publications, 2007 (149-152).

10. Nicolas Meisel, Governance Culture and Development (Paris: OECD Publishing,
2004) SourceOECD, 27 July 2007

11. Corporate Governance in Development: The Experiences of Brazil, Chile, India,

and South Africa. ed. Charles P. Oman. OECD Development Centre and CIPE, 2006.

12. Nicolas Meisel, Governance Culture and Development (Paris: OECD Publishing,
2004) SourceOECD, 27 July 2007

13. The Disney Decision of 2005 and the precedent it sets for corporate governance
and fiduciary responsibility, Kuckreja, Akin Gump, Aug 2005

14. TD/B/COM.2/ISAR/31

15. "International Standards of Accounting and Reporting, Corporate Governance

Disclosure". UNCTAD.

E-Governance: Miles to Go....

Budget allocation, policies and a task force are not enough. Cultural inhibitions and the lack of
infrastructure are stubling blocks along India's e-governance path
The Year 2001 was declared as the ‘Year of e-governance’ by the Central Government. A number
of measures suggested by the 1998 Task Force targeted at promoting and enhancing the use of IT
in governance. But a look at actual implementation shows that almost 40% of MIT’s targets are yet
to be achieved and most of them, directly or indirectly, relate to e-governance. Says IT Minister
Pramod Mahajan, "Technology can not work in isolation, it has to reach one and all. Most officials
still find IT too complicated to use and unless we train and motivate them to adopt tech tools to
speed up their processes, we can not expect things to change."

Interestingly, the 3% IT budgets allocated to all central and state government departments are all
being exhausted as per the directions. But senior officials reiterate that just buying equipment will
not help unless it is put to efficient use, which in most cases is not happening. Says Central
Vigilance Commisioner N Vittal: ""Money is not an issue because by and large, the budget is
available for investing in IT. Policy-wise, the government seems to be encouraging e-governance,
but unfortunately that money is being spent on buying junk. It takes a lot of commitment to
translate policy into reality and that is missing."

Even well known IT companies have not been able to implement software projects successfully for
the government. The prime reasons have been poor direction (particularly in the case of frequent
policy changes) and more importantly, the non-involvement of end-users during this process. A
number of other factors add to the woes — Lack of IT awareness among decision-makers, poor
management of knowledge and human resources, non-compatibility between IT projects and
business processes, poor risk management, choice of technology and over-ambitious projects.

What was to be What actually happened

Minimum standards stipulated by the
Ministry of IT to enable e-governance:
• Automation of Internal
ProceduresEquip all ministries and
government departments with LANs,
PCs and basic software necessary to
improve their functioning; Automate
recording and filing systems to ensure
better workflow.
• Employee Training Give necessary IT
training to all staff members who need
to use computers for their work
How much of this has been implemented…
• Scattered Automation While the
process of networking and purchase of
hardware has been initiated, in many
cases the departments have randomly
bought material (which is lying unused)
only to exhaust the budgets allocated.
The result: lack of standards and
scattered automation.
• Slow on Learning Training of
employees has been perhaps one of
the slowest in terms of actual
 • Online Communication Promote the
use of e-mails and online notice boards.
• Transparency through the Web Set
up Web Sites for all ministries and
government departments displaying
information of interest or relevance to
the public.
• Web-Enabled Services Set up Web-
enabled grievance cells and make all
necessary efforts to allow electronic
delivery of services to the public.
• Department-specific IT strategy Each
ministry or department should have an
overall IT strategy for a five year period,
within which it could detail specific
action plans and targets to be
implemented within one year.
implementation as most of the 1998
Task Force recommendations in this
regard are yet to be achieved. MIT
officials blame the ministry of HRD for
this.
• Not Connected Yet Although senior
officials have been given access to the
Internet, only a handful of self-
motivated and tech savvy have put it to
actual use.
• Need More Info There are some useful
sites such as the ones giving online
status railway bookings or passport
status, but there’s a long way before all
such information is made available to
public.
• Inefficient Services A few steps have
been initiated and automation of many
services such as billing has been
made. But whether it is lack of IT
knowledge or rampant corruption,
incidents such as inflated bills,
inefficient services still cause
harassment.
• Far From Reality It may be easy to lay
down policies on paper, but to ensure
actual implementation is a tough call.

Cultural Inhibitors

A lot of stress is laid on the lack of infrastructure in the country, which certainly can not be ignored.
But a bigger question that arises is that IF we have the infrastructure ready, can we ensure the
successful adoption of e-governance across the country? As of now, the aggressive buying spree
that government offices are indulging in is only creating graveyards of computers. There is
absolutely no accountability or motivation to put them into efficient use.

Experts insist that the basic work culture and framework of the government in India does not favor
e-governance. "I can say with conviction that 95% of people in the government don’t believe in e-
governance. So, how much can you expect from the remaining 5%, who have to work under
tremendous constraints," Vittal points out. He explains that the whole issue of e-governance is
stuck in the conflict between domain knowledge and knowledge of IT. "The policy makers are
older people who are not technology savvy and those who know IT are the junior fellows. The
problem with these senior people is that they have a sense of power, which they may not want to
surrender by sharing information," he says.

The rampant corruption prevalent in all government departments also prevents the use of IT,
because it will make all processes more transparent. And this again may not be in the interest of
many ‘senior’ people. Besides these issues related to work culture, there exists a lot of disparity
across the country in the level of education and orientation to technology. While southern states
like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have higher literacy and have been more
active in implementing IT, the North lags far behind.

A Cafeteria Approach

"It has been widely accepted that IT implementation in government is the most difficult process
and hence requires careful planning and formulation of strategies for effective implementation,"
says Renu Budhiraja, Additional Director, E-Governance Division, MIT. There is tremendous
emphasis on rules and procedures across all government departments. Unless the records are
kept properly, accessing information and tracing the precedents becomes time consuming and this
is one of the reasons for the delays and inefficiency in administration.

The use of IT can improve the pace of effectiveness of governance, but it has to be done in a
phased manner. A step-by-step or ‘Cafeteria Approach’ as they put it. This means that just like a
buffet, you have various options laid out and you pick and choose the ones that suit your taste.
"You can’t go for it all at once, you will obviously have to implement it step by step," says Vittal.
Based on your existing infrastructure and requirements, you choose and implement from among
the various options such as front-end e-services, backend digitization, e-services, e-procurement
and process reengineering.

What can be done?

A few states and government departments have initiated innovative steps, but they are yet to be
implemented in a big way. Some features of e-governance that could be used for effective
functioning:
• Front-end E-services All public interfaces or points of contact with government
departments can be automated. This would help avoid the delay and harassment people
have to face in such dealings. For instance, inter-connecting various departments can
centralize payments.
• Backend Digitization All the paper documents need to be converted into digital form. To
reduce extra costs and save time, unemployed youth or self-help groups could be used
for such exercises. Kerala, for instance, has used women self-help groups to input all the
data. In this way, even funds meant for women empowerment could be utilized for such
programs.
• Information Kiosks and Intranet Exchange of information, online bidding and selling
could be done through these. The Gyandoot model based on the Intranet has been
initiated in Madhya Pradesh. An educated and well-informed person, who monitors the
kiosk, enables people to get good deals while selling buffalos or other agricultural
products.
• Smart Cards Individual public services such as ration shops or transport licenses could
make use of smart chips.
• E-procurement E-procurement is another new concept based on reverse auctions for
online bidding and buying. The government will now have to define and clarify guidelines
on various legal and security measures to enable public sector organizations to compete
in the market.
• Process Re-engineering This would mean implementing e-governance in a big way,
such as the one initiated in Andhra Pradesh. It involves complete re-engineering or
designing of processes around technology.

E-governance has to go hand in hand with all the other welfare measures adopted by the
government. Whatever approach it adopts, in the end what finally measures success the success
of any policy is its benefit to the citizens. If the government is not able to improve the life of the
common man, there is no point implementing any amount of IT. And more than infrastructure, it
would need cultural reorientation or a change in the mindset of the bureaucracy. The ‘Year of E-
governance’ calls for a more committed approach, otherwise the government’s ambitious e-
agenda may remain unfinished.

SHWETA VERMA In New Delhi

DATA GOVERNANCE CHALLENGES

Organizations tend to manage data by adopting ad-hoc data governance policies
that over time root themselves in day-to-day data management operations. Data
management is further hampered by a lack of a central place to control day-to-day
data management activities (i.e. an MDM hub), a lack of clear representation of
data operations and an inability to continuously measure data quality at the
attribute level. These approaches reduce an organization’s ability to foresee and
effectively plan for data management issues in light of a growing reliance on the
proliferation of sales, service, product, finance and marketing data from myriad
sources.
Despite companies now recognizing the importance of their enterprise data,
they still have a difficult time effectively managing it as an asset. Some of
those challenges arise from a lack of business involvement and sponsorship, an
inability to identify data owners and encourage accountability, or a reluctance to
share data.
Business involvement and executive level sponsorship is one of the biggest
challenges in governing data. DG tends to be a cross-functional program that no
individual organization wants to or should independently own, which makes
finding an executive sponsor difficult. Executive commitment is also difficult
because DG is often perceived as an esoteric issue, rather than as a program that
delivers measured business value. Consequently, few people are raising their hands
to run a program that may be perceived as delivering little value.
However, executive and senior business leadership involvement is essential to the
success of DG because it helps to identify data owners while holding people
accountable to the agreed upon standards, policies and processes. Executive
involvement also helps to manage, arbitrate and resolve difficult crossdepartmental
decisions, many of which typically arise while deploying an MDM
technology platform. Executive sponsorship helps ensure that the DG program is
aligned with corporate goals and objectives, while facilitating the sharing of data
across departments by breaking down organizational barriers and encouraging the
view of data as a shared asset.
6. Technology Enables Data Governance
Each of these critical data governance program components: strategy,
organization, policies and procedures, measurement and monitoring, and
communications, are each enabled and enhanced by the use of technology – with
MDM providing the technical foundation for data governance.
MDM inherently addresses data quality, data structure, data architecture, master
data management and data security. Where data governance defines and
standardizes master data definitions, MDM instantiates them within business
processes so they stick. Where data governance prioritizes data management
efforts to derive the greatest business value, MDM profiles the data to allow for
data analysis.
Similarly, metrics and monitoring tools provided by MDM allow DG teams to
track their progress, identify issues and continually improve performance. Where
data auditing capabilities provide insight into how the data is created and
corrupted, MDM propagates data fixes throughout the enterprise.
These and other tactical examples of how data governance is enabled by
technology are best understood in context of the data governance technology
framework.
DATA GOVERNANCE TECHNOLOGY FRAMEWORK
As mentioned, technology can help address the inherent challenges of data
governance. Specifically, technology can help:
• Define and communicate data definitions, policies and business rules
• Operate consolidate, share and cleanse hub functions
• Monitor hub operations and track sources of bad data in the enterprise
• Fix data issues proactively and help tune data quality rules
Figure 2. Technology requirements for Data Governance
“Governance has emerged as a critical
success factor for an enterprise-wide
information management initiative. Now,
technology can greatly facilitate data stewards’
daily tasks and help data governance teams
fulfill their data management goals.”
Kelle O'Neal, Managing Director,
First San Francisco Partners LLC. How Technology Enables Data Governance 9
Oracle Data Governance Manager
Oracle Data Governance Manager (DGM) is designed specifically around the
aforementioned requirements. It provides an intuitive graphical user interface as
the single management destination for data stewards and business users alike.
Using DGM, data stewards can easily perform stewardship operations on
crossdepartmental data in a centralized place. The DG overseeing group can also
manage the data stewards’ performance and workloads and generate data quality
assessments to monitor and demonstrate progress for continued executive
support.
DGM serves as a place to define and set enterprise master data policies and to
monitor and fix data issues. It also helps operate t
The 4th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance
(ICEGOV2010) will take place in Beijing, China, during 25 - 28 October 2010 under the
patronage of the National School of Administration, Ministry of Science and Technology
and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China.
The conference will be co-organized by: UN University, Macao SAR; Electronic
Government Center, National School of Administration, China; Center for Technology in
Government, University at Albany, USA; Fudan University, China; and University of
Oxford, UK.
The International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance
(ICEGOV) series tech enabled governance focuses on the use of technology to transform
relationships between government and citizens, businesses, civil society and other arms
of government (Electronic Governance). The Series looks beyond the traditional focus on
technology-enabled transformation in government (Electronic Government), towards
establishing foundations for good governance and for sustainable national development.
The Series, established by the UN University in 2007, aims to bring together
practitioners, developers and researchers from government, academia, industry, non-
governmental organizations and UN organizations to share the latest in theory and
practice of Electronic Governance. Following its first three editions in Macao
(ICEGOV2007), Cairo (ICEGOV2008) and Bogota (ICEGOV2009), ICEGOV
established its identity as:
1. A Global Conference - ICEGOV consistently attracts submissions from more than
45 countries, including over 60% representation from developing and transition
countries.
2. A Multi-Stakeholder Conference - ICEGOV is well attended by all major
stakeholders of technology-enabled innovation in government: government,
academia, industry and NGOs.
3. A Networking Conference - ICEGOV brings participation from across thematic,
national, and development borders, with common interests in transformational use of
technology in government.
4. A Research and Practice Conference - ICEGOV includes a healthy balance of
research-, practice- and solution-related work - looking at technology, at the
processes surrounding its implementation and management, or at the wider context
of Electronic Governance.
5. A Capacity Building Conference - ICEGOV features a rich program of invited
talks, invited sessions, tutorials, workshops, panel discussions, posters, demos, etc.
all taught, moderated or organized by leading researchers and practitioners in the
area.
6. An International Development Conference - The focus on Electronic Governance
helps consider how government investments in technology, resulting in expected
social and economic benefits, contribute to the fulfillment of the national
development goals.
7. A UN Conference - With international development focus, with United Nations
University as the founder of and the main force behind its editions, and with several
UN organizations being actively involved, ICEGOV exhibits a strong UN character.
In addition, ICEGOV promotes close interactions between government, academia,
industry and NGO stakeholders so that each group can contribute to as well as benefit
from the interactions with others:
• The stakeholders from government can share the knowledge of concrete
initiatives as well as lessons learnt and challenges faced when carrying them out. In
return, they can learn about the latest research results, and how they are implemented
by industry, non-governmental organizations and other governments to address the
challenges they face.
• The stakeholders from academia can share the models, theories and frameworks
which extend the understanding of Electronic Governance and upon which concrete
solutions can be built. In return, they can learn about concrete challenges faced by
governments, gain access to concrete cases, and identify opportunities to implement
and deploy research prototypes.
• The stakeholders from industry and NGOs can share technological and socio-
organizational solutions to be used in government practice. In return, they can learn
about the challenges faced by governments, and the latest research findings available
for developing solutions.

he ideal scenario for e- Governance would be one common application for all the 5,000 Urban Local
Bodies (ULBs). However, variation in law across different states and 22 official languages make such
a common application unviable.

The power of e-Governance in transforming citizen services has been proven. Not only does technology
enabled governance results in quick, transparent and reliable citizen-centric services, but it also acts as a
check on corruption.
In fact, automation of municipalities was identified as one of the 27 mission mode projects under the
Government of India’s National e-Governance Programme (NeGP). Further, the Ministry of Urban
Development (MoUD) decided to implement ‘automation of municipality’ scheme in 35 cities. These cities
were also identified for massive infrastructural up gradation under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban
Renewal Mission (JNNURM). In return for the infrastructure upgrade, the cities were expected to introduce a
system of e-Governance in their Urban Local Bodies (ULBs).
The stage was set for e Governance.

Modus Operandi – Some Glitches

However, there have been practical issues in the adoption of technology at the grassroots - by local
administrative bodies. Some questions that needed to be answered are:

• Which technology should be adopted?

• How can services be made accessible to citizens living in different topographical zones?
• How should data be secured?
 The problem is compounded by the fact that though the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) has issued
a set of guidelines to various state governments for implementing e-Governance, and also prepared a
model Detailed Project Report (DPR), the Ministry did not lay down a specific solution to be deployed.

CASE IN POINT

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation automated six civic centres in 2002 (covering over 50 lakh citizens) by using ICT
applications. This was a much lauded e-Governance effort.
However, the initiative was not extended to other Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in Gujarat because of lack of knowhow,
resources In the absence of a centralised application, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation remained an island of
excellence.

The result is that, though all municipalities have to offer a common set of eight services (minimum), they all
follow different technology designs. This diversity is likely to create a serious human resource issue.
Employees of ULBs are routinely transferred across different municipalities within a State. Such people have
to deal with different solutions at each end. Also, at the district level, specialised technology resources are
hard to come by.
Another serious issue is the lack of learning from the implementation in seven mega cities, which are in
advanced stage of e-Governance readiness.
The conclusion is that standardisation eliminates learning curve and increases efficiency – and is the need
of the hour as far as e- Governance is concerned.

Shifting gears and perspective – An Imperative

The ideal scenario for e- Governance would be one common application for all the 5,000 Urban Local
Bodies (ULBs). However, variation in law across different states and 22 official languages make such a
common application unviable.

CISCO’S ROLE IN eGOV

IBSG (Internet Business Solutions Group), the strategic arm of Cisco is working with NISG (National Institute for Smart
Government) that runs the e-Municipality projects of the Government of India. IBSG brings to the table, global
experience of large scale deployment of e-Municipality projects. Cisco has been helping urban local bodies achieve their
objectives by supporting and enabling initiatives like shared services, increasing e-Government services and bringing
local government services closer to the citizens.

Given the diversity across the country, the solution would be to adopt one application for each State. And a
centralised application in each State would handle all ULBs in that State. Cloud Computing is best suited to
this scenario.

The Benefits of Cloud Computing

• Evolutionary and enabled by a number of existing technologies, such as virtualisation, automation,

and self-service portals
• Virtualised and dynamically scalable resources are provided as a service over the Internet. This
means that users do not need to have knowledge of the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that
 supports them. This aspect is very important considering that technology resources are hard to obtain at
a district level.

SUCCESS STORIES IN CLOUD COMPUTING

The City Council of Biel, Switzerland moved from a standalone model to a cloud model, hosting 190 different
applications. Faulty clients can be restored within minutes, compilation of software inventories is automated,
allowing IT staff to save hours of maintenance time each week while improving end-user productivity.

• Greening’ of the data center through centralised and shared infrastructure

• Reduced cost of infrastructure, platforms, and applications, as municipalities within state can
share services like network, security, IT help desk support, facility management
• Increased speed of response to business needs.

Conclusion

To sum up, cloud computing at the state level (vis a vis independent deployments at local body level) is the
answer to wide spread adoption of eGovernance in local bodies due to the following:

• Lower cost of development

• Less complex technical manpower requirement for maintenance of application software
• Lower roll-out time
• Cost reduction as urban local bodies can use the State Data Center and State Wide Area Network
for hosting applications

Clearly cloud computing can provide the strategic leverage needed by Indian States to take the power of e-
Governance to India’s masses. The Cisco-Metropolis study points to an interesting trend where 45% of
respondents (fig. 1) consider their cities responsive to technology innovation. It is in this positive outlook that
cloud computing’s success in transforming local governance lies. \\
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Abstract
IT governance arrangements refers to the patterns of authority for key IT activities in business firms,
including IT infrastructure, IT use, and project management. During the last 20 years, three primary
modes of IT governance have become prevalent: centralized, decentralized, and the federal mode.
These modes vary in the extent to which corporate IS, divisional IS, and line management are vested
with authority for the key IT activities. While a significant volume of research has examined the
influence of contingency factors on the choice of a specific mode of IT governance, most of this
research has examined the singular effects of the contingency factors. The assumption underlying
these studies is as though the organizational contingencies act in isolation in influencing the mode
of IT governance. However, in reality, business firms are subject to the pulls and pressures of
multiple, rather than singular, contingency forces. Therefore, to acknowledge this reality, this study
applies the theory of multiple contingencies to examine how contingency forces influence the mode
of IT governance. The theory argues that contingency forces interact with each other by either
amplifying, dampening, or overriding their mutual influences on the IT governance mode. Three
scenarios of multiple, interacting contingencies are identified: reinforcing, conflicting, and
dominating. Each of these scenarios of multiple contingencies is hypothesized to influence a
particular mode of IT governance. Utilizing rich data from case studies of eight firms, empirical
evidence is presented to support these hypotheses. Implications of the multiple contingencies
theory for research and for practice are presented.

Towards a theory of the technology-based firm1

Ove Granstrand*
Industrial Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, S-412 96 Göteborg, Sweden

Available online 2 November 1998.

Abstract
The modern firm is a very viable economic institution, drawing strength from a competitive market
economy, with embedded ‘super-markets' for corporate control and ‘sub-markets' for internal
organization. The technology-based firm in addition draws strength from its co-evolution with
modern science and technology (and vice versa), and thereby becomes increasingly important.
However, received theories of the firm, of which there are many, have not particularly taken account
of technology and technology-based firms, nor their management. This paper takes an empirical
point of departure from recent findings regarding the positive relationship between technology
diversification on the one hand and corporate growth and business diversification on the other.
These findings are not readily explainable by received theories of the firm, which the paper reviews,
and the findings are thus taken as an explanandum for a proposed approach to formulate a theory of
the technology-based firm. The approach is compatible with various other theoretical approaches
such as the resource-based, the transaction-cost and the evolutionary approach, but specifically
takes the idiosyncrasies of technology (i.e., technical competence) as well as management into
account. Through notably strong economies of scale, scope, speed and space associated with the
combination of different technologies and resources, the technology-based firm is subjected to
specific dynamics in its growth and diversification and shifts of businesses and resources. In
particular, a technology-based firm tends to engage in technology diversification, thereby becoming
multitechnological. As such the technology-based firm has incentives to economize on increasingly
expensive new technologies by pursuing strategies of internationalization on both input and output
markets, technology-related business diversification, external technology marketing and sourcing,
R&D rationalization and technology-related partnering.

Conference sub-themes
The conference will run over of a variety of sessions,
such as plenary, workshops, posters and
presentation sessions on the following sub-themes:
Theme I: Indian Higher Education: Past,
Present and Future
Theme IV: Governance, Autonomy and
Accountability of Indian Higher Education
Historical Perspectives
Status of staff and students in Indian Higher
Education
Trends in Indian Higher Education
Policy and governing goals of Indian Higher
Education
Regulatory Framework
Governance and Administration
E-Governance
Measurement of Excellence
Promoting Quality, Excellence and Equity and
Inclusiveness
Academic Autonomy
Political Authority in Governance of Higher
Education
Theme II: Need for Re-engineering in
Indian Higher Education
Theme V: Role of Information &
Communication Technologies (ICT) in
Indian Higher Education
Reengineering in Higher Education:
Reinventing Teaching and Learning
Reengineering: A Process of Transforming
Higher Education
The Role of ICT in Education Sector
Media, Technology and Class Rooms
ICT Strategy in Higher Education
Knowledge Packaging in Digital Form
Development of a Roadmap to Achieve
Excellence in ICT Higher Education
New Functions of Higher Education and ICT to
Achieve Education for All
Enhancing the Quality and Accessibility of
Higher Education through the use of
Information and Communication Technologies
Information Technology Management
Communications Management
Theme III: Benchmarking: The Need of the
Hour
Theme VI: The challenges of ICT in
Learning Process
Benchmarking in Indian Higher Education
Case Studies on Benchmarking
Principles of Good Benchmarking in the
Development of Higher Education
Benchmarking Procurement
Practices in Higher Education
Benchmarking in Higher Education:
Approaches and Methodologies
Quality Assurance Practices in Higher
Education
Motivating Students to Learn
Redesigning Curriculum and Pedagogy in
Higher Education
Employability with Education
Learner-Centric Higher Education
Research in Higher Education
Technology-Enabled Teaching, Learning,
Evaluation and Research
Organizational Communication
The Information Society
The Knowledge Society
Virtual Communities
Community-Based Education
Higher Education: Vision of the New World
Realities in the Pursuit of Knowledge
Global Higher Education: Issues and Challenges

Interactive Wireless Solutions for Next Generation Education System

Vishav Vikram Kapoor1, Manmeet Singh1, Aarthy Krishnamurthy2, and Hrishikesh
Venkataraman1,2
1
Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology
(DAIICT), Gandhinagar, India - 382007
2
Performance Engineering Laboratory (PEL), School of Electronic Engineering,
Dublin City University (DCU), Dublin 9, Ireland
Email: vishav_kapoor@daiict.ac.in.akrishnamurthy@computing.dcu.ie,
hrishikesh@ieee.org

Abstract
The emergence of Internet and portable devices like Laptops/PDA's and mobile
phones have bought a great change in the communication and entertainment
world. However, unfortunately, the teaching and learning methodologies in the
secondary schools and pre-university colleges in India have remained almost
stagnant over the last several years. There have been few rigorous efforts,
especially, in Europe and USA to enhance the education system using the latest
technological tools. However, the outcome has not yet been very desirable. This
work aims to use the mobile phones and other handheld devices as e/m-
Iearning pedagogical tools in order to enhance technology-enabled interactive
learning, keeping in mind the affordability and usability of proposed technology
in emerging economies/developing countries like India, China, etc. We have
developed a prototype for "interactive wireless education solution" with two
independent yet complimentary components- clicker response system and m-
Iearning application, in order to cater to two different spectrums of users. The
low-cost clicker response system is developed primarily for students in schools
and colleges, while the m-Iearning application is being developed for students in
colleges and professional institutions, keeping in mind the fact that most of the
students today in these institutions have Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones. This
not only enables interactive learning using wireless devices but also provides
multimedia-based bi-directional transfer of information between the students
and the teacher.

Key words: Bluetooth, clicker response systems, e/m-learning, RF technology

Study of Defect Amplification Index in Domain Variant Business

Software Application Development through Fault Injection Modeling
Paloli Mohammed Shareef1*, M. K Srinath2, and S. Balasubramanian3
1
Trimentus Technologies, Chennai, India.
2
Mahendra Engineering College, Mahendrapuri, India.
3
Anna University - Coimbatore, Coimbatore, India.
Email: pmshareef@gmail.com,sri_induja@rediffmail.com, s _ balasubramanian@rediffmail.com.

Abstract
A planned insertion of faults or errors into software in order to determine its
response and to study its behaviour is understood as Fault Injection. Fault
Injection have proven to be an effective method for measuring and studying
response of defects, validating fault-tolerant systems, and observing how
systems behave in the presence of faults. The approach offers both accuracy of
fault injection results transparency of the system dynamics in the presence of
faults. The objectives of this study are to measure and study defect leakage,
analyse amplification of errors and study "Domino" effect of defects leaked. The
approaches endeavour to demonstrate the phase wise impact of leaked defects,
through statistical analysis of defects leakage and amplification patterns of
systems, built in domain (education, e-governance, retail, systems) variants
using the same technology (C#. Net), and through a causal analysis carried out
on the defects injected.

Keywords: Fault Injection, Dominos Effect, Amplification Indx(AI), Defect

Leakage and Distribution

Incident Management in Urban Transportation: Application of Data

Mining
Seyed Hessameddin Zegordi 1*, Mohammad Aghdasi2, Hoda Davarzani3
and Nasim Ghanbar Tehrani4
1,2,3,4
Industrial Engineering Department, School of Engineering,
Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran,
3
Engineering Logistics, Department of Industrial Management and Logistics,
Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Email: {zegordi.aghdasim.davarzani.nasim.tehrani}@modares.ac.ir,
3
hoda.davarzani@tlog.lu.se

Abstract
Better understanding of the impacts of an incident may help analysts to design
more appropriate incident management strategies. Very little is known to date
about the usefulness of applying data mining in traffic and transport related
research, although data mining has contributed its usefulness significantly in
other fields. This research is intended to discover the relationship between motor
vehicle accidents and the comprehensive information about people, vehicles, and
conditions recorded in Police Accident Reports using data mining techniques. The
data obtained from the traffic police's accident database, are first clustered using
the K-mean method. Then, by exploring the extracted patterns and rules, some
refinements in behaviors are proposed. So by using this innovative method,
regardless of the constraints of this study, useful knowledge about the
enhancement of safety of driving and roads and managing the accidents are
provided.
Keywords: Urban Transpotation, Data Mining, Incident Management, safety.

DIESEL© Framework-An Integrated Approach (of TOC and Six Sigma)

To improve Software Testing Productivity
Prasad Revur*, and Soujanya KVL
Mahindra Satyam, Hyderabad, India.

Email: {Prasad_Revur.Soujanya_KVL}@mahindrasatyam.com

Abstract
There are many methodologies available for continuous improvement and quality
improvement. This paper proposes a new framework called "DIESEL" integrating
Six Sigma methodologies and Theory of Constraints(TOC) approach to be used
as a Continuous Improvement tool for improving quality and productivity in
software testing. This also helps us to exploit the complementary benefits of
both the approaches to find solutions in a complex testing process. A Case study
is presented illustrating the application of this framework in a complex Software
testing project where the productivity was affected by a few constraints. The
solution developed using this framework improved the productivity while living
with the constraints.

Keywords: Six Sigma, Software Testing, Theory of Constraints, Productivity

Improvement, Z Value, Machine Idle time, Theory of Constraints (TOC), DMAIC
(Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control), CRT(Current Reality Tree),
FMEA(Failure Mode and Effects Analysis)

A Novel Approach to Interactive Transmission of Telemedicine Videos

Rituik Dubey, Ambrish Dantrey*, Vaibhav Sharma, Ankush Mittal and M.J. Nigam
Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India.
Email: rickyuec@iitr.ernet.in, a4ambrish@gmail.com,
vaibhuec@gmail.com, ankumfec@iitr.ernet.in, mkndnfec@iitr.ernet.in

Abstract
This paper considers an interactive telemedicine video transmission system
which uses Region of Interest (ROI) based video compression scheme to
enhance transmission efficiency and makes real time streaming of telemedicine
videos possible. The system is an example of domain specific multimedia
compression schemes, a research field which has not been fully explored yet.
The scheme presented is based on observation that telemedicine videos
generally have an ROI which is only a fraction of the overall frame area.
Efficiency of the system is increased by using lossless compression on the ROI
and lossy compression on regions apart from the ROI. On the initial frame called
the template frame, the ROI is determined interactively by doctor herself and
image registration is used for automatic determination of ROl on other frames.
The scheme presented can be extended to other domains apart from
telemedicine with modifying the ROI detection method.

Keywords: Telemedicine, Region of Interest, Lossless Compression

Online Social Interactions amongst Indian women in IT

Suneet Kheterpal
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Mohali, India
Email: suneetkheterpal@rediffmail.com

Abstract
The cyberspace seems to appeal many women for the possibilities it offers for
connecting, networking and sharing information. In a bid to understahd the
usage of Web 2.0 as a social networking medium by technical women for
personal as well as professional reasons, an exploratory study was conducted on
married Indian women working in the field of Information Technology. While the
professional reasons to access the social networks outweigh the personal
reasons, few women are also discussing about themselves, their ambitions and
desires. This is a good indication considering the fact that most Indian women
keep their likings and personal life to themselves. Patterns and styles of
interaction on the online social networks provide a glimpse into the overall
portrait of the emerging Indian woman.

Keywords: Women in IT, Social Interactions, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Indian
women and online social networking

Behavioral Pattern Generation and Analysis: Application of Enhanced

Closeness Factor Algorithm for Effectual Forecasting
Parag A. Kulkarni1, and Preeti Mulay2 *
1
Capsilon, Pune, India.
2
Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune, India
Email: Paragakulkarni@yahoo.com, Vnv2004@redifJmail.com

Abstract
Many organizations today have more than large databases; they have databases
that change dynamically. In many classification systems this represents a huge
problem, since changing data may lead to poor results in the absence of proper
retraining. This paper aims at constructing the knowledge model incrementally
for a dynamically changing database. It intends to solve the problem intrinsic to
incremental Clustering, and obtaining a faster and more accurate result. It
presents a clustering model, including initializing clusters, modifying the
previously discovered knowledge using the new data without retraining the old
data, and maintaining clusters and related behavioral patterns in pattern-
database, for further re-use. To handle this proviso, we propose innovative
incremental clustering method for incremental learning. To accommodate new
data on arrival every time, to handle unlabeled data and to understand which
cluster to update, requires knowledge amassing and learning based on the
same. This proposed new incremental algorithm clusters continuous input, and
outline research directions to deal with very large data sets. The proposed work
called "Enhanced Closeness Factor Algorithm for Effectual Forecasting" [ECFAEF]
and is based on finding closeness among data series. The outcome will be useful
for forecasting and decision making, analyzing generated patterns and their
behavior. ECFAEF is a smart algorithm which catchless exceptions in behavioral
patterns, very easy to implement and understand.

Keywords: incremental clustering, k-means, incremental learning, semi-

supervised learning.

An Empirical Investigation on Concerns, Opinions and Attitudes of Web

Shoppers
Prashant D. Amin1* and Bijal Amin2
Elecon Engineering Company Limited, VV Nagar, India.
1

2
Parul Institlute of Engg. and Tech., Vadodara, India.
Email: prashantbijalamin@gmail.com, bijuzaveri@gmail.com

Abstract
According to Internet World Stats, there were 45 million Internet users in India
representing 3.5 per cent of the population as on January 2009. This was up by
700 per cent compared to 2000. (lnternetWorld Stats, January 2009). A brief
review of Information Technology (IT) indicated that more than 70 percent of
Internet users used Internet for sending and receiving e-mails followed with
information search, chat sessions, and instant messaging .. The marketing
implications of this research study can be assessed at two levels. First, at the
level of the five dimensions viz., convenience, security concerns, personality,
user experience and prices that the female online shoppers used to evaluate the
relatively new marketing medium. Second, at the level of using findings on
female online shoppers' demographics and expectations to design and
strengthen its communications strategies.

Keywords: Online Shopping, E-commerce, Internet users, World Wide Web,

Shoppers, Personality, User Experience, Information Technology, Convenience

Aligning Network Security Audit with ISO 27001

Jayant Singh
IT Security Consultant, SecurE yes, India.
Email: er.Jayant_singh@yahoo.com/jayant.singh@secureyes.net

Abstract
This paper is an attempt to relate my freshly gained knowledge about the
IS027001:2005 standard and its controls to a network security audit scenario.
The paper tries to align the network security audit recommendations to
corresponding controls in the IS027001127002 standard [1] [2]. To achieve this
I have taken a case-study of a business network for which network security
audit was performed by our penetration testing team of SecurEyes. SecurEyes is
focused information security consulting organization having head office in
Bangalore, India. For purpose of this paper, the alignment of the audit
recommendations and the applicable IS027001:2005 controls were done in the
final report generated as part of the deliverables for the network security audit.
Benefits of these controls include increased productivity, maximization of
corporate assets, compliance with privacy regulations, protection from legal
liabilities, preserving network bandwidth and resources.

Keywords: ISO, lEO, ISOIIEG 27001, ISOIIEG 27002, Vulnerability,

Gompromise, Attacker, Malicious User, Information Security.

Indexing Of AIML Grammar Files in Response System

Ankush Khanna, Abhishek Garg and Ankur Jain
Dept. of Computer Sc. & Engg.
Lingaya's University, Faridabad, India.
Email: ankushkhanna1988@gmail.com,
abhishek.garg.cse@gmail.com, jain20056@gmail.com

Abstract
When a response system is based on Artificial Intellig"ence Markup Language
(AIML), it uses a compiler for processing the AIML grammar files for giving the
appropriate responses. A compiler is being used that uses php and XML Dom for
giving appropriate response to the user queries. At the time of user query, the
compiler will search in a number of files of AIML grammar, which increases the
complexity, ambiguity and processing time. To improve upon this, the technique
of indexing can be used. In this paper, a way of indexing the grammar files is
being presented. By doing the indexing part, the compiler does not need to
search all AIML files and will only search the related files according to the entries
 in the index table, thus reducing the complexity and processing time.

Keywords: AIML, template, response, srai, pattern, artificial intelligence,

response system, PHP (Hypertext Processor), indexing

1
Knowledge Superpower: Education Technology Management and
Information
Technology Strategy
DrR.C.Chhipa
*
and Prapti
*Centre for Air & Water Modalling,
Computer science and engg, School of Engineering Std
Suresh Gyan Vihar University, Jaipur -302 025
Website: www.gyanvihar.org ; Email- chprcc@rediffmail.com :
cawm@gyanvihar.org
ABSTRACT
By increasing the access to information and augmenting the process of
information exchange and thereby minimizing transaction cost, fast
processing,
information & communication technology (ICT) offers the potential to
increase
efficiency, productivity, competitiveness and growth in various business
social life and
education. The Education technology is so important and accompanying
innovations
technology and that therefore it has profound influence on human
sustainability an
economy. Comprehend the manifold ways in knowledge superpower ICT
enabled
education technology contribute more effectiveness in education technology.
In the context of globalization, the ability to harness this technology can
improves
the capabilities as the new source of wealth is not harnessed the developing
countries
face the threat of further falling behind the developed countries, thereby
accentuating the
inequality across countries. In India there is an increasing awareness of the
multiple roles
of information technology in which ICT could play developmental role in
empowering
manpower of the country. Digital inclusion and Knowledge Management of
education
generates productivity through human resource mobilization.
Deliberately aim of information technology is to spread as widely
privileged
segments of society through which education Technology can be employed
for effective
teaching .E-education is more flexible, have need based academic
programmes, learner
group modular programmes and also flexible in term of place, pace &
duration.
Education technology bring a challenging task to make strong industrial base
and
successful commercialization of technologies and well socialization
application because
it have the qualities of self learning, face to face counseling and practical,
Audio-video,
teleconferencing and radio and interactive radiocounselling,assignment and
feedback and
projects as instrumental methods of education. In addition educational
organizations are
also convinced of the potential role of IT on the socio-economic
transformation. A
number of initiatives towards harnessing ICT for increase the literacy and
increase the
technical manpower Effective and integrated studies support service
network, resource
sharing, mobilizations and networking. Accordingly, technical manpower of
many folds
can be increased in varied professional courses and specifically of private
institutions
which are well equipped institutions. Education technology can organize
training courses
and provide technical assistance to administrators, managers and technical
experts who
can then fabricate and sustain the various professional programs. 2
 Digital inclusion (DI) as e-Education to meet complexity and deliberate
over the
latest for policy developments for teaching techniques , have aimed at not
only to
deliver information and communication technology ( ICT ) but also access
targeted
groups and provide various types of support for learning and capacity
building in India .
For effective education technology IT Strategies must be employed to make
participants
aware and understand Value Creation through digital inclusion, to make
participants
understand the concept of DI based systems applications, to acquaint
tools, techniques
and information to conceptualize, to implement such innovative
programmes in the
area of digital inclusion and their management
Training for trainers is also undertaken so that they can formulate projects,
implement and manage them. Today's technological advancements have
developed more
efficient means of harnessing and using e-resources which judiciously
gaining
popularity. They offer us alternatives to existing conventional system of
knowledge and
their integration for better digital inclusion. The more we use digital
techniques of
education, the more we benefit the citizen of India and definitely strengthen
our
capabilities, security, create jobs, and improve the economy. Further
inclusion of Eeducation and make an IT based Programmed Strategy.
KEYWORDS: Education technology, Technical Manpower, IT Strategy,
Digital
inclusion.
*Author for correspond and e-mail: chprcc@rediffmail.com
INTRODUCTION & OVERVIEW
For digital inclusion in India use the overall direction, standards and
consistency
across the resources and flexibility to drive this plan. Requirements and
initiatives
must be strategic priority to ensure the alignments. India is now in a stage
when it can
take pride of having a strong network of S&T institutions, skilled manpower
with
innovative potential and a strong industrial base backed by equally efficient
financial
institutions.
Accordingly, Govt’s portals and websites are catering to wide variety of
citizen
centre services. Further vital role in implementation of for the common
public are
given. A clear vision, for strategy and their implementations are the crucial
to mitigate
risks associated with the inclusion. E-education initiatives within the
Governments,
presently give enhancement in the aspiration level in IT strategy as
managerial and
technological challenges are the consequence for effective digital inclusion.
For
implementation and assessments of these Government take all possible
measures for
spreading e-education throughout the country , covering all the sectors with
a view to
provide hassle free, transparent and efficient service to the education
community. For
achieving this goal, the government has the approach toward digital
inclusion as IT 3
strategy and application of technology management effectively to increase
capacity in
technical manpower in different areas.
Initiatives for connectivity for e-education projects which are varied in
purpose
and typically project provides means for increased access to computers,
network and
the Internet as a source of information by which education.
RESEARCH & DEVLOPMENTS
Education technology management practically is to build capacity for
increase technical manpower by application of e-education. By
implementation of
education technology higher education is coping with the growing cost of
information
technology security and with the tensions between preserving
confidentiality, ensuring
data integrity, and maintaining an academic environment in which
information is easily
available to authorized users.
EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
Role of teacher is evolving along with growing awareness of how true
learning
takes place. “The teacher” (both in the classroom and in e-education) breaks
into a
multiplicity of roles involving different types of expertise: inspiring,
guiding, evaluating,
and supporting learners in an increasingly complex society. Depends on
the learning
process. The actors may vary depending on student/teacher relationships,
which blur
together when there is more focus on the learning environment rather than
on the roles
individuals play within the environment.Workarounds when the system fails.
ICT’s contribution to better teaching and learning in which models are
useful
in linking specific types of ICT to pedagogical elements conversational
framework and
extended by others. Framework provides a way the organize prior
pedagogical analysis. It
is not a way of classifying and delivering a verdict about quality in terms of
use of new
media forms; rather it is a way of linking and relating media types to
learning and
teaching interactions. To make a value judgment about specific teaching or
learning
strategies or theories, but instead ask a particular technology is appropriate
for a specified
purpose.
The Institute for the future scenarios as a way to get a fresh scenarios about
the
future of e-education, three educational fields: primary/secondary schools,
universities,
and corporate settings in three vast geographic regions: Analyzing E-
Education required
analysis of education in general, with technology as a tool for (not a driver
of) optimum
learning conditions.
For capacity building and quality higher education requires
framework of
National Open Knowledge Grid combined with Technology Enhanced
Learning will
break this impasse and give strategy focused development a major
thrust. 4
Effective Education Technology and ITS Strategies
Information Communication and Technology plays an important role to
provide
effective information related services to citizen and can helps to expand
education,
strengthen the education technology in more efficient means of harnessing
and using eresources which judiciously gaining popularity the increasingly
digital workplace, and
raise educational quality teaching and learning into an engaging, active
process connected
to real life.

Appropriate use of different ICT enabled technologies help to expand access

to
education, strengthen the importance of education to the increasingly digital
workplace,
and raise quality and to help in teaching and learning as connected to
education.
Tools and activities for education technology
To build tools and facilitate for educational communities that support
teaching and
learning including training.
To Work with faculty and students for and brainstorm
To share information’s and disseminates among different institutions in
which approach
of” teachers teach and students learn “.taken can be solved
To apply knowledge of web technologies and design to create powerful and
tools that
support faculty and students in their teaching and learning process
To write software codes and doing design works, including transfer of
proprietary
knowledge to chip’s micro-architecture and physical design.
Higher value-creation opportunities for education community
Educational services providers have to increase their capabilities and expand
their
volume.
Expertise in product development, testing and sustenance and complemented
with clear
understanding of information technology and enables most value chain
product
architecture and design.
Market trend suggesting that the domestic Talent pool is shrinking in the
India because of
less accessibility to e-education
To enjoyed a culture of open access to information and free flow of
information
To challenges as concerns about information security. 5
To promote software enabled to address their ICT problems and thereby
enhance their
own competitiveness
OBJECTIVES OF THE IT STRATEGIES:
Information has been continued to be accumulated in many fold and the in
context, with key determining the external environment. Up gradation of
computing
facilities and connectivity and promotion of technology enhanced e-
education and
which concerned with the technological infrastructure to fulfill object of
the information
strategy and which concerned with how the information services are
organized.
Information strategy acts as academic strategy in which information is
required to
support the key goals, of the education strategy, critical assumptions and
changed
environment and perceptions. Information technology strategy is concerned
with
applications and platforms like, the 'nuts and bolts' of how to provide the
information, to
face the problem and enhanced education technology.
IT strategies are important concerns to knowledge superpower by use of
education technology management use following contexts. Software
industries in India
gain recognition in the early eighties as companies started taking up software
projects at
customer sites. Further, internet access transformed computers from mere
computing
machine to derived information age including telecom expansion
modified the eeducation and other e-business tecnologies.Such as:

Important teaching Skills

Set induction programmes,
Stimulate variations,
Probing questionnaires with deep thinking
Illustrators with examples,
Closure ending the session,
Lecture communication skill,
Explanation techniques for concepts, principles
Use of black board’s accessibility,
Use of audio visual aids,
Value addition systems
Ability to convey listening skills in education people
Class management Techniques
Increase pupil participation
Recognizing attending behavior of students
Home assignments and workouts
Importance of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) the
acquisition of
knowledge and skills 6
India’s knowledge economy gets benefits from the export oriented ICT
growth,
while the use of 'ICT for knowledge superpower seems to have not received
the attention
it deserves in education technology. Thus India’s strategy has been one of
promoting
software technology enable with knowledge superpower and find out other
developed
countries to find out their education problems. Thereby expand access to
education,
enhance their own competitiveness, and make capacity buildings so far as
active process
connected to real life.
Today's highly globalized economy; increase in the competitiveness has
adverse
impact on domestic developments in education as compared with the world
ranking of
our institute organizations and to underline the need for providing greater
focus on the
education technology in our future IT strategy and comprehending social
product for
competitiveness with developed countries and increase productivity,
growth and human
welfare by use of ICTs to prove and help in strengthen of digital
inclusion. To raise
educational quality transmission of a prescribed set of information from
teacher to
student over a fixed period of time and increase digital workplace,
Information and communication technology (ICT) sector in India and their
implications in transforming the country into knowledge economy which
must be
empowered with ICT infrastructure, policies, and present status within the
framework of
India Vision 2020 along with various activities with Digital inclusions
Mental access (motivation) is required first. Once this has been achieved, a
person can mobilize material access (hardware). This will lead to skills
access and
incorporates strategic, instrumental and informational skills. We did not
agree with this
linear progression since our sense was that a more networked, relational
perspective
would be more useful. However, we had to agree that there were certain
conditional
aspects to ac
Importance of ICT for the overall development of IT to improve the living
standard and of the 40 percent of the population which lives below the
poverty line, the
government must play.
ICT initiatives in India to increase Technical Manpower
Existing ICT projects for development have been implemented against the
backdrop. Recommendations made by the National Task Force on IT &
Software
development. To combat the Challenges which covers the problem of lack of
education
and illiteracy in India?
Software development with various recommendations covers wide range of
issues. Development of hardware system for education technology. To
promote the
growth of IT enabled industry, particularly software projects have
effectively 7
implemented with the diffusion of ICT to the specific issues involved in
for
knowledge superpower.
Existing ICT initiatives have been made in a context to explicit policy on
digital
inclusion for development, which takes into account the national and
regional specifics
with emphasis on a realistic assessment of what ICT could do in present
socio-economic
aspect to increase technical manpower.
To Acquaint and understand Value Creation through DI
For capacity building and quality higher education requires
framework of
National Open Knowledge Grid combined with Technology Enhanced
Learning will
break this impasse and give strategy focused development a major
thrust.
This allows for the necessary interdisciplinary approach across relevant
multiple
institutions, industry and organizations that is needed to achieve
the results in
the emerging knowledge driven economy.
To make participants understand the concept of DI based systems and its
applications
Terms such as “real access”, “thick conceptions of access” and “social
inclusion”
give some indication as to the change in thinking about access to ICT.
To acquaint with Tools, Techniques and Information Development and
Implement
such innovative programmes
That would be required to conceptualize, develop and implement such
innovative
programmes in the area of digital inclusion and management of different
departments
Learner Group Modular Programmes Strong Industrial Base and Successful
Commercialization of Technologies
Seekers get benefit in terms of easy access to information for learning’s
some
centers provide opportunities for direct interface New models of innovation
chain and
new paradigms of the science and industry contacts have begun to emerge.
The trends of
techno globalism are bringing in a silent revolution in India. It is rapidly
becoming a
global R&D hub. More than 300 companies have set up their R&D centers.
KNOWLEDGE SUPERPOWER 8
Information technology strategies for India will help transformations of
knowledge superpower, because of immense contribution to economic and
industrial
development which produced high quality skilled technical and managerial
manpower as
capacity building to India. To achieve economy goals to improve their
competitiveness
Economic scenario and growth patterns against the background of
emerging
technologies are the empowered business. Some researchers stress the
economic
importance of ICT, stating, for example, Access to information technology is
crucial for
governance and economic development Others possibilities which ICT
enable, and
prefer the term ‘knowledge democracy’ rather than ‘knowledge economy’
because of the
participatory and social dimensions with which ICT is increasingly
associated. ICT by
contribution in output, employment, export earnings. On account of the
production of
ICT related goods and services which are confined to just one segment of the
economy.
Knowledge creation and acquisition in a country, and availability of
human
resources with education enabled technologies reflects the in intellectual
content which
are embedded in imports from other knowledge-based economies.
Knowledge-based economies must ensure a stable political and economic at
same
time talents will find it conducive to apply their knowledge and flourish in
India.
Knowledge-based economy is basically an economy that creates,
disseminates and uses
knowledge to enhance its growth and development, which depends on the
creation,
acquisition, dissemination and application of knowledge

Higher and Technical education has been growing and knowledge based
industries are now occurring at the central stage in development .There are
now number
of universities are increased after the inclusion of digital era in which many
medical
,agriculture and certain other technical and professional colleges ad
universities are
increased.
DIGITAL INCLUSION AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT OF
EDUCATION
Past few years, concepts of the digital divide and theories of access to ICT
have
evolved beyond a focus on the separation to include just physical access to
computers.
Digital inclusion induced development through enhanced productivity,
competitiveness,
growth and human welfare on account of the use of this technology by the
different
sectors of the economy and society.
Contribution of ICT towards development is due to the growth of ICT and
on
account of ICT diffusion which requires a strategy for expansion of above
and refers
contribution in output, employment, economy enhancement and
production of ICT
services confined developments. 9
Given the scope of the project – with hundreds of possible variables – we
refined
the process to include a range of possibilities for each variable, and then
developed four
plausible scenarios
TECHNIQUES FOR TRAINING AND CAPACITY BUILDING
Quality improvement in education through modernization of syllabus
,networking of institutions, Networking through LAN ,WAN ,Information
and Library
Network (INFLIBNET ) would also leads to increased academic activities
uniform
curriculum course initiatives and teaching methods and trainings by the help
of
education technology.
Digital inclusion programmed are designed for different training techniques
as
their employees, people teaching community, training techniques
programmes are
included related Professionals, Academic institutions, Business institutions
and who
possess an interest in digital inclusion , Training techniques are as follow
(i)Lectures/interactive sessions
(ii)Group Discussions
(iii)Case studies/Group exercises
(iv)Brainstorming sessions/ Experience sharing
(v) Training Support materials/ Handouts Power-point Presentations.

Such projects of teaching techniques and training contribute a broader goal

of
digital inclusion in education and contribute fostering participatory
democracy with
superpower in knowledge.
ADDITIONS FOR CAPABILITY BUILDING WITH DI
Our country's S&T grew in broad directions of the nationally strategic
areas of
under the Atomic Energy, Space, Defense and such areas; do not work
adequately closely
with 'outside' institutions, particularly boosting education and research in
basic sciences,
technology and management that is crucial for the steady supply of high
quality
manpower for their future needs. In some areas, we do not have a clear root
institution to
undertake the leadership.
The cost to the country due to the poor quality of education offered in
the
existing educational system to the country which led to a shortage of
competent
scientists, technologists, thought leaders and professionals. As a country,
we neither
have 10
To play the new role in education technology, capacity building is required
to
enhance the skills of education community’s librarians and other information
workers to
provide education development and information to users. We require to
first
understanding why our present system of higher education is not effective,
because of the
problems faced by our higher education and research institutions.
How we induct technology assisted collaborative system of education
across
colleges and premier institutions to enhance the quality of
education very
substantially in the country's numerous colleges and universities.
Information Systems and Services Architecture: This provides the most
crucial
skeletal ICT framework for the NOKG architecture. It facilitates all the user
groups, their
activities related workflow and services framework. There needs to be some
degree of
consistency across shared resources serviced and maintained by the
different
parties. The NOKG architecture needs several studies and reference
implementation that
fall under the broad class of Advanced Informatics.
In view of the specificity their future prospective are correlated with IT
strategies and education technology management accordingly.
Further following additions are added:
(i) Sharing of knowledge, experiences, technology, infrastructure and
resources for best
utilization.
(ii) Enhancement of computer skills and internet skills
(iii) Eliminate geographical barriers of language, areas
(iv) Various protocols of networking TCP/IP and user datagram protocol
(UDP)
(v) Convenience of reading material online
(vi) Flexibility to teacher techniques by education technology for uploading
the latest
development in digital inclusion
Realize e-learning especially to trainer and professional education
(vii) Integrity of all institution, research institution regulatory bodies
academicians,
Professional
(viii) Technology based competency to establish the context of education
technology
(ix) Meet current system architecture for proper integration
(x) Selection criteria, evaluation, ranking of used software and hardware’s
for different
areas of education: primary, secondary, college.higher and technical
education.
(xi)Researchers have started considering the conditions or criteria for access
and
broadened the concept with additional components.
(xii)E-education covers a vast territory: lifelong learning at all ages and
venues, from the
home to work, with learning inside and outside institutional settings. 11
CONCLUDING REMARKS
More we use digital techniques of education, than more we benefit the
people of
India and definitely strengthen our capabilities, security, create jobs, and
improve the
economy.
The knowledge economy and the growth of knowledge management are
essential
competency of education system because industrial technology depends to
utilize the
skills they have to meet corporate objectives. Information management of
both internal
and external information, alongside the contribution to information
competence and the
ability to contextualize information, contributes excellence in education
system more
effectively through collaboration and partnership.
Further inclusion of E-education with IT based Programmed strategy with.
Array
of information data, architecture decision with technology choices and
Technology
sourcing with security and networking will defines the knowledge
superpower.
Keywords: Governance, corruption, education, education systems,
education
performance, indicators, education expenditures
JEL Classifications: I2, I21, I22, 128, O29Abstract
The impacts of education investments in developing and transition countries
are typically
measured by inputs and outputs. Missing from the education agenda are
measures of
performance that reflect whether education systems are meeting their
objectives; public
resources are being used appropriately; and the priorities of governments are
being
implemented. This paper suggests that good governance can serve as an
entry point to
raising institutional performance in the delivery of education services.
Crucial to high
performance are standards, information, incentives and accountability. This
paper provides
a definition of good governance in education and a framework for thinking
about
governance issues as a way of improving performance in the education
sector.
Performance indicators that offer the potential for tracking relative education
performance
are proposed, and provide the context for the discussion of good governance
in education
in the areas of budget and resource management, human resources,
household payments,
and corruption perceptions. What we do and do not know about effective
solutions to
advance good governance and performance in education is presented for
each area,
drawing on existing research and documented experiences.3
1. Introduction
The impacts of investments in education in developing and transition
countries are
typically measured by inputs and outputs. Focusing on inputs (e.g. number
of teachers or
textbook provision) or aggregate education outcomes (such as literacy rates,
enrollment
and average years of education attained) while important does not capture
performance,
whether resources are actually deployed, or how effectively they are used.
Performance is
difficult to measure but it is critical to do so if education systems are to
achieve their
objectives and to ensure reasonable returns to public investments. This paper
suggests that
using good governance as an entry point can help to focus on performance in
education
service delivery, and in turn, provide policymakers and program managers
with a basis
upon which to raise performance.
What is good governance and why does it matter?
Good governance in education systems promotes effective delivery of
education services.
Critical are appropriate standards, incentives, information, and
accountability, which
induce high performance from public providers (Box 1). Sound provider
performance in
turn, raises the level of education outputs (e.g. school retention) and can
contribute to
improved outcomes (e.g. student test scores). This paper focuses on
incentives,
information, and accountability, that does not mean that standards are
unimportant, rather
these are implicit in the discussion throughout.
Improved public performance is one means to enhance returns to public
education
investments. It can also reduce disparities in education provision if targeted
properly.
1
The paper provides an overview of governance and performance issues in
education, and
attempts to identify what we do, and do not know about effective solutions
to advance
good governance and high performance in education, drawing heavily on the
existing work
of many researchers, specialists, and practitioners. The paper defines
governance, presents
a governance framework, and proposes a set of indicators to track education
sector
performance across countries and over time. The aim is to improve sectoral
performance,
complementing other education system efforts not addressed here, such as
curriculum
development, teacher training, and textbook design.
Moreover, good governance can discourage corruption, an outgrowth of
poor governance,
which directly affects performance of the education sector. The remainder of
this paper
elaborates on the themes of good governance and performance, and the ways
in which they
apply to education.
What is good governance? Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi (2004; 2007)
define it as the
“traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised for
the common
good”, which includes the process of selecting those in authority, capacity of
the
government to manage, and respect for the state (Annex 1). While desirable
and perhaps
necessary for the economic and social wellbeing of countries, these factors
are neither
necessary, nor sufficient to ensure effective public provision of education.
Good
governance in education requires enabling conditions: the existence of
standards,

1
Equity in access to education is not discussed in this paper.4
information on performance, incentives for good performance, and, arguably
most
importantly, accountability (Box 1).
BOX 1. GOVERNANCE AND PERFORMANCE FUNDAMENTALS
Standards are transparent and publicly known criteria or benchmarks used to
assess and
inform education policy, provision, and performance.
Incentives are any financial or non-financial factors that motivate a specific
type of
behavior or action, and can be positive or negative, i.e. encourage a certain
behavior or
deter it.
Information in the form of clear definitions of outputs and outcomes
combined with
accurate data on performance and results collected at regular intervals
enables sanctions
to be imposed when specified standards are not met.
Accountability refers to the act of holding public officials/service providers
answerable
for processes and outcomes and imposing sanctions if specified outputs and
outcomes
are not delivered.
Ackerman (2005) describes accountability as “a pro-active process by which
public
officials inform about and justify their plans of action, their behavior and
results, and are
sanctioned accordingly.”
2
In education, poor governance results in inefficiency in service provision,
and in some
cases no service at all. Lack of standards, information, incentives, and
accountability can
not only lead to poor provider performance but also to corruption, the “use
of public office
for private gain” (Bardhan 1997: 139). However, the line between poor
governance and
corruption is often blurred. Is poor service a function of corruption or simply
of
mismanagement? Improving governance and (thereby) discouraging
corruption in
education ultimately aims to increase the efficiency of education services so
as to raise
performance, and ultimately, improve student learning and labor
productivity.
Accountability requires that public servants have clear
responsibilities and are held answerable in exercising those responsibilities,
and if they do
not, face predetermined sanctions. Without sanctions there cannot be any
real
accountability. Despite its importance to effective delivery of education
services, real
accountability is rare in most public education systems worldwide. Good
governance also
requires effective incentives at all levels of the education system, and both
benchmarks for
and information on performance in order to induce and sustain desirable
behavior.
The political economy context of education plays an important role in
determining whether
the ideas and analysis presented here have a chance of implementation.
Indeed, some of the
performance issues outlined in this paper stem from special interests that
have captured the
agenda and undermine performance. What is intended here is to focus on
factors that help
foster good governance and high performance in education systems.

2
Ackerman distinguishes accountability from transparency and
responsiveness, which have elements of
importance but are not substitutes for accountability.5
Translating good governance into action
This paper identifies the key incentive and accountability issues that
underpin education
sector performance. In this section the conceptual framework for possible
indicators that
can be used to track performance in education service delivery is outlined.
We are
interested not simply in whether there is consultation or not between
different stakeholders
but also that the public sector reaches an acceptable standard of
performance. That
performance entails basic functioning of the education system so that
teachers are hired
based on merit, administrators and teachers show up daily, adequate
numbers of books are
available, funds are budgeted and allocated transparently, incentives are set
to promote
good performance, and corruption is discouraged. Without these basic
ingredients the
broader education system objectives cannot be attained.
For effective service delivery, central public policymakers must have a set of
objectives
that are clear to lower levels of government, which then translate policy into
viable
programs that can be implemented by local government and service
providers. For
instance, (1) ministries of finance and parliaments set budget levels and
broad education
priorities; (2) ministries of education define specific educational objectives
and translate
those objectives into education programs; and (3) depending on whether the
education
system is centralized or decentralized, central or local government
implements by
constructing schools, hiring teachers and so on. This process must contain
appropriate
incentives, performance information, and accountability mechanisms at each
level of the
education system if the desired performance standards are to be attained and
sustained
(Figure 1).
Performance is determined by the nature of these relationships across
policymakers, policy
implementers, and direct providers. How things get done, and performance
at the provider
level, are informed by overall health policy but is defined through the
specific policies and
procedures of the education bureaucracy at central and/or local levels. These
policies and
procedures have built-in incentives, implicit and explicit, which drive
performance in
education service delivery, and can work at cross purposes or be mutually
reinforcing.
The lines of accountability directly influence the effectiveness of
performance incentives.
Teachers hired, paid, and deployed by ministries of education become
accountable to
central government, not to local government, the community, or parents, as
these entities
have no financial or other leverage to hold teachers accountable. The
distance between
provider and central government/ministries of education can therefore
become very long,
and as a result, real accountability through these channels can evaporate
(WDR 2004c).6
FIGURE 1. OVERVIEW OF THE GOVERNANCE PROCESS
Ministry of
education:
Education
policy
Local
government
Provider
performance
Service
delivery quality
&
Education
outcomes
Beneficiaries
&
Stakeholders
direction of incentives direction of accountability
direction of potential accountability
Parliament:
Government
policy
direction of influence
Source: Authors.
While education providers remain technically accountable to the ministry of
education,
local governments, citizens and other stakeholders, in reality, they are
typically not. This is
in part due to the fact that provider accountability is unclear but even if
accountability is
clear, inadequate authority, lack of appropriate incentives, and absence of
information on
performance makes education systems difficult to manage and high
performance hard to
attain. Education ministries’ authority, and therefore, ability to hold line
ministries
accountable is often very limited, and this applies to parents and local
governments as well.
Figure 1 captures these relationships, and the direction of incentives and of
accountability,
between different levels of government, and between government and
providers, and the
roles of stakeholders and beneficiaries outside government.
To improve governance and subsequently the performance of education
systems it is
critical to identify the weak points that contribute to poor performance and
corruption. The
governance process outlined in Figure 1 indicates where governance failures
tend to occur.
For example, pervasive teacher absenteeism in developing countries is a
symptom of
governance failure due to little or no accountability of teachers to employers
or parents.
Budget leakages, where public education funds fail to reach intended
recipients, offers
another sign of governance failure due to some combination of
mismanagement, lack of
incentives to track funds, weak information systems that thwart the ability to
track funds,
and absence of mechanisms that would hold officials to account.7
2. Good Governance in Education: Measuring Performance
Measuring performance is critical to establish benchmarks for efficiency,
compare
performance across time and providers, and assess effectiveness of public
education
investments. Real accountability hinges on having well-defined standards
and adequate
information about performance in education provision to enable
policymakers and program
administrators to improve service delivery.
The performance indicators proposed in this paper are generic enough to be
adapted to
different settings and can serve as a basis for cross-country and within
country
comparisons over time, and offer a menu of options. These indicators
provide a starting
point, drawing on existing data relevant to the education sector, which can
be adopted to
measure performance in education systems in developing and transition
countries. Table 1
shows these indicators, which can be used to detect and assess performance
in education
systems, and also serves as an overview of the types of governance
challenges discussed in
this paper (aggregate-level governance indicators are discussed in Annex 1).
Only indicators for which at least some data are available are shown, other
indicators of
performance but for which there are very limited data are discussed in the
text. Each
indicator is defined here and its salient features briefly discussed, the
indicators are then
elaborated on in each relevant section under the aggregate groupings: budget
and resource
management, human resources, household payments, and institutions.
Budget and resource management
How funds flow through the government bureaucracy offers insights into the
operational
effectiveness of the government’s financial management functions. While
sector specific
measures are preferable, how well the overall system operates provides a
benchmark for
the education sector as financial management tends to be less efficient in
education
ministries than in either ministries of finance or on average across ministries
(although
there are exceptions).
Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) indicators are
expert ratings
of budget performance designed to track budget credibility, transparency,
and the
performance of key institutions involved in the budget cycle. They
effectively provide an
overall assessment of how well the budget process works. While these
indicators currently
only exist for overall public financial management, the process of
developing sectorspecific indicators, including for education, is ongoing.
Budget leakages are the discrepancy between the authorized budget for
education and the
amount of funds received by intended recipients. Leakages may occur at
multiple stages in
the education system: outflows from one level to inflows at the next level,
inflows and
outflows within a specific level; and leakages across multiple levels.
Sometimes leakages
are reported for broad expenditure categories, e.g. total public education
expenditure, other
times for specific expenditure areas such as payments to school teachers in a
particular
local district.
One common component of total budget leakages is payroll irregularities
associated with
ghost workers, those listed on payroll but who no longer (or never did) work
for the
Ministry of Education or a lower level of government. Ghost workers are
typically 8
measured as the discrepancy between the number of teachers on payroll and
the number of
teachers employed as listed on employment records. Payroll irregularities
can also result in
workers who are not paid because employment records fail to include them.
Human Resources
Teachers claim a substantial share of total public education funds and pose a
significant
management challenge given the difficulty of allocating and supervising a
large cadre of
public sector workers. The indicators discussed below aim to capture the
performance
problems associated with the overall teacher selection process, and with
subsequent
performance of teachers once hired.
Job purchasing refers to the purchasing of public positions, which bypasses
hiring based
on objective criteria. Indicators are typically based on perceptions of the
extent to which
personnel hiring decisions are influenced by illegal payments, measured as
the share of
respondents who regard job purchasing to be common or very common, and
in rare cases
the “cost” of a particular job. These perceptions often differ depending on
the position of
the respondent in the education hierarchy making it important to use a cross-
section of
individuals. Related to the purchasing of posts are nepotism and favoritism
in hiring. The
former is defined as the illegal preference given to a relative; the latter as the
illegal
preference given to any person without consideration of relative merit or
other objective
factors. Mainly anecdotal and occasionally some perception-based evidence
is available on
the prevalence of nepotism and favoritism.
Teacher absenteeism is defined as the proportion of teachers (and/or
administrators)
contracted to be working on site during the period(s) of observation but who
are not
present and captures the underperformance of education providers and,
depending on the
reason for absence, fraud associated with unexcused absences. Teacher
absence data can be
collected by various means: surprise visits, direct observation at schools,
attendance
records kept by school administrators, or other methods that document
actual and expected
attendance (see Patrinos and Kagia 2007 and Rogers and Vegas 2009 for
comprehensive
overviews).
It is extremely difficult to reflect teacher performance in a single, direct
indicator since
any individual teacher’s performance depends not only on her training, skill,
and effort but
also on those of her co-workers, the availability of necessary equipment and
materials, and
student characteristics. Instead, indirect measures such as assessments of the
existence and
effectiveness of incentive and accountability mechanisms faced by teachers
can provide
insights and be useful for designing improved arrangements.
Household payments
Informal payments in education are charges for education services meant to
be provided
for free, or paid “under-the-table” directly to public officials or teachers to
obtain specific
favors. These are generally measured as the fraction of survey respondents
reporting that
they made payments to a public education entity for education services
intended to be free
of charge. Household surveys and perception surveys of citizens and public
officials are
the most common sources of information. More detailed surveys may also
include the
average value of payments made, to whom, and for what specific service.
Types of 9
informal payments include but are not restricted to payments for admission,
advancement,
preferential access to resources, and specific grades.
TABLE 1. PERFORMANCE ISSUES AND INDICATORS FOR
EDUCATION
AREA ISSUE KEY INDICATOR(S)
Budget processes
PEFA indicators track budget credibility, comprehensiveness, transparency,
execution, recording, reporting, and external audits and scrutiny.
Budget leakages
Discrepancy between budgeted public education funds and the amounts
received by education providers.
Payroll irregularities Discrepancy between payroll roster and health workers
on site.
Job purchasing
Frequency of illegal side-payments/bribes influencing hiring decisions and
of
payments for particular assignments.
Teacher absenteeism
Fraction of teachers contracted for service but not on site during the
period(s) of
observation.
Informal payments Frequency of iIllegal charges for publicly provided
education services.
Academic fraud Fraction of respondents perceiving academic fraud
involving payments.
Involuntary private tutoring
Frequency of teachers charging for private tutoring of academic material
omitted
from the required curriculum.
Perceptions of corruption
Fraction of households, public officials, or experts reporting corruption in
the
education sector.
Relative ranking of education sector on corruption indices.
Institutional quality The Country and Policy Institutional Asessements
(CPIA) for education.
Source: Authors.
BUDGET AND
RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
HUMAN
RESOURCES
CORRUPTION
PERCEPTIONS
HOUSEHOLD
PAYMENTS10
A special case of informal payments are involuntary private tutoring
payments, fees
paid for supplementary tutoring in academic subjects meant to be covered
during regular
school hours but intentionally omitted (tutoring of material that is omitted
due to, for
instance, a genuine lack of time are not involuntary). Some data on
payments for all private
tutoring (voluntary and involuntary) exist but data on involuntary private
tutoring
payments are very difficult to obtain. Given the prevalence and growth of
private tutoring
in many developing countries, more information is needed to assess the
extent of informal
(illegal) payments versus legal private tutoring payments, a crucial
distinction for assessing
inappropriate behavior.
Academic fraud by its nature often goes undetected and few data are
available. Academic
fraud includes but is not limited to: cheating on examinations, result
falsification,
credentials fraud, and diploma milling. Here the focus is on academic fraud
that entails
informal payments for which perceptions of academic fraud based on
surveys of students,
teachers or experts are the best source of data (Hallak and Poisson 2007).
Corruption Perceptions
Aggregate measures of corruption and institutional quality are difficult to
create given the
breadth of relevant factors. Kauffman, Kraay, and Mastruzzi (2007) have
developed
general indices of corruption that integrate the results from multiple
perceptions surveys
(see Annex 1). Some education sector specific indicators of corruption and
institutional
quality also exist, and complement the aggregate measures.
The World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA),
assesses
overall institutional quality and also by sector, including for education. But
the CPIA
includes a broad range of issues, some which affect performance and some
that do not, and
the degree of variation across countries is limited. Perceptions of corruption
in
education are generally reported as one of the following: the fraction of
citizens, public
officials, or experts perceiving worse-than-neutral corruption outcomes, an
average of all
scores across interview categories, or respondents’ ranking of how corrupt
the education
sector is relative to other sectors. While these perception measures are
imperfect they
complement the disaggregated indicators discussed above. Perceptions
matter because
people may change their behavior, including education decisions, based on
these
perceptions even if incorrect, and where perceptions are largely negative,
this suggests the
need to examine the performance of education service delivery more
carefully.
Potential data and information sources for the indicators outlined above are
shown in Table
2. Some of the data and information are readily available and based on
administrative data.
Others draw on large surveys, some of which have only been conducted in
selected
countries (e.g. Quantitative Service Delivery Surveys (QSDS) and Public
Expenditure
Tracking Surveys (PETS)). Living Standard Measurement Surveys (LSMS),
other
household surveys, and public expenditure reviews exist for more countries
but are
administered intermittently. Still, such surveys offer a wealth of data and the
basis for
useful analysis that can shed light on education service delivery
performance.11
TABLE 2. SOURCES OF PERFORMANCE DATA IN EDUCATION
GOVERNANCE AREA ISSUE INDICATOR(S)
Budget
processes
° Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability indicators
° Focus groups with public officials, recipient institutions, and civil society
° Interviews with public officials, recipient institutions, and civil society
Budget
leakages
° Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys
° Public Expenditure Reviews
° Focus groups with public officials, recipient institutions, and civil society
° Interviews with public officials, recipient institutions, and civil society
Payroll
irregularities
° Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys
° Public Expenditure Reviews
° Focus groups with public officials
° Household surveys
Job
purchasing
° Official administrative records combined with facility surveys
° Focus groups with public officials and teachers
° Governance and Anti-Corruption Country Diagnostic surveys
Teacher
absenteeism
° Quantitative Service Delivery Surveys
° Surprise visits
° Direct observation
° Facility records
° Focus groups with headmasters and parents
° Interviews with headmasters and parents
Teacher
performance
° Direct observation
° Facility surveys
° Focus groups with teachers, students, and parents
° Administrative records
Informal
payments
Academic
fraud
Involuntary
private
tutoring
Perceptions
of corruption
° Governance and Anti-Corruption Country Diagnostic surveys
Institutional
quality
° WB Country Policy and Institutional Assessements (CPIA)
Source: Compiled by authors.
INSTITUTIONS
° Household surveys
° Focus groups with providers/students/parents
° Interviews with providers/students/parents
° Governance and Anti-Corruption Country Diagnostic surveys
BUDGET AND RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
HOUSEHOLD
PAYMENTS
HUMAN
RESOURCES12
The set of indicators discussed above are unevenly available and only
sometimes enable
comparison across countries, or over time, and even less often across regions
and schools
within countries. However, when they are available they provide important
insights into
governance challenges and performance issues in education. Ideally, data for
indicators
such as these should be collected on a regular basis and be made publicly
available to
provide the basis for improving incentives and accountability in education,
and ultimately
performance.
The remainder of this paper places each indicator from Table 1 into context
describing the
underlying governance failure and performance problems, and presents
available evidence
on potential solutions to address these challenges.
3. Budget and Resource Management
Without funding public education services grind to a halt. The flow of public
funds and the
ability to manage funds at the provider level thus become the first level of
concern for
performance of the education system. Where funds originate, consistency in
disbursement
and financial management combined with spending discipline at the school
level are the
broad categories of concern in budget and resource management. Effective
incentives and
accountabilities across the government, from the Ministry of Finance
through the Ministry
of Education, and across all entities involved in dissemination of funding to
education
providers are crucial, and therefore, this section is concerned with how well
funds move
through the institutions shown in Figure 1.
Weak governance structures, characterized by low capacity to plan, allocate
and execute
budgets; weak internal controls; poor management and supervision of funds;
absence of
external accountability (including audits); and distorted incentives that
considerably
increase the opportunity for mismanagement and corruption, affect the
funding received by
education providers, and thereby the delivery of education services. Table 3
outlines some
common vulnerabilities in public financial management (PFM) systems by
area.
Public financial management has well-developed standards and benchmarks
for
performance that are widely endorsed. Ensuring sound financial
arrangements that limit
leakages is the first step in building a high performance public sector,
including education,
and effective incentives and real accountability are the backbone of
successful
arrangements.13
TABLE 3. OVERVIEW OF VULNERABILITIES IN PUBLIC
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
Vulnerabilities
• Absence of clear rules on hiring
• Absence of management controls, internal controls
• Absence or weakness in internal audit, external audit
• Absence of treasury payroll matching
• Absence of records, weak record record keeping
• Absence of management mandates for and review of
regular financial reports
• Absence of nonpayroll expenditure controls
• Absence of inventory control, asset registry
• Weak procurement system
• Absence of management oversight and review of
payment and procurement practices
• Cash or in-kind transfers
• Weak or no record keeping
• Absence of clear procedures for processing
• Failure to follow procedures
• Absence of clear laws, regulations, rules for eligibility,
criteria
• Absence of nonpayroll expenditure controls
• Absence of management oversight and review of
payment and procurement practices
• Weak procurement system
Source: Adapted from Dorotinsky and Pradhan (2007).
Capital
expenditures
Employee
compensation
Goods and
services
Transfers
Measuring budget performance
It is difficult to assess budget performance directly but some very useful
process indicators
exist based on the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA)
framework.
This uses a comprehensive set of 31 indicators to assess overall performance
of public
financial management systems (PEFA Secretariat 2005).
3
Table 4
Indicators especially relevant to
education are shown in .

3
At the time of writing, PEFA assessments had been carried out in 100
countries, out of which about 40
assessments are publicly available.14
TABLE 4. SELECTED PUBLIC EXPENDITURE AND FINANCIAL
ACCOUNTABILITY (PEFA)
INDICATORS RELEVANT TO EDUCATION
Predictability and control in budget
execution
Budget credibility
Budget comprehensiveness and
transparency
° Predictability in the availability of
funds for commitment of expenditures
° Aggregate expenditure outturn
compared to original approved budget
° Transparency of intergovernmental fiscal relations
° Recording and management of cash
balances, debt and guarantees
° Composition of expenditure out-turn
compared to original approved budget
° Public access to key fiscal
information
° Effectiveness of payroll controls
° Competition, value for money and
controls in procurement
° Effectiveness of internal controls for
non-salary expenditure
° Effectiveness of internal audit
Policy-based budgeting Accounting, recording and reporting External
scrutiny and audit
° Orderliness and participation in the
annual budget process
° Availability of information on resources
received by service delivery units
° Scope, nature and follow-up of
external audit
Source: PEFA Secretariat (2005).
The PEFA indicators are rated from 1-4 with + modifiers (4 indicating
strongest
performance).
4
The PEFA indicators are useful for identifying where in the budget process
governance
and performance problems exist. For example, a poor score on the aggregate
expenditure
outturn compared to original approved budget indicator may be a sign of
poor
management, inadequate monitoring of processes, and/or of weak
disbursement systems.
In any event, there is a clear absence of accountability in financial
management. If a
country scores low on the effectiveness of payroll controls indicator, the
problem of
payroll irregularities may be serious. A low score on availability of
information on
resources received by service delivery units indicator suggests some
combination of
inadequate transparency, poor recordkeeping, low budget management
capacity, and
insufficient accountability.
Scores for three PEFA indicators especially relevant to education: (1)
aggregate expenditure compared to original approved budget (in some
countries there are
large discrepancies suggesting that allocated resources do not reach service
providers), (2)
effectiveness of payroll controls (a particularly critical issue for education
given that the
payroll costs in education are the largest among government sectors), and (3)
availability
of information on resources received by service delivery units.

4
The PEFA indicators are rated from A (best) to D with + modifiers, here we
have converted them into
numerical values for ease of exposition.15
Data for five countries are shown in Figure 2 to illustrate relative
performance across these
three areas. Bangladesh scores relatively poorly on all three indicators; the
Dominican
Republic scores the worst on aggregate expenditure outturn compared to the
original
approved budget; Macedonia scores comparatively poorly on information on
resources
received by service delivery units; and Mozambique and the Ukraine both
score poorly
with respect to the effectiveness of payroll controls. PEFA indicators can
thus be helpful
in pinpointing and prioritizing areas where action is needed to strengthen
budget processes
and help bolster good governance in PFM.
FIGURE 2. SELECTED PUBLIC EXPENDITURE AND FINANCIAL
ACCOUNTABILITY (PEFA)
INDICATORS FOR FIVE COUNTRIES, 2005-07
43210
Selected PEFA budget performance indicators
Bangladesh Dominican Republic Macedonia Mozambique Ukraine
Aggregate expenditure outturn compared to original approved budget
Effectiveness of payroll controls
Availability of information on resources received by service delivery unit
Source: PEFA Secretariat (various years).
Budget Leakages
Weaknesses in budget management can result in funds never arriving at their
intended
destination due to mismanagement, arbitrary reallocation or theft, and where
allocated
education funding is not disbursed, or is diverted en route from the point of
disbursement
to schools, education provision tends to suffer.
Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS) and Public Expenditure
Reviews (PERs) are
important means to track funds and scrutinize the flow of public resources in
education
across administrative layers (Engberg-Pedersen et al. 2005; Reinikka and
Smith 2004; 16
Savedoff 2008).
5
PETS can be a useful tool for determining where leakages occur in the flow
of funds, and
what types of flows are more vulnerable to leakage in a particular country.
There are
several potential leakage points as illustrated in
Tracking inflows, understanding spending, and identifying where
governance failures may arise, PETS and PERs complement what PEFA
evidence reveals
about government-wide performance, thereby offering an important
diagnostic on budget
management and possible leakages.
Figure 3: discrepancies between budgeted
and disbursed funds; differences in outflows from one level to inflows at the
subsequent
level; differences between inflows and outflows within a specific level; and
leakages
across multiple levels in the chain of budget allocations (Savedoff 2008).
FIGURE 3. OVERVIEW OF POTENTIAL LEAKAGE POINTS
Level and Recorded Information Potential Leakage
Absenteeism, Theft
Level 1
Budgeted
Authorized
Disbursed
Level 2
Inflow
Outflow
Level 3
Inflow
Outflow
Facility
Inflow
Outputs
Diversion
Policy Changes
Diversion, Theft, Administration
Diversion
Diversion
Diversion, Theft, Administration
Diversion, Theft, Administration
Level and Recorded Information Potential Leakage
Absenteeism, Theft
Level 1
Budgeted
Authorized
Disbursed
Level 2
Inflow
Outflow
Level 3
Inflow
Outflow
Facility
Inflow
Outputs
Diversion
Policy Changes
Diversion, Theft, Administration
Diversion
Diversion
Diversion, Theft, Administration

Diversion, Theft, Administration

Source: Savedoff (2008).
The much cited study on Uganda by Reinikka and Svensson (2004) provides
an example
of extensive budget leakages; in 1995, on average, only 22 percent of
capitation grants
reached primary schools. The leakage of these funds was likely due to a
combination of
non-disbursement for bureaucratic reasons, diversion of resources to
purposes other than
education, and private capture by local officials and politicians.
Evidence from PETS in other countries further illustrates the extent of
leakages in primary
education (Table 5). Certain types of funding, discretionary as opposed to
rules-based, and
in-kind and cash flows, may be more susceptible to leakages. In Zambia,
leakages of fixed

5
For access to available PETS by country see
http://go.worldbank.org/HSQUS4IS20. Also see Savedoff
(2008).17
school grants were estimated at 10 percent compared to 76 percent for a
discretionary nonwage grant program in 2001 (Reinikka and Smith 2004).
A PETS for Tanzania in 1998 showed that merely 43 percent of non-wage
funding
destined for primary schools reached schools with the remaining 57 percent
going to noneducation sectors and private capture. Similarly, a PETS for
Ghana found that in 2001 only
51 percent of grants made it to end-users. The 49 percent that did not reach
schools were
seemingly lost between line ministries and districts at the point at which
public funds were
converted into in-kind transfers (Reinikka and Smith 2004).
TABLE 5: BUDGET LEAKAGES OF NON-WAGE FUNDS IN
PRIMARY EDUCATION IN
SELECTED COUNTRIES, 1995-2001
Expenditure program Leakages (%)
Uganda (1995) Per capita student capitation grant 87
Zambia (2001) Discretionary non-wage grant program 76
Tanzania (1998) Non-wage spending in (multiple programs) 57
Ghana (1998) Non-wage spending in (multiple programs) 49
Papua New Guinea (2001) School fee subsidy 16-29
Zambia (2001) Fixed school grant 10
Source: Instituto Apoyo and World Bank (2002); Reinikka and Smith
(2004); World Bank (2004a).
Most education PERs address governance and performance problems,
explicitly or
implicitly, and contain information on performance and potential solutions
to identified
governance weaknesses and performance challenges.
A PER for Sierra Leone describes a stark case of leakages but also hints at a
possible
solution. Schools receive a per student fee subsidy each term but there were
serious
problems in ensuring that the subsidies actually reached schools. Two
different methods
were used to transfer the subsidy to schools. The first allocated the subsidy
to the
Education Secretaries and to the District Education Offices, for onward
transfer to schools.
The second used a third-party, KPMG, to distribute the subsidy directly to
the schools
(World Bank 2004b).
The first method led to substantial leakages with merely 45 percent of the
funds disbursed
centrally, and 28 percent of teaching materials, reaching schools during the
last two terms
of the school year 2001-2002 (Transparency International 2004). When
funds were instead
transferred via KPMG during the first term of 2002-2003, 78.8 percent of
funds disbursed
centrally reached schools, and 98.6 percent of the funds actually transferred
to KPMG
reached schools, and about 70 percent of teaching materials (World Bank
2004b;
Transparency International 2004). A 10 percent service charge was paid to
KPMG, and
some transportation costs were incurred, thus the loss between central
disbursement and
KPMG was no more than 10 percent (Sewell 2004).
The difference in the amount of the subsidy received under the two delivery
methods is
stark. However, some anecdotal evidence suggests that now leakages occur
after schools
receive funds, rather than en route (World Bank 2004b). This underlines the
importance of 18
having effective incentives, accurate and up-to-date financial information,
and
accountability mechanisms at all levels of the education system so as not to
shift leakages
from one level to another.
Payroll irregularities
Teachers listed on payroll and being paid but who no longer, or never,
worked at a school
are manifested as payroll irregularities, and are made possible by the
absence of accurate
and updated employee records, functioning information systems, payroll
controls, and
internal and external controls (e.g. payroll audits). The flipside is not
uncommon, where
teachers who are on the payroll do not receive their wages (or receive them
with great
delay).
Multiple reasons account for the discrepancy between employee records,
actual numbers of
teachers employed, and teachers listed on payroll. Lists of public sector
teachers are
sometimes kept by multiple agencies (e.g. the Ministry of Education, the
Ministry of
Finance, and schools) and are often infrequently updated. Where teachers
have left, died,
or retired, and those separations are not recorded there is a disconnect
between official
records and actual teacher numbers. Such problems may be the result of
administrative
error or fraud, and suggest the need for efforts to strengthen both personnel
and budget
management, and accountability. Poor scores on the PEFA indicator
effectiveness of
payroll controls (Table 4) may imply the existence of ghost teachers on
payroll.
Some of the estimates of the prevalence of ghost workers that are available
come from
Uganda, Honduras, and Papua New Guinea. Ghost workers were estimated
to account for
approximately 20 percent of primary teachers in Uganda in 1995, by
2005/06 this share
had declined to 4 percent (World Bank 2007c). In Honduras, 2.9 percent of
education staff
and 4.6 percent of primary school teachers did not exist in surveys from
2000 (Dehn,
Reinikka, and Svensson 2003).
In Papua New Guinea, there was notable discrepancy between the number of
teachers on
payroll and those on school rosters for a sample of 205 schools surveyed.
Figure 4 shows
how the different gross and net rates were computed. The total number of
teachers listed on
payroll was 5,982, out of these 1,534 teachers were on the surveyed PESD
schools’ roster
and also on the payroll; 346 teachers were on payroll but not on any of the
surveyed
schools’ roster, a gross ghost teacher rate of 15 percent.19
FIGURE 4. GHOST TEACHERS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA, 2002
Source: World Bank (2004a).
Another area in which poor governance often results in resource leakages
and corruption is
public procurement. This is due to the uniqueness of the public procurement
process in that
(1) private sector participants who are stakeholders in the outcome of the
process directly
participate; (2) large, discrete amounts of public expenditure are involved;
and (3) it entails
significant discretion on part of public officials (PEFA Secretariat 2005).
When
governance is weak, manifested by the lack of a clearly regulated
procurement process;
little or no accountability; weak incentives for public officials involved in
the process to
ensure an efficient and fair process; and inadequate oversight and controls,
the opportunity
for inefficiencies and corruption is exacerbated (Ware et al. 2007).
In the education sector, poor governance provides opportunities for leakages
and other
irregularities in procurement for the construction and maintenance of school
buildings, the
purchase and distribution of textbooks, the acquisition of school supplies,
and the delivery
of school meals. For example, in the Philippines, a 1998 audit found that the
Department
of Education had bought US$320,000 worth of textbooks that were
overpriced by bidders,
not fit for use, or simply not delivered (Leung 2005; OECD 2006). A
combination of
factors, including non-transparent procurement rules, inadequate controls,
and the inability
to effectively hold public officials with significant discretion over
procurement decisions
accountable, led to the collapse of public sector performance.20
Potential solutions
Between inputs and outputs, and between outputs and outcomes, are the
institutional and
public sector actions that define performance. The budget and resource
management
solutions aimed at improving governance and thereby education sector
performance listed
below vary in scope and design but all share common elements: the need to
put in place
effective incentives, increase oversight, and introduce accountability.
Performance based budgeting
One potential way to address poor governance in public financial
management is
performance based budgeting, which links allocated funds to measurable
outputs or
outcomes to improve resource allocation and resource-use efficiency to
enhance the quality
of public expenditures and, ultimately, public service provision (OECD
2007; World Bank
2008). Two main characteristics set performance-based budgeting apart from
traditional
budgeting systems: “the greater focus on the achievement of public program
objectives and
their alignment with government policies” and “an emphasis on holding
senior officials
accountable for deliverables – often with an accompanying change in the
nature of
expenditure controls, away from detailed ‘line item’ input controls to one
where managers
are held accountable for both results and the use of inputs” (World Bank
2008: 6). Only
some qualitative evidence on the effectiveness of overall performance-based
budgeting in
improving performance exists for developing and transition countries, and
evidence for the
education sector in particular is lacking.
Increasing internal transparency: information and its systematic application
Internal transparency, which ensures that information and data are recorded
accurately and
on a regular basis, and are available to decision makers on demand, is a vital
component of
good governance in budget and resource management. When internal
transparency is
strong, monitoring of management is more effective and detection of
irregularities in the
budget process easier. To strengthen internal transparency typically requires
the creation of
effective information management systems, training of staff in their
application and use,
and, crucially, the introduction of incentives for accurate reporting of data
and their use.
The importance of getting incentives right is illustrated by the Sierra Leone
example.
Comparing EMIS data on student enrollment with those from two other
sources and from
random checks it became apparent that some districts were significantly
over-reporting
their student numbers as school principals had strong incentives to over-
report but no
incentives to report accurately (Hamminger 2008).
Improving internal controls: oversight, audits, and simplification
Management control and oversight are necessary to implement financial and
budget rules,
establish civil servant accountability, and improve performance. Audits can
detect a range
of financial irregularities and provide information on means to rectify
problems when
incentives to follow up and respond to audit findings are in place. To help
minimize the
time and cost of audits, education and finance ministries can undertake
record
simplification and procedural streamlining. Improved oversight, follow-
through on
recommendations, and institutionalization of audit procedures can promote
progress in
these areas.21
Strengthening external accountability mechanisms: parental and community
involvement
Improved access to information on education budget allocations and
disbursements for
stakeholders (e.g. parents and civil society) can complement initiatives such
as those
mentioned above. This is particularly relevant to primary education (whereas
at tertiary
level there is less potential for influencing policy or its execution). These
measures have
been shown effective in Uganda where a campaign publishing monthly
inter-governmental
transfers of education funds in the main newspapers and posting details of
primary
education funds transfers on notice boards in schools and district centers
provided parents
with information, which enabled them to hold local officials and providers
accountable for
funds transfers (Reinikka and Svensson 2005). Still, this type of action
arguably only
works when parents and communities have the ability and means to
discipline providers if
they perform poorly, and also tend to depend on the education and income
levels of
parents. More evidence is needed to determine how and when access to
information can
help strengthen external accountability.
Payroll cleanup and management
Regular updating of employee lists and payroll commitments is a basic
management tool
and is a high priority for education systems, which have large numbers of
employees.
While politically difficult and not inexpensive, accurate, up-to-date
employee records are a
critical starting point for improving staff management and reducing payroll
irregularities.
Physical verification where teams visit points of pay and verify that teachers
on payroll
exist and are being paid the correct salary can be carried out. A less costly
method is to
have auditors carry out spot checks at schools to verify that teachers on
payroll exist.
Uganda has undertaken several payroll cleanups and has seen a decline in
the share of
ghost teachers from roughly 20 percent in 1993 to 4 percent in 2005/06
(World Bank
2007c). However, it is not possible to determine how large a share of this
decline is
attributable to payroll cleanups although they have likely contributed.
Tracking the flow of funds
PERs and PETs in the education sector can provide information on where
budget leakages
take place during the flow of funds. Quantitative Service Delivery Surveys
(QSDS)
provide a useful complement since they track services instead of flows of
funds, providing
further information on areas that are prone to leakage. Once the main
governance
weaknesses contributing to leakages have been identified priority actions can
be outlined.
For instance, education PETS for Tanzania and Uganda served to determine
at which
administrative level of the education system leakages were most likely to
occur (local
level) and a Zambia PETS addressed what type of funding, rules-based or
discretionary
was more vulnerable to leakages (discretionary funding) (Savedoff 2008).22
Outsourcing disbursement of funds to independent third-party
Contracting out disbursements to an independent third-party can substitute
or complement
government efforts, and are particularly useful in fragile states with little
existing capacity
to ensure that public funds reach their destination. In general, contracting out
should be a
temporary strategy until public financial management systems have been
sufficiently
strengthened (see Sierra Leone example in Budget Leakages section).
Making it easier for end-users to access goods and funds
Facilitating the receipt of education funds by making disbursement directly
to front-line
providers may help ensure that schools receive funds if check and balances
are in place to
avoid frontline providers capturing public funds (instead of officials at
higher levels in the
education system). In Kenya, a primary education project arranged to have
textbook grants
transferred directly to primary school bank accounts. School Committees
could then
purchase books locally (World Bank 2003). Recent INT audits showed
virtually no
leakages.
Introducing (and enforcing) clear and transparent procurement rules
Establishing clear and transparent procurement rules including clear and
objective criteria
for prequalification and bidding procedures with explicit specifications to
avoid hidden
wires (specifications in proposed bids that are written in such a way as to
benefit certain
manufacturers or a single group) is crucial to assure competition and
efficiency.
Introducing e-procurement
E-procurement allow governments to use information technology in the
procurement
process to create more transparent and efficient arrangements for bidding on
and awarding
of contracts by improving access to information, increasing efficiency, and
promoting
competition, ultimately lowering costs and raising the quality of purchased
education
goods and services. The introduction of e-procurement (for all sectors) has
been highly
successful in reducing costs and corruption in several countries including the
Republic of
Korea, Mexico, and Chile (Ware et al. 2007).
External monitoring of procurement: engaging stakeholders
In countries where central governments do not have the resources or
capacity to monitor
each local school district to check if supplies reach schools, participation of
civil society
and community volunteers in monitoring the procurement process can
improve the
procurement and delivery of school supplies. These volunteers can also
serve as checks on
government officials and agencies engaged in the procurement process. One
example is the
national textbook delivery program, Textbook Count 1-2-3, in the
Philippines started in
2003 to address corruption in textbook procurement (Leung 2005; OECD
2006). The
program ensured that the tendering process selected the best qualified
suppliers relied on
volunteers from the Scouts, the National Movement for Free Elections,
church-based and
other local groups to monitor, and in some cases physically deliver
textbooks to schools.
The program succeeded in decreasing the cost of each textbook by roughly
50 percent and
in providing nearly all schools with timely supplies of textbooks
(Department of Education
2007).23
Acting on findings of corrupt behavior
Random forensic audits in which auditors select specific procurement
projects and
scrutinize actual submitted invoices, check on the quality and quantity of
contracted
supplies, investigate whether a contractor actually exists and so on, can help
government
detect irregularities and deter firms from inappropriate behavior. If audits
detect corruption
but the prospects of being disciplined are small or non-existent, corrupt
officials and firms
will not be deterred from further corrupt behavior. The stringency of
sanctions for
procurement fraud varies substantially across countries, from dismissal to
prison in Hong
Kong to virtually none in Bangladesh (ADB/OECD 2006). For effective
sanctioning, a
complaints system staffed by independent investigators with the authority to
scrutinize
contracts is necessary, and when corruption is discovered, publication of
sanctions can
serve to deter other firms and officials from wrongdoing.
Establishing voluntary disclosure programs
The creation of voluntary disclosure programs that allows contractors to
report on
corruption in exchange for immunity or milder sanctions and do not prohibit
reporting
firms from participating in bidding on future contracts, can help reduce
procurement
corruption. Several countries already have some version of such programs,
e.g. Argentina,
Brazil, and Pakistan, and so far there has been some success in discouraging
procurement
irregularities (Ware et al. 2007).
4. Performance of Human Resources
Teachers represent one of the largest groups of civil servants, and as a result,
the education
sector claims a substantial fraction of national budgets. Because education is
labor
intensive, human resource management and the performance of teachers
largely define the
scope and performance of education service delivery. How public sector
teachers are
recruited, deployed, monitored, and perform is governed by underlying
education system
incentives and lines of accountability.
Hard evidence on these topics is scarce; most of the available measures of
teacher
performance are negative and include indicators such as absenteeism and
reliance on
bribery or personal contacts to obtain jobs and promotions. This section
outlines the main
governance issues and potential performance indicators, and examines
existing evidence
and possible solutions to the persistent challenges facing human resource
management in
education.
Designing recruitment and assignment to improve performance
Civil service regulations and recruitment systems are intended to ensure a
professional,
politically neutral workforce with appointment and promotion based on
transparent civil
service regulations and pay scales. With those advantages can come
disincentives for
performance including compression of pay differentials that make rewards
minimal,
promotion based on seniority rather than performance, lack of mechanisms
to monitor
effort, and limited or no freedom of managers to reward and discipline staff.
Civil service 24
reforms can address some of these limitations but pose political and
operational
difficulties.
Teacher performance can be enhanced through policies that promote the
recruitment,
hiring, transfer, and assignment of adequately trained staff; appropriate
performance
incentives; and effective accountability mechanisms. While it is relatively
simple to outline
the processes, implementation is complex. Without consideration of these
components
human resource management becomes susceptible to some combination of
political
manipulation, mismanagement, nepotism/favoritism, and fraud, which tend
to compromise
performance.
A modified version of the teacher education and development framework
designed by the
US Educational Testing Service (ETS) summarizing how high-performing
country systems
screen for high-quality teachers is shown in Table 6. These systems include
the following
components: standards for entrance into and exit from teacher education
programs,
certification requirements, and minimum academic qualifications (Wang et
al. 2003).
6
TABLE 6. POTENTIAL CONTROLS FOR TEACHER TRAINING AND
HIRING
Intensity of
controls
Entry to teacher
education
Exit from teacher
education
Teacher certification Hiring
High Must exceed threshold
levels on subject area
examinations,
advanced level national
examinations or
university entrance
examinations.
Systemwide exit
examinations in subject
areas and on other
topics.
Systemwide
examinations.
Pass of national
examination with high
score required;
additional tests
required locally.
Medium Must exceed threshold
levels on school exit
examinations or
national examinations.
Institutional
examinations in subject
area and on other
topics.
Some evaluation of
teaching is required
and is reviewed by
statutory authorities.
Decision is made by
state authorities or
national ministry with
set thresholds for
passage required on
multiple criteria.
Low Must pass a basic
skills test.
Degree requirements,
perhaps plus a basic
skills test.
Degree requirements
only.
Up to individual school.
Source: Adapted from Wang et al. (2003).
Note: Criteria can be high-standard where candidates are required to satisfy
a certain criterion to continue. A mediumstandard criterion is one that a
candidate has to satisfy but, which is easier to satisfy than other regulations.
A low-standard
criterion is a minimum or voluntary requirement.
These components are useful for controlling the quality of the flow of
teachers into and out
of teacher education systems, and into public sector jobs. The existence and
application of
controls can help avoid or reduce irregularities such as favoritism and
nepotism in hiring
and sale of teaching posts (e.g. hiring based on national test scores), and
bribery (e.g.
certification based on systemwide examinations). Clearly, the number of
controls, their

6
High-performing countries are those whose eight-graders performed as well
or better than American
students on mathematics or science in TIMMS 1999; these countries were
Australia, England, Japan, Hong
Kong, the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands and Singapore.25
design, intensity, and where along the teacher education pipeline they are
implemented will
vary across countries depending on country circumstances (Table 6).
Hiring and assignment: discouraging favoritism, nepotism, and purchasing
of posts
Favoritism is the illegal preference given to any person while nepotism is the
illegal
preference given to a relative (Hallak and Poisson 2007). Favoritism and
nepotism often
do not involve bribes whereas purchasing of posts does. In the latter case, a
teacher may,
pay an official to be hired, or to get a specific position (e.g. urban rather than
rural). Hiring
and appointments are susceptible to both forms of corruption when the
recruitment process
is not transparent, rules are not made public, and there are no credible
sanctions for
inappropriate behavior.
Teachers sometimes perceive the promotional process in their country to be
nontransparent and unfair because posts are not advertised, which creates
distrust in the
recruitment system. In some countries, education administrators are
recruited based on
party affiliation, or teachers based on union membership, for example in
Mexico (Hallak
and Poisson 2007). Unsurprisingly, there is little systematic evidence on the
incidence of
favoritism and nepotism in the recruitment and appointment of teachers.
Bribes sometimes play a key role in the selection process. In some countries,
teaching
posts can be “bought” from school committees or board members,
purchasing of posts. As
a consequence, teacher recruitment and selection processes hinge on the
ability and
willingness to pay for teaching positions rather than on competence and
suitability. It may
also lead to newly hired teachers requesting payoffs from students and
parents to recoup
what they had to pay for their position.
As long as recruitment criteria are convoluted, or systematically bypassed,
and there are no
monitoring mechanisms in place there is a risk that less qualified teachers
and
administrators will be appointed because no one is accountable for the
quality of hiring,
with likely adverse effects on teacher and thereby student performance.
Some available perceptions-based data on the purchasing of posts suggest
that this practice
is quite common in some countries (Table 7). The average share of
respondents who
perceives job purchasing in education as common, or very common, ranges
from 10
percent in Benin to 77 percent in Paraguay. In Colombia, job purchasing is
perceived as
more common among superiors (40 percent), than among peers and
subordinates (20
percent for each) whereas in Peru the opposite is true.
7

7
These are perceptions so attention should mainly be paid to relative rankings
rather than magnitude.
Clearly, the patterns of perceived
purchasing of posts are highly variable across countries.26
TABLE 7: PUBLIC OFFICIALS’ REPORTS ON THE EXTENT TO
WHICH EDUCATION
PERSONNEL DECISIONS ARE INFLUENCED BY ILLEGAL
PAYMENTS, 2000-2006
Among
superiors
Among peers Among
subordinates
Average
Benin (2006) 13.9 7.4 9.0 -
Colombia (2002) 40.0 20.0 20.0 -
Ghana (2000) - - - 18.4
Guinea (2005) - - - 26.2
Paraguay (2006) - - - 77.1
Peru (2001) 25.0 38.0 33.0 -
Sierra Leone (2002) - - - 24.3
Zambia (2003) 30.8 24.7 22.9 -
Source: World Bank Governance and Anti-Corruption Diagnostic Surveys
(various years).
Job purchasing in education is common or very common
Reducing the scope for irregularities in teacher deployment
With teacher deployment the problem is not necessarily the lack of qualified
teachers,
though that may also be the case, but the resistance of teachers to be
assigned to remote or
rural areas. Risks to health and safety, language barriers, poor living
conditions, and fears
of not being able to participate in professional development programs and
networking
opportunities are important factors in teachers’ reluctance to transfer to
faraway schools
(Mulkeen, Chapman, Dejaeghere, Leu, and Bryner 2005). Consequently,
there are times
when teachers resort to paying bribes to avoid a posting in a remote area or
secure an
attractive posting (Chapman 2005).
The effect of this problem is particularly evident in post-conflict societies.
For instance, 40
percent of teachers in rural schools in northern Namibia are qualified
compared to 92
percent in the capital Windhoek. In Uganda, two-thirds of primary school
teachers in urban
schools are qualified, while in rural schools only half are (Bennell and
Akyeampong 2007).
With bribes paid to secure appointments, and less qualified teachers
deployed to remote
schools, the quality of education tends to deteriorate.
Teacher unions influence teacher management
Teachers’ unions serve an important role by protecting teachers’ rights, and
in many
countries they possess a strong bargaining position and actively lobby to
affect education
policy, including teacher recruitment, deployment, and transfer criteria.
Sometimes
teachers’ unions are directly involved in the recruitment and deployment of
teachers,
which can undermine public efforts to raise performance by weakening
incentives and
accountability when the interests of teachers do not coincide with those of
other
stakeholders (such as government, parents, and students).
For example, in Mexico, unions are typically given the responsibility of
nominating
individuals for vacant teaching posts. In half of all Mexican states teachers’
unions allocate
all teachers (Álvarez, Garcia Moreno, and Patrinos 2007), and government
officials merely
have the power to check whether a candidate fits the basic requirements of
the position 27
(Hallak and Poisson 2001).
8
Also, in Mexico, Álvarez, Garcia Moreno, and Patrinos (2007) found that
students in states
with lower levels of conflict between state authorities and teachers’ unions
and higher
teacher wages performed better in terms of average PISA mathematics
scores (
This arrangement arguably reduces the competitiveness of the
teacher selection process, which can result in greater accountability to
unions than to the
employer, parents, or students, with possible adverse effects on teacher
performance.
Figure 5).
For instance, test scores were highest in states with low levels of conflict
between state
authorities and teachers’ unions and with high teacher wages, and lowest in
states with
high levels of state-teacher’s union conflict and high teacher wages,
implying that simply
paying teachers more may not affect student performance as measured by
test scores.
Students in states with strong accountability systems (e.g. testing, report
cards, and school
rankings, and the dissemination of results) performed even better.
A case of teachers’ unions influencing the level at which accountability
exists in the
education system is the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) examined by
Kingdon and
Muzammil (forthcoming).
9
These are but some examples of the difficulties that may arise when
different stakeholders
have conflicting interests. Nevertheless, accommodating and working with
teachers unions
to improve performance is a highly desirable, and arguably necessary,
element to improve
human resource management in education.
In the mid-1960s school teachers’ unions lobbied to have local
government schools come under state government management; in the early
1990s the UP
government announced decentralization reforms including the transfer of the
authority of
teacher appointment for publicly aided schools from the Secondary
Education Selection
Board to the schools themselves, a measure strongly opposed by the unions
and never
realized; in 2006 teachers’ unions vehemently opposed the Model Right to
Education Bill,
which aims to give school management committees at each school
significant powers (e.g.
teacher appointments, disbursement of wages, and disciplinary action) and
to introduce a
school-based teacher cadre (under this system once teachers are appointed
they cannot
request a transfer for any reason). The Bill remains under consideration.

8
In Mexico all public school teachers are unionized (Alvarez, Moreno, and
Patrinos 2007).
9
In UP, 85 percent of all primary and secondary school teachers working in
state-funded schools
(government and aided) are unionized based on a survey of 570 teachers in
rural primary and secondary
schools in five districts in UP conducted by Kingdon and Muzammil
(forthcoming). The extent of union
influence is reflected in the trend or real wages for teachers; between 1973
and 1996 real wages for teachers
grew at an annual rate of 5 percent compared to a real growth rate of 3
percent per year of GDP per capita.28
FIGURE 5: PISA MATHEMATICS SCORES AND LEVEL OF
TEACHER WAGES AND
INTENSITY OF TEACHERS’ UNION-STATE AUTHORITY CONFLICT
IN MEXICO
383
391
410
382
385
377
351
346
300
320
340
360
380
400
420
Low-Low Low-Medium Low-High Medium-Low MediumMedium
MediumHigh
HighMedium
High-High
Status of level of state authority-teacher's union conflict and teacher wages
PISA mathematics score
Source: Álvarez, Moreno, and Patrinos (2007).
Using information to introduce accountability
The effective management of human resources in the education sector is not
only
dependent on clear standards and regulations, appropriate incentives, and
effective
accountability mechanisms but also on the availability of and access to
accurate and up-todate information about staff and school needs. This
information is critical to monitor
teacher assignments and performance although the decision on what
information should be
used to measure personnel and school needs, and the subsequent collection
of that
information, is a challenge.
A study of teacher management information systems in Botswana, Malawi,
South Africa,
and Uganda examined the personnel data collected, processed, and available
at nationwide
level (Göttelman-Duret and Hogan 1998). In Uganda, a computerized
management
information system made it possible for the government to identify 25,000
ghost teachers.
In Botswana, the information system allowed the government to accurately
monitor the
number of teachers employed and the salary each received. South Africa was
able to
improve its personnel and financial management by using an electronic
Personnel and
Salary system.
Despite the successes, these information systems suffered from problems,
especially in
terms of the capacity to maintain and further develop the systems. Creation
of databases
and computerized systems is the first step; making sure that the information
stored is 29
accurate and up-to-date is another, more challenging step. In the case of
these countries,
collection of information was annual, and data were only processed and
disseminated one
year after they were entered into the system thereby severely reducing their
usefulness in
terms of policy and monitoring, and making it difficult to hold officials,
schools, and
teachers accountable for performance.
Other weaknesses that are common in many countries include: incomplete
data; difficulty
updating individual records due to lack of monitoring mechanisms; no
collection of data on
teacher turnover and transfers; lack of uniformity in measures used; and
absence of
adequate databases and records at the provincial or district levels
(Göttelman-Duret and
Hogan 1998). In addition, when capitation grants are tied to the number of
students
enrolled, local officials and principals have an incentive to report
exaggerated enrollment
numbers in order to receive more funding (World Bank 2007c).
BOX 2. INFORMATION AND INCENTIVES FOR PERFORMANCE IN
PUNJAB, PAKISTAN
The Punjab Education Sector Reform Program (PESRP) is an interesting
example of a
program to promote good governance in education to improve school
performance through
information gathering and oversight, incentives linking school rewards to
performance,
and accountability through competition.
The PESRP program has helped decentralize the highly centralized,
province-level
Department of School Education, responsible for service delivery in over
63,000 schools
with more than 500,000 employees. Teacher recruitment, performance
management, and
even minor disciplinary issues were all centralized at the provincial level.
The absence of
incentives and accountability in this highly centralized system undermined
the quality of
service delivery (World Bank 2004d). One of the components of the PESRP
program aims
to improve education governance by strengthening teacher management,
school councils,
and monitoring and evaluation.
To improve teacher management the program is “(i) changing the terms of
contracts with
new teachers from standard civil service recruitment to site-specific, fixed-
term contracts,
with almost 20% of the teaching staff already recruited through such
contracts; and (ii)
introducing district monitoring mechanisms to curb absenteeism and monitor
local schools.
Transparency in teacher recruitment, postings and transfers is being
enhanced through (i)
new merit-based recruitment criteria, based on a point system, which favors
recruiting
women and local candidates; and (ii) temporarily freezing transfers of
education
management staff, during the first year, to provide continuity” (World Bank
2004d: p. 17).
The provincial and district governments have undertaken several measures
to empower
school councils including “(i) an agreement on the role of School Councils
included in the
[terms of partnership] (TOPs); (ii) the issuance of guidelines by the
provincial government
clarifying the role of [school councils], including their authority to undertake
small
procurement of works; and (iii) contracting NGOs for provision of capacity
support to
school [councils] in six districts during the first year” (World Bank 2004d:
p. 18). Building
upon this pilot, the Government is expanding the capacity building program
to strengthen
school council capability across all 35 districts.
Finally, to build monitoring capacity the Government of Punjab has “(a)
developed district
education profiles and established baseline indicators of education
performance for the 30
reform program; (b) agreed on monitoring targets with the districts and
included them in
the TOPs; (c) established a Program Monitoring and Implementation Unit
(PMIU) in the
Provincial Education Department; and (c) approved an education awareness
campaign for
disseminating information about the reform program” (World Bank 2004d:
p. 18).
As part of the effort to strengthen monitoring each school (a total of 63,000)
receives an
unannounced monthly visit by an inspector from the independent monitoring
unit, and the
data collected on school performance are matched with school information
systems and
cross-checked with implementation systems. The information is then
reviewed at district
level and aggregated at the provincial level to enable monthly performance
assessments.
The performance evaluation index currently consists of twelve components:
teacher
absenteeism, transfer of funds to school councils, free textbook provision,
enrollmentattendance gap, non-teaching staff absenteeism, school
inspections by District Education
Department staff, meetings of the District Review Committee, illegal fees,
school
cleanliness, missing facilities schemes progress, school utilities
functionality, and teacher
training (Shakil 2008). The index components are revised periodically to
reflect the
requirements for monitoring of various aspects of the sector.
The frequent monitoring of school performance has enabled the introduction
of incentives
in the form of awards to the best performing district managers for school
investments, but
there are no sanctions for poor performance, the accountability element is
partial. The
information on performance in each district is disseminated to all other
districts
introducing an element of competition among education managers.
However, the
information is not disseminated to the public, doing that in the future could
help introduce
the basis for external accountability where community and parental groups
pressure for
better performance. Figure 6 shows the index for the five best and worst
performing
Punjab districts in November and December of 2007.31
FIGURE 6. VARIATION IN SCHOOL PERFORMANCE IN PUNJAB,
NOV-DEC 2007
Five best performers
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Lahore Lodhran Rawalpindi Sahiwal Jhelum
Nov-07 Dec-07
Five worst performers
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Gujranwala Khanewal Layyah Attock D.G.Khan
Nov-07 Dec-07
Source: Shakil (2008) based on data provided by the Department of
Education, Punjab, Pakistan.
A successful example of using student performance on achievement tests to
oversee school
performance comes from Mexico. States that implement their own student
assessments in
addition to international PISA assessments disseminate results to the schools
and the
public; engage with schools on their test performance to find ways to raise
scores; and
design strategies and policies for improving education in the state based on
that
information have students performing significantly better on both PISA
mathematics and
reading tests (Álvarez, Garcia Moreno, and Patrinos 2007). The competition,
external
scrutiny, and engagement on policy and program issues of specific schools
offer a form of
school accountability to state education officials. It also improves
transparency and
oversight, which together help to promote better performance. Effectively
the 32
accountability arises through the increased transparency and involvement of
the
community (despite the lack of sanctions).
To make information systems work it is not sufficient to put new systems in
place but also
to introduce incentives at each level, whether at local government or school
level, to
collect, accurately report, and actually use the available information. Once
accurate data
are available on a regular basis, sustained monitoring and periodic third-
party validation
are typically required; the resulting information can then be used to
introduce incentives
and hold providers accountable and, ultimately, improve teacher and school
performance.
BOX 3. DOES SCHOOL-BASED MANAGEMENT IMPROVE
INCENTIVES, OVERSIGHT, AND
ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ULTIMATELY, PERFORMANCE?
The last few years there has been a surge in decentralization and thereby a
delegation of
decision-making power from central government to the community and
school levels in
many countries with the objective of increasing the effectiveness and
responsiveness of
resource allocations and to improve performance. Because decision-makers
at the central
level may be too far removed from schools to ensure that spending is
appropriately
targeted and managed, decentralization is seen as a way of bringing
decisionmaking to the
local level where officials, in theory at least, have better information on
school resource
needs, and face greater pressure from communities to effectively deliver
education services
(assuming there is local voting) (Wößman 2003; World Bank 2007a).
To evaluate the impact of school-based management on education
performance and
outcomes it is important to be clear about which decisions (human resources,
supplies,
finances) are decentralized, and to whom (school officials, parents,
teachers), since
different combinations of decisions transferred, and to different parties, can
produce
different outcomes (De Grauwe 2005). Moreover, de jure decentralization
does not always
translate into de facto decentralization. Finally, the circumstances under
which schoolbased management is introduced matters.
In Madagascar there was concerted effort to decentralize to the level of the
community and
to allow parents to make decisions, however, teachers’ promotions and
service location
were determined centrally (Brinkerhoff and Keener 2003) and accountability
remained
centralized and parents’ authority was dissipated.
Some studies report a positive effect of school-based management on
student attendance
and performance. In post-conflict El Salvador, student attendance was higher
in the
EDUCO schools managed by local parent committees than in regular
schools, and
standardized test scores were similar to those in regular schools despite
students coming,
on average, from more disadvantaged backgrounds (Jimenez and Sawada
2000).
Students in schools with greater autonomy in Nicaragua had higher test
scores than
students in non-autonomous schools (King and Özler 2001). This effect
seemingly worked
through schools’ authority over teacher staffing, monitoring, and evaluation,
suggesting
that school autonomy contributed to improved student performance through
its impact on
teacher quality.
A study on Brazil used panel data at state level for the period 1981–1993 to
estimate the
impact of school autonomy in the form of transfer of funds to schools;
election of school 33
principals; and the setting up of school councils, and found that school
autonomy reduced
drop-out rates and repetition rates (Pães de Barros, Ricardo, and Mendonça
1998).
Another study assessed the impact of Mexico’s Quality Schools Program
(PEC) program, a
voluntary, urban-based program open to all public schools and found that
school-based
management reduced repetition, drop-out and failure rates (Skoufias and
Shapiro 2006).
Gertler, Patrinos, and Rubio-Codina (2006) assessed the impact the Support
to School
Management (AGE) program in Mexico, which consisted of financial
support and training
to parents associations at rural primary schools in deeply disadvantaged
regions. The
schools received AGE over the period 1998-2001 with the objective of
increasing the
influence of parents, teachers, and principals over how the schools were run.
The main
impacts of AGE was a significant reduction in grade failure and in repetition
rates.
However, there was no statistically significant impact on student drop-out
rates.
Another study on the effect of a school-based management program,
PROHECO,
10
An important issue to consider when assessing the impact of school-based
management is
the potential difference between de jure and de facto school autonomy. Even
if power is
transferred to “all” schools, some schools will find it easier to use their new
powers than
others, which will be reflected in any evaluation results. That is, the results
will not cleanly
capture the impact of school-based management itself but also the effect of
some schools
being better able to use their new powers (Gunnarsson et al. 2006).
in
Honduras, found a direct positive impact on teacher behavior, which in turn
improved
student learning outcomes as measured by student test scores (Di Gropello
and Marshall
2005).
Gunnarsson et al. (2006) found that parental participation and school
supplies have
statistically significant and positive effects on 4th grade test performance,
whereas school
autonomy had no impact. They argued that SBM works when communities
have the
necessary capacity and will to manage schools, but fails when communities
lack the
required skills, authority, and information.
Available evidence suggests that school-based management at the primary
level in some
cases increases attendance and reduces drop-out, repetition, and failure rates.
However, the
evidence on the impact on student test scores is less encouraging. Overall,
the research on
primary level school-based management suggests that it is effective if
parents have
authority over funds and/or teachers, which allows them to hold providers
accountable
(Lewis 2004).
Why and how often are teachers absent?
Teacher performance directly depends on teachers being present during
contracted hours,
yet absenteeism a chronic problem in many education systems in developing
and transition
countries, is often unmeasured, and sometimes completely overlooked
(Lewis 2006).
When it is widespread, it can severely limit access to and quality of
education, and when
absences are unauthorized it constitutes fraud. Here, teacher absenteeism is
defined as
unauthorized absences by teachers during contracted hours.

10
PROHECO stands for Proyecto Hondureño de Educación Comunitaria.34
Unauthorized absenteeism, teachers failing to show up for work, arriving
late and leaving
early, constitute a major drag on education resources and have a direct
negative impact on
student performance (Wößman 2003; Suryadarma et al. 2006). One estimate
puts the direct
financial cost of teacher absenteeism at 10-24 percent of recurrent primary
education
expenditures (Patrinos and Kagia 2007). Estimated financial losses range
from US$16
million in Ecuador (0.05 percent of GDP) to US$59 million in Uganda (0.86
percent of
GDP) to more than US$2 billion in India (0.29 percent of GDP) (Patrinos
and Kagia 2007).
Estimates for Uganda suggest that reducing teacher absenteeism by one-fifth
would
generate savings of approximately US$5.1 million (World Bank 2007c).
The effect of teacher absenteeism on student learning is difficult to assess
but is no doubt
substantial and some evidence on this is presented below.
11
Low pay per se does not appear to be the reason for the high and endemic
teacher
absenteeism observed in developing countries. After all, private sector
teachers who often
earn notably less tend to be present at least as often, if not more frequently,
than their
higher earning public sector counterparts (PROBE 1999; World Bank
2007d; Kremer et al.
2005; Das, Pandey, and Zajonc 2006).
Some recent evidence also
suggests that parents are less likely to send their children to school when
they expect high
teacher absenteeism because the opportunity cost of their children’s time
becomes too high
(Rogers and Vegas 2009).
12
An important factor affecting teacher attendance is the quality of school
facilities and the
availability of teaching materials. A World Bank study of teacher
absenteeism in six
countries showed that well-equipped schools with better infrastructure had
absentee rates
roughly half that of schools with poor infrastructure (Chaudhury, Hammer,
Kremer,
Muralidharan, and Rogers 2006). Implicitly good infrastructure provides an
incentive for
higher level performance. Interestingly, household evidence suggests that
parents are also
more likely to send their children, especially girls, to schools with better
infrastructure
(King and van de Walle 2007).
Moreover, within schools, higher paid teachers
(e.g. head teachers), on average, tend to be absent more frequently than
lower paid teachers
(Rogers and Vegas 2009). This points to two other possible explanations for
absenteeism:
the absence of performance-based incentives and the inability to hold
teachers accountable
for their attendance and performance. Yet, existing evidence (see below)
suggests that
performance-based incentives on their own do not work well but teacher
accountability is
also required.
The extent of the problem of absent teachers is highlighted by the World
Bank study of
Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Peru, and Uganda, which used
surprise visits to a
random sample of schools, and recorded an average absentee rate of 19
percent for primary
school teachers (Chaudhury et al. 2006). Teacher absenteeism in an
additional set of
countries, for which relatively recent data are available, ranges from 11
percent in Peru and
14 percent in Honduras to 30 percent in Senegal (Table 8) (Benavot and Gad
2004;
Chaudhury et al. 2006; Reinikka and Smith 2003). These data are based on
direct
11
Indirect costs stem from the opportunity cost of students’ time and the
potential loss of human capital due
to missed instruction. While estimates of these indirect costs do not currently
exist, they are arguably large.
12
In a study of Pakistan, private school teachers were found to be absent 1.8
days per month compared to 3.2
days for public school teachers (Das, Pandey, and Zajonc 2006). Wages of
public sector teachers in Uganda
are 60 percent higher than those of private sector teachers (World Bank
2007c).35
observation, which is important given the frequent discrepancy between
reported (e.g.
records kept by headmasters) and observed absentee rates (Rogers and
Vegas 2009).
TABLE 8. PRIMARY TEACHER ABSENTEEISM SELECTED
COUNTRIES, 2001-2004
Absentee rate (percent)
Bangladesh (2002) 16
Ecuador (2002/03) 16
Ghana (2003) 19
Honduras (2001) 14
India (2002/03) 25
Indonesia (2002/03) 19
Papua New Guinea (2002) 15
Peru (2002/03) 11
Senegal (2004) 30
Uganda (2002/03) 27
Zambia (2002) 17
Unweighted average 19
Sources: Benavot and Gad 2004; Chaudhury et al. 2006; and
Reinikka and Smith 2003.
More detailed evidence on absenteeism provides additional insight. The
average absentee
rate for primary teachers in Honduras is 14 percent (Table 9). Further
indicating the extent
of the problem, 40 percent of teachers are absent one month or more each
year; teachers
even self-report that they work 30 hours a week instead of the stipulated 37
hours (World
Bank 2005a). Part of the problem is that absenteeism is frequently not
considered a serious
problem by school officials. In the 2000 school census only 7 percent of
surveyed school
principals in Honduras considered absenteeism a problem; the subsequent
lack of sanctions
for failing to show up for work is therefore unsurprising (World Bank
2007b).
TABLE 9. TEACHER ABSENTEEISM IN HONDURAS
Length of absence
Average annual teacher absence 16 days
Teachers with no month absent 60%
Teachers with 1 month absent 26%
Teachers absent 2 months or more 14%
Source: World Bank (2007b).
One very important aspect of absenteeism is its duration (Table 9); whether
a teacher is
absent for one day, or ten, or thirty likely has very different effects on
student learning. A
survey in Papua New Guinea found that, on average, teachers were absent
15 percent of
the time, out of these absent teachers 30 percent had been absent for one day
only but 25 36
percent for seven days. In Honduras the average annual duration of teacher
absences was
even longer, 16 days (World Bank 2004a; World Bank 2007c).
A nationally representative study of public primary schools in Peru, based
on two separate,
unannounced visits to a random sample of schools, found that teachers were
absent 11
percent of the time, with absentee rates being higher in poorer and remote
areas (Alcázar et
al. 2006). The study examined the reasons for teacher absence and found
that better
infrastructure (also see Kremer et al. 2005), and a school being located in a
richer
community were associated with lower teacher absenteeism. Parents in
richer communities
are typically more educated and thus likely better able to monitor teacher
attendance and
discipline teachers if they fail to show up. Teachers born and working
locally, non-contract
teachers, and the competition from private schools were also correlated with
lower
absentee rates.
Oversight without any ability to hold teachers accountable seems to have
little value;
distance to the nearest Ministry of Education Office, or the share of schools
within the
province recently inspected, were not significantly correlated with teacher
absenteeism in
Peru, nor was Parents’ association monitoring (Alcázar et al. 2006). The
likely reason is
that teachers who fail to show up for work do not face any sanctions. These
results suggest
that under existing incentive and accountability arrangements, monitoring
alone is not
effective (see Box 5).
The main reason for widespread teacher absenteeism is arguably the
exceedingly low
probability of being disciplined; an explanation consistent with the Indian
teacher
compensation structure described by Pritchett and Murgai (2006), see below.
While punitive action for teacher absences is provided for in official
regulations in many
countries, in practice, disciplinary action is rare. In a recent survey of almost
3,000 Indian
government-run schools with an average 25 percent teacher absentee rate,
only one
headmaster reported firing a teacher for repeated absence (Chaudhury et al.
2006). Data on
teachers’ disciplinary records in Mozambique further suggest that sanctions
for
misbehavior, including absenteeism, are uncommon: in 2004 there were
approximately
46,600 primary teachers but only 58 disciplinary actions were taken: 23 five-
year
suspensions, 7 permanent dismissals, 20 demotions, and 8 fines (Mulkeen
and Chen 2008).
BOX 4. MONITORING ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH
One increasingly considered method for reducing teacher absence is
monitoring, which can
take several forms. (1) external monitoring where an employee in the
education system is
assigned the job of monitoring teachers but, which may lead teachers to
bribe monitoring
inspectors; (2) impersonal monitoring but this may fail to identify legitimate
absences; and
(3) beneficiary control where those with an interest in the delivery and
quality of education
services, e.g. parents, monitor teachers is a less costly option but is
ineffective if parents
lack the authority and means to discipline absent and/or underperforming
teachers.
In Kenya, external monitoring of a program, pre-primary school headmasters
monitored
teachers was evaluated. Teachers with good attendance were given a prize (a
bicycle), if
their attendance was poor the money (for the bicycle) remained with the
school (Banerjee
and Duflo 2006). Kremer and Chen (2001) found that prizes were given to
all teachers
because all were recorded present an adequate number of times. Surprise
visits to the 37
schools showed equally high absentee levels in treatment and control
schools. Headmasters
had simply marked teachers as present, either to avoid confrontation, or
because they felt
that the teachers “deserved” the prize. This particular experience suggests
that in education
systems with weak governance structures characterized by little or no
accountability,
incentives may not work as intended.
In Udaipur district, India, Seva Mandir, a non-governmental organization,
introduced
impersonal monitoring to deal with teacher absenteeism (Duflo, Hanna, and
Ryan 2007).
Schools were randomly selected to receive a camera with tamper-proof data
and time
function with instructions for teachers to take a picture of themselves and
their students at
the start and end of every school day.
13
A beneficiary monitoring program in Kenya to reduce teacher absenteeism
through
monitoring and transfer of certain authorities to local school committees was
implemented
in 36 randomly chosen schools. After 12-months the teacher absentee rates
in treatment
and control schools were not statistically different (Banerjee and Duflo
2006). It may be
that insufficient authority was delegated to the school committees.
Teachers received a financial bonus based on days
attended, and paid a penalty for each day missed above the minimum
number of days
required attendance. During the monitoring period the absentee rate was
reduced from 44
to 21 percent in the treatment schools mainly due to the financial incentive,
not the
monitoring (Duflo, Hanna, and Ryan 2007).
By itself monitoring may not be very effective in reducing absenteeism but
combined with
incentives and disincentives it can generate performance improvements. As
discussed
below, monitoring in conjunction with other measures such as financial
rewards can
positively affect measurable performance including teacher attendance.
A few studies attempt to evaluate the impact of teacher absenteeism on
student learning
outcomes. Das et al. (2005) evaluated the impact of teacher absenteeism on
student
learning as measured by fifth-grade test scores on English and mathematics
tests using data
for 182 schools in Zambia at two points in time, 2001 and 2002. Their main
measure of
teacher absence was head-teachers’ reports of teacher absenteeism in the 30
days before
the survey. For students whose teachers were absent 10 percent of the time
compared to
students whose teachers were not absent, there was a sharp decline in
learning as measured
by standardized test scores. But the reduction in learning when the absentee
rate rose from
10 percent to above 10 percent was smaller, implying a potentially non-
linear effect of
teacher absenteeism on student learning. For the sub-sample of students who
were taught
by the same teacher during the two years in which they were tested, a 5-
percent increase in
their teacher’s absentee rate decreased their learning by approximately 4
percent of the
average learning gains during the two years.
14
Suryadarma et al. (2006) also examined the relationship between teacher
absenteeism and
student learning using a nationally representative sample of students in
Indonesia. They
used data on public primary school teacher absenteeism obtained from direct
observations,

13
A valid day is one in which the start and end of the day photos are separated
by at minimum of five hours,
and a minimum number of children are shown in both photos.
14
For the sub-sample of students who were not taught by the same teacher
over the two years there was no
statistically significant relationship between teacher absenteeism and student
learning.38
and fourth-grade students’ scores on mathematics and dictation tests in 2002
and 2003.
The tests were administered by the researchers making it impossible to
tamper with the test
results. In addition, the tests were not announced in advance, thereby
avoiding the problem
of teaching to the test. Suryadarma et al. (2006) found that higher teacher
absenteeism
(average teacher absentee rate for each school), and a larger share of
permanent teachers
were both associated with lower test scores in mathematics but not in
dictation. This
suggests that the loss of instructional time due to absent teachers translates
into lower
student learning, and that teachers who feel more secure in their job may feel
that they do
not need to exert extra effort as there are no personal costs for poor
performance.
Motivating teachers to raise their performance
Teacher performance matters for student performance; the evidence shows
that students of
better teachers consistently achieve better learning outcomes (Hanushek
2003; Rivkin,
Hanushek, and Kain 2005; Umansky 2005). Unfortunately, it is very
difficult to tell the
difference between good and bad teachers. Observable characteristics such
as education
attainment, experience, and wages are often very similar. More variable
characteristics that
are less easy to observe, including teacher effort, may be far more important
for student
performance in many contexts.
Many teacher performance problems stem from weak governance systems
that fail to
reward good performance and discipline teachers who under-perform. For
teacher
performance to reach and remain at acceptable levels, effective incentive
structures,
oversight mechanisms, and teacher accountability are key.
Financial and non-financial incentives that motivate teachers are listed in
Table 10. The list
is not exhaustive but indicative of the wide range of factors that influence
teacher
performance. For example, teachers may exert more effort if this improves
their standing
in the local community. A good work environment also tends to improve
teacher
performance (IIEP 2006). These incentives are country-specific and should
be viewed as
tools to raise performance.
TABLE 10. TEACHER INCENTIVES TO PERFORM, OR NOT
Non-financial incentives Financial incentives
Career development prospects Employer power to fire
Good work environment Job security
Intrinsic motivation Pay level
Prestige in local community Performance pay
Professional recognition
Student/parent appreciation
Source: Adapted from Vegas and Umansky (2005).
Note: The ordering of incentives does not indicate importance. Work
environment
includes things such as number of hours worked per week, class size,
availability of
teaching materials, and the physical condition of classrooms/schools.
The evidence on the effect of pay on teacher performance is mixed (Kingdon
and Teal
2002; Vegas 2002). In a study of teacher recruitment and retention in Sub-
Saharan Africa 39
where teacher attrition rates are high, teachers indicated that although higher
pay would
encourage better performance, improvements in working conditions, better
deployment
systems, and more professional development opportunities, were deemed
equally
important in promoting job satisfaction and retention and motivating
teachers (Mulkeen,
Chapman, DeJaeghere, and Leung 2007).
In a recent study Pritchett and Murgai (2006) document weaknesses in
India’s public
sector teacher compensation system: little or no ability to fire teachers; high
pay relative to
comparable professions; pay does not vary with performance; and the degree
of overpay
compared to private sector teachers and other similar professions is higher at
the early
stages of teachers’ careers. The lack of pay incentives combined with
virtually no teacher
accountability (it is virtually impossible to get fired and even disciplinary
action is rare),
does nothing to encourage existing teachers to increase their effort, or invest
in adapting
more effective teaching methods.
Another much debated teacher incentive is performance-based pay. Overall,
the evidence
on performance-based pay is mixed, and some evidence indicates that it can
in some cases
lead to unintended and undesirable changes in teacher behavior. For
example, if teacher
performance is evaluated based on students’ test scores, teachers may teach
to the test
rather than, as intended, provide their students with lasting, widely
applicable skills. Or
worse, teachers may focus their attention on students most likely to improve
their test
scores at the expense of students at the bottom and top of the test score
distribution
(Umansky 2005).
Glewwe, Illias, and Kremer (2003) examined how primary school teachers
in Kenya
changed their behavior in response to a monetary bonus received if students
improved their
performance on standardized tests. Their results suggested that there was no
change in
teacher absenteeism, the frequency of homework assignments, or in
classroom practices
but that there was an increase in test taking tutorials, which had a positive
but short-lived
impact on student test scores.
Using a randomized trial in Andhra Pradesh, India to evaluate the impact of
bonus
payments, both individual (teacher) and group (school) based, Muralidharan
and
Sundararaman (2008) found that bonus payments (3% of teacher pay)
significantly
improved student performance.
15
15
The sample consisted of a representative sample of 300 rural, government
schools with 100 schools in each
treatment (individual- and group-based) school and 100 schools in the
control group (Muralidharan and
Sundararaman 2008).
The bonus payments were based on students’ average
improvement on independently administered tests and at the end of the two-
year program
test scores for students in program schools was 0.28 standard deviations
higher in
mathematics and 0.16 standard deviations higher in languages compared to
test scores for
students in control schools. The improved student performance was
seemingly the result of
genuine learning since the students performed better on both mechanical
(meant to capture
rote learning) and conceptual (meant to capture deeper learning) tests. The
students in
schools participating in the incentive program also performed better on tests
in subjects not
part of the program, implying positive spillovers from the program. During
the first year of
the program schools with individual- and group-based incentives performed
equally well, 40
however, in the second year, the schools with individual-based incentives
performed
markedly better, perhaps because it is typically easier to monitor and hold an
individual
teacher accountable for performance than a group of teachers.
Potential solutions
Raising teacher performance requires the introduction of effective
incentives, means to
assess or audit performance, and accountability mechanisms. How to do this
in practice
remains a challenge but some initiatives have shown promise. A review
study by IIEP
(2006) suggests that financial incentives matter but have to be accompanied
by some
combination of accountability mechanisms and/or non-financial incentives
such as training
opportunities, a good work environment, and availability of resources as
discussed above.
Making regulations clear and transparent
The quality of public school teachers partly depends on the type and number
of regulations
that are in place (when enforced). Adoption of context-based regulations can
help improve
performance by addressing the specific needs of any given education system,
i.e. if more
attention is given to one aspect, for example, teacher education, certification,
or
recruitment (Table 6) over another, based on which contributes the most to
inefficiencies in
the sector. However, clear and transparent regulations are only a first,
necessary but not
sufficient step to improve teacher quality. Without appropriate incentive
structures and
accountability mechanisms, regulations become irrelevant. For example,
India has a good
track record in recruiting and hiring qualified teacher but coupled with weak
incentives and
virtually no accountability, teacher performance remains relatively poor
(Pritchett and
Murgai 2006).
Transparent recruitment and promotion systems
Teacher knowledge and awareness of how the recruitment and promotion
processes work
are vital to attract strong candidates. At the basic level, advertising of higher
posts to
teachers already in the system contributes to the perception that the hiring
and promotion
process is fair and transparent. Hiring and promotion by selection
committees is preferable
to the actions of a single administrator, and decisions of the selection body
are more
credible if they are open to questioning and clarification. Participation of
communities and
parents in the selection committee, either as voting members or simply as
observers, offers
transparency and fairness in the recruitment and promotion process.
Innovative hiring mechanisms and incentives for remote posts
To ensure the distribution of experienced teachers to rural and remote areas
incentives for
relocation must be sufficiently attractive and transfer systems transparent.
Education
reform in the city of Bogota, Colombia introduced a more transparent
system for
transferring teachers. Under the new deployment procedures, transfers were
only to take
place at the end of the school year, all transfer requests were centralized, and
software that
incorporated relevant criteria to assess school needs and teacher
characteristics, was
introduced in order to increase transparency (Hallak and Poisson 2007).
Given the
resistance of teachers it took several years before all transfers were made
under the new
system. A comprehensive benefits package (housing, insurance, hardship
allowances, 41
family relocation, and opportunities for continuing education and training)
and/or rotations
with defined service periods can also serve to make remote and rural areas
more attractive
(or at least more acceptable) to qualified teachers. Another, potentially
complementary
strategy is to hire local teachers under the presumption that people with roots
in the area
will be more willing to return and remain in the area. Some evidence from
Punjab,
Pakistan, suggests that female teachers who live in the community in which
the school they
work at is located have lower absentee rates (Ghuman and Lloyd 2007).
Leveraging information to improve provider performance
Collecting and managing education data accurately and in a timely fashion at
all levels of
the education system allows service providers, whether local government,
school official,
headmasters, and teachers, to be held accountable for their performance (if
the relevant
stakeholders have the means to impose sanctions). But incentives are needed
for the
agencies at all levels of the education system to record data since unless data
collection and
use are required and enforced, data collection tends to become erratic or
even stop.
Combining monitoring with incentives
Monitoring attendance is necessary but not sufficient for discouraging
teacher absenteeism.
Offering financial (e.g. financial bonuses and penalties), and non-financial
incentives (e.g.
a good work environment or professional recognition) for regular attendance
combined
with accountability measures (real probability of being transferred, demoted,
or otherwise
disciplined) can help address persistent absences (see Box 5).
Performance pay combined with accountability
Well-designed financial incentives based on performance have the potential
to improve
teaching quality if teacher performance, on which rewards and penalties are
based, can be
measured accurately, and if combined with accountability. The major
challenge is
implementing such schemes on a large scale and following through on
accountability. In
India, performance pay for private sector teachers is associated with better
student
performance but this is not the case for public sector teachers (Kingdon and
Teal 2002).
This implies that there is some factor in the private sector that elicits a
response to
performance pay that does not exist in the public sector. It may be that the
accountability
(possibility of being fired or demoted) in the private sector makes the
performance pay
incentive effective, which may also allow the private sector to set wage
levels below those
of the public sector.
School-based teacher management
School-based teacher management can increase accountability at the primary
school level
by making the teacher selection process transparent and merit-based and by
giving school
councils authority to hire and fire teachers (and administrators). However,
school-based
management does not tend to work unless local school councils have the
authority to hold
teachers and schools accountable for their performance by rewarding or
penalizing
teachers according to their performance. It is a largely primary school
strategy, not easily
applicable at higher levels of education where parents are typically less
involved (see Box
4).42
Introducing standardized examinations
Standardized examinations can help raise and maintain education standards
at all levels of
the education system, inform resource allocation decisions, and assign
accountability for
student performance by comparing student performance to national and/or
international
standards. If a student performs poorly it can be determined whether this is
due to the
effort and ability of the individual student, or to poor teacher performance if
the whole
class performs relatively poorly (PROBE 1999; Kellaghan and Greaney
2001).
Contract teachers instead of civil servants
Over the last few years several countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa,
have
experienced rapid rises in enrollment and given budget constraints have
started hiring
contract teachers who are typically paid less, receive no benefits, and have
short-term
contracts, rather than regular (i.e. civil servants) teachers. The evidence on
the effect of
contract teachers on education quality is ambiguous. In some countries (e.g.
Niger, Togo,
and Guinea) there seems to have been a negative effect of contract teachers
on student
performance, in other (e.g. Cameroon, Madagascar, and Senegal) students of
contract
teachers performed better than those of regular teachers (Santibañez 2008).
These
differences may be the result of contract teachers being hired by the public
authorities in
the countries where they seemingly affected student performance negatively,
and by
parents’ associations and local communities in countries where they were
associated with
better student performance thereby strengthening accountability, and also
that contract
teachers face incentives to perform well in order to become regular teachers.
5. Household Payments
Informal household payments stem from the lack performance
fundamentals: incentives
are wrong, information absent, and accountability missing (Box 1). These
informal
payments – illegal charges for education services or supplies meant to be
provided for free
or to obtain specific favors – are surprisingly widespread in education
although objective
evidence is limited.
Institutional performance as outlined in Figure 1 deteriorates when informal
payments
drive financing and delivery of education services. Indeed, the perpetuation
of informal
payments suggests a breakdown of public sector operations and undermines
good
governance, provider performance, and equal access to publicly funded and
delivered
services.
Weak governance structures characterized by lack of appropriate incentives,
oversight, and
accountability, contribute to poor performance in service delivery and create
opportunity
for under-the-table payments for access to services, upgraded services and,
in some
instances, jobs (see previous section). Service providers can charge
informally when users
do not know what services they are entitled to; providers have discretion
over how
resources are allocated; and users are willing to pay to receive better or
faster services
(CMS 2006; Lewis 2000).
The cost of education to households as reported in household surveys is
significant even
when children attend free public schools. Costs include some combination of
uniforms, 43
parent teacher association (PTAs) fees, transportation, textbooks, and
general contributions
(Bentaouet Kattan and Burnett 2004). These required fees can make
schooling too costly
for some households, effectively preventing parents from sending their
children to school.
Parents may in addition have to pay informal fees for a variety of services:
access to
school, advancement to the next grade, to pass examinations, access to
library resources, or
for their children to be taught the stipulated curriculum after school-hours,
and so on.
What is the extent of informal payments?
There is considerable anecdotal evidence on informal payments in education
but there are
relatively few data considering the likely prevalence and magnitude of
informal payments
in many developing and transition countries. Household surveys and citizen
report cards
provide some useful insights.
Across five types of fees in public primary education for 79 countries:
tuition, textbook,
uniforms, PTA and community contributions, and school-based activity fees,
one-third of
all fees collected were informal (Bentaouet Kattan and Burnett 2004). In CIS
countries,
Burnett and Cnobloch (2003) estimate that informal payments, on average,
finance half of
all public education.
In household surveys the average share of users of education services who
report making
informal payments varies substantially within and across regions (Table 11).
The largest
differences are in South Asia where 25 percent of service-users in Nepal
report that they
made informal payments compared to 92 percent in Pakistan. In Latin
America reported
informal payments are least frequent in Colombia (close to 2 percent), and
most common
in Haiti (60 percent). Relatively fewer service-users report informal
payments in SubSaharan Africa, from 2 percent of users in Madagascar to 20
percent in Namibia
(Afrobarometer 2006; AmericasBarometer 2006; USAID Vitosha various
years; and
Thampi 2002). But anecdotal evidence suggests significantly higher under-
the-table
payments in Sub-Saharan Africa where the abolishment of user fees has led
to huge class
sizes and some parents have resorted to paying teachers to give their
children an
advantage. The notable variation in the frequency of informal payments
across countries
may be due to them varying in nature making cross-country and even cross-
country
comparisons difficult. However, without better data any conclusion is
speculative only.
The household burden of informal payments can be seen in terms of their
relative share of
average income. This varies substantially across countries: from 4.4 percent
of half
monthly per capita income in Bulgaria, to 143 percent in Ghana, to an
astounding 380
percent in Pakistan (Table 11). In the case of Pakistan, 92 percent of parents
reported
making informal payments (all types) for education, combining this with the
large amounts
paid, the scale of the problem is enormous and may help to explain why
private primary
schools have seen the fastest growth over the last decade, and this applies to
girls’
schooling in particular (Lloyd, Mete, and Grant 2007). Even in countries
where informal
education payments are smaller in absolute terms, they can still constitute a
large share of
total household expenditure.44
TABLE 11. INCIDENCE AND MAGNITUDE OF INFORMAL
PAYMENTS FOR EDUCATION
SELECTED COUNTRIES, 2000-2006
Informal payment
(% of half monthly per capita income)
% of households that make
informal payments
Albania (2005) 46 35
Bulgaria (2001) 4 16
Tajikistan (2003) 23 9
Colombia (2006) n.a. 2
Guatemala (2005) 38 8
Haiti (2006) n.a. 60
Paraguay (2006) 23 7
Peru (2001) 6 7
Bangladesh (2002) 87 40
India (2002) 76 34
Nepal (2002) 139 25
Pakistan (2002) 380 92
Sri Lanka (2002) 86 61
Ghana (2000) 143 24
Madagascar (2006) 38 7
Mozambique (2004) 57 16
Namibia (2006) n.a. 20
Zambia (2003) 9 6
Note: Data for each region are from the same survey where possible to
ensure consistency across countries in how
the question on informal payments was asked.
Sources: World Bank LSMS (various years); World Bank Diagnostic Survey
(various years); and Thampi (2002).
Charging for admission, advancement, and specific grades
In some developing countries informal fees are charged at all levels of
education to
guarantee admission, for grade advancement, to graduate, to receive higher
marks, and to
pass exams.
In several countries, which officially prohibit school fees, households still
report payment
of fees. Out of 79 countries surveyed, tuition fees were collected in 30
countries although
they were only legal in 19 of them (Bentaouet Kattan and Burnett 2004).
16
Citizen report cards, users’ assessment of the performance and quality of
education
collected through survey questionnaires can be used as a possible basis for
increasing
accountability of public officials, schools, and teachers if higher level
officials act on the
In China, out of
3,000 primary and 1,500 secondary schools audited in the Jiangxi province
in 2003 there
were 125 cases of illegally collected school fees with a value of US$2
million. At the
national level, more than US$20 million in illegal school fees were collected
at primary
and secondary level. For the 18 higher education institutions audited, 15 per
cent of all fees
charged were illegal (UNDP 2008).

16
These included Benin, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Nepal,
Colombia, Bosnia, Latvia, Russia, and
Egypt.45
information and findings. However, in practice, it is often difficult to punish
such corrupt
behavior.
17
A report card survey of primary education in eight subdistricts of
Mymensingh district in
Bangladesh conducted in 2000 showed that households were paying for a
variety of
education services all meant to be provided for free. 6.2 percent of
respondents reported
paying for admission and 5.3 percent for primary school textbooks (Karim
2004). Out of
students who had passed their final examinations, 2.3 percent reported
paying to be
promoted to the next grade, however, this only occurred in one of the eight
subdistricts
(Sadar). In Bangladesh, the government does not pay for primary schools to
hold
examinations so instead teachers charge students; approximately 96 percent
of students
reported paying to sit the first term, second term, and annual examinations
respectively,
implying that informal payments to sit examinations are systematic.
Thus, report card surveys can be very useful in collecting information on
patterns of
behavior in the school system, including frequency and type of informal
payments. But for
the information to have any impact on performance and corruption, effective
accountability
mechanisms, that include the authority and means to impose sanctions, must
exist. The
findings from the Bangladesh study were widely disseminated but had a
limited impact:
after having been informed of irregularities taking place in their offices
many primary
subdistrict education offices introduced transparent and standard fees for
examinations
and, subsequently, many teachers reported that they no longer had to pay
bribes to obtain
services (Karim 2004).
When incentives for good performance are weak or lacking, there is little or
no oversight,
and accountability is non-existent, informal payments to access examination
questions in
advance, or to pass or receive a certain grade, can become the rule not the
exception.
Hallak and Poisson (2007: 231) define examination fraud as “any prescribed
action taken
in connection with an examination or test that attempts to gain an unfair
advantage.” The
practice of paying for advance test information, to pass, or for a particular
grade, has
serious implications. When results can be purchased, resources are allocated
to students
able and willing to pay instructors, which undermine education objectives
and put those
without funds at a disadvantage.
There is little hard evidence on the extent of informal payments for gaining
access to
examination questions in advance, or receiving a specific grade but
anecdotal evidence
suggests that these practices are widespread. At one extreme, public
announcements in
Georgia notified students of the payments required to pass courses
(MacWilliams 2002).
Focus groups consisting of secondary school students and graduates in
Russia, Ukraine,
and Uzbekistan, all highlighted the need to pay teachers to receive good
examination
marks (OSI 2006). Another stark example of cheating on examinations is
provided by
indirect evidence from Uttar Pradesh, India. The average annual pass rates
for exams of the
UP High School Exam Board over the period 1988 to 1991 ranged from 46
to 61 percent,
however, when police were stationed at examination centers in 1992 to
discourage
cheating, the pass rate dropped to 17 percent (Kingdon and Muzammil
2003).

17
Citizen report card surveys are based on stratified, random sampling to make
sure that results are
representative of the underlying population.46
Perception-based surveys carried out in Bulgaria, Croatia, Moldova, and
Serbia show that
academic fraud involving informal payments is perceived as widespread.
Roughly between
27 and 36 percent of interviewed students believe that admission scores can
be changed if
students are willing to pay professors. Between 35 and 45 percent think that
their faculty
does not follow the official admission selection process (Table 12). Survey
respondents
when asked, estimated the share of students who have paid to take an exam,
or to receive a
specific grade to be 1.5 percent in Croatia, 3.8 percent in Serbia, 6.5 percent
in Bulgaria,
and a high of 28 percent in Moldova (Hallak and Poisson 2007).
TABLE 12. STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF ACADEMIC FRAUD
SELECTED COUNTRIES
Share of students who perceive that: Bulgaria Croatia Moldova Serbia
the official selection process is bypassed in their
faculty
37.1 35.1 38.4 44.9
there is possibility for admission test scores to be
changed illegally
32.9 27.5 36.1 36.3
there are illegal activities concerning students
ranked in the admissions list
26.6 32.2 60.9 39.0
there are illegal changes in the quotas of those who
do and do not pay
20.3 25.2 47.1 32.8
Students' perception of: Bulgaria Croatia Moldova Serbia
the share of students who have paid for taking an
exam or receiving a certain grade
6.5 1.5 28 3.8
the share of students who were illegally admitted to
the university/faculty
18 18 40 15.1
Source: Adapted from Hallak and Poisson (2007).
Many countries have national assessment systems but these are mostly
ineffective in
reducing the extent of informal payments to pass, or for specific grades,
when there are no
penalties for examination fraud.
Involuntary private tutoring
In addition to formal and informal school fees, and illegal payments to pass,
advance, or
for specific grades, households sometimes spend a non-negligible share of
their incomes
on private tutoring. While some tutoring is voluntary and reflects parental
interest in
bolstering their children’s performance, it can be abused by teachers when
parents feel
forced to finance private tutoring on omitted parts of the curriculum to
ensure that their
children pass (Bray 2003). Information on such practices is scarce, and what
does exist
emerges mainly from qualitative surveys.
In a survey of schools in Morocco, 70 percent of teachers at the senior
secondary level said
that they were unable to cover the full curriculum during regular school
hours; 70 percent
of teachers at this level also reported that they offered private tutoring (Bray
1999). This
raises concerns that teachers may intentionally omit important topics from
regular
instruction in order to supplement their incomes with earnings from
involuntary private
tutoring.47
In Azerbaijan, Georgia, Mongolia, and Ukraine, “respondents reported that
some teachers
pressured their students to take supplementary private tutoring with them
after school
hours; in some instances, the pressure included threatening students with
lower grades if
they refused to take private tutoring” (OSI 2006). A recent empirical study
of private
tutoring in Nepal suggests that secondary school teachers who engage in
private tutoring
teach less during official school hours causing students to perform worse as
measured by
test scores (Jayachandran 2008).
18
Potential solutions
Replacing informal with formal user fees
Informal payments are a form of corruption, which can reduce the quantity
and quality of
education services. In health, the introduction of formal fees while ensuring
that providers
continued to receive some additional earnings, have shown promise in
reducing the level
of informal payments in Kyrgyzstan and Cambodia (Kutzin et al. 2003;
Barber, Bonnet,
and Bekedam 2004). Formal contributions that are transparent and may
make teachers and
principals more responsive to parents, is an alternative that deserves
attention and
experimentation.
Using campaigns to inform parents about education entitlements
Often parents and students are not (fully) aware of what their education
entitlements are,
for instance, they do not know whether primary education is meant to be
provided for free
or not, or if there are fees they do not know the correct amount. In either
case, the lack of
information facilitates the charging of informal payments by education
officials and
teachers. Public dissemination of information on school fees (amount and
frequency), the
need to pay officially, and to receive a receipt, can potentially help reduce
the extent of
informal payments when parents and communities have the knowledge and
ability to
refuse payment. There is no direct evidence on the effect of school fee
dissemination on
the extent of informal payments for access to education but some related
evidence on the
positive impact of information being made available to communities for the
reduction of
leakages exists (Reinikka and Svensson 2005).
Penalties for cheating on examinations
The introduction of financial or professional (e.g. dismissal and expulsion)
penalties for
both students paying to access examination information in advance and
those selling this
information (e.g. test providers and teachers) could, if enforceable, help
reduce cheating.
6. Corruption Perceptions
As noted in the previous section, informal payments, a form of corruption,
reflects a
breakdown of good governance and undermines service provision. Indeed,
corruption
brings into question the viability of the governance process summarized in
Figure 1, and

18
Students in schools that offer private tutoring score approximately 0.1
standard deviations lower on the
national secondary exam.48
suggests that accountability of service providers is either not enforced or
non-existent.
Perceptions of corruption are useful for tracking overall corruption but must
be
complemented by more objective measures, such as those discussed above,
to identify
specific levers that can help raise performance.
Perceptions of the education sector and education service delivery provide a
guide to how
public services are performing. While perceptions of actual performance or
corruption are
not necessarily accurate, they can affect the behavior of providers, parents,
and students.
Their ability to cover households as well as providers and the private sector
makes
perception surveys useful. They also signal how well public investments in
the sector are
perceived, which in turn tends to influence utilization and public support for
publicly
financed education. The alternative to perceptions surveys is household
surveys, which are
more costly and time consuming but provide more extensive evidence and
context.
Corruption perception surveys by the World Bank, AfroBarometer,
AmericasBarometer,
and Transparency International among others, focus on specific sectors
including
education, and provide perceptions of the extent of corruption in the sector.
Results are
typically reported either as the share of citizens, business people, experts, or
public
officials reporting worse-than-neutral corruption outcomes, or as an average
of all scores.
Corruption in education, as measured by perception surveys, varies
substantially within
and across regions (Figure 7). In Sub-Saharan Africa, the share of
households perceiving
the education sector as corrupt ranges from 5 percent in Madagascar to 36
percent in
Nigeria, In Latin America from 18 percent in Paraguay to 51 percent in
Honduras, and in
Eastern Europe from 10 percent in Bulgaria to more than 33 percent in
Serbia.
Countries with better institutions should in theory be less corrupt. The World
Bank’s
Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) offers a measure of
institutional
quality. It includes a subcategory, building human resources in education,
which “assesses
national policies and public and private sector service delivery that affect
access to and
quality of education, ECD, training and literacy” (OPSC 2007: 3). The
scores range from
1–6 (6 indicating higher quality institutions) and are based on the
assessments of education
experts working on the country against a sample of regional benchmark
countries.
Average regional CPIA scores for building human resources for education
are shown in
Figure 8. In 2007, Europe and Central Asia had the highest average regional
score
followed by Latin America and the Caribbean and South Asia; Sub-Saharan
Africa had the
lowest average score. There is, of course, significant variation across
countries within each
region. While not perfect, such scores reflect both policy and execution of
policy and the
institutional quality of the entities providing education services and
therefore, provide a
sense of education performance and honesty of government.49
FIGURE 7. SHARE OF HOUSEHOLDS PERCEIVING EDUCATION AS
CORRUPT IN
SELECTED COUNTRIES, 2002-06 (PERCENT)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Madagascar (2005)
Cape Verde (2005)
Tanzania (2005)
Lesotho (2005)
Kenya (2005)
Bulgaria (2002)
Albania (2002)
Zimbabwe (2005)
Senegal (2005)
Botswana (2005)
Uganda (2005)
Malawi (2005)
Ghana (2005)
Croatia (2002)
Romania (2002)
Paraguay (2006)
South Africa (2006)
Mali (2005)
Montenegro (2002)
Zambia (2005)
BIH (2002)
Macedonia (2002)
Guatemala (2005)
Mozambique (2005)
Namibia (2006)
Serbia (2002)
Nigeria (2005)
Haiti (2004)
Colombia (2002)
Honduras (2002)
Share of households perceiving education as corrupt (percent)
Note: Data for each region are from the same survey to ensure consistency
across countries in how the question on informal payments was
asked.
Sources: Afrobarometer Round 3 (2006); SELDI (2002); and World Bank
Governance and Anti-Corruption Diagnostic Surveys (various years).50
FIGURE 8: CPIA SCORES FOR BUILDING HUMAN RESOURCES IN
EDUCATION BY
REGION, 2007
3.0
3.2
3.4
3.6
3.8
4.0
4.2
East Asia and
Pacific
Europe and
Central Asia
Latin America
and the
Caribbean
Middle East
and North
Africa
South Asia Sub-Saharan
Africa
CPIA scores on building human resources education 2007
Note: Unweighted average CPIA scores for question 9b, building human
resources in education, by region.
Source: CPIA Review (2007).
Another approach to capturing perceptions of education sector institutions
and
performance is client satisfaction surveys. Satisfaction surveys complement
evidence on
perceptions of and experience with corruption and education service delivery
performance.
Recent survey data from Indonesia has been used to examine whether client
satisfaction
surveys can guide policy. The findings suggest that perceptions data are not
as useful for
directly informing policymaking as they are for providing insights to
policymakers on the
priorities of citizens, and on the acceptability and effect of specific reforms
such as
decentralization (Dasgupta, Narayan, and Skoufias 2009).
Still, high scores on perceived corruption and low scores on perceived
institutional quality
and performance all provide red flags and indicate the need to assess
possible corruption
and shortcomings in education service delivery and financing.
7. Conclusions
The role of good governance in raising education provision performance is
important and
provides a useful entry point for discussions of policy, programs, and
implementation.
Considerable work exists on how to design sound education programs –
quality of inputs
and budget and financial management for example. Much of that knowledge
informs
countries’ education agendas. However, the challenge of translating those
concepts into
functioning and effective education systems is a harder and more
complicated step. It
moves into the realm of political economy to align the interests of different
stakeholders,51
and ensure that they face the appropriate incentives and accountabilities to
perform as
intended.
The gap between good ideas and evidence-based programs on the one hand,
and education
performance and outcomes on the other, is often significant. The governance
agenda
focuses on the elements of implementation, the factors that drive
performance and make
sound technical designs successful in a public context. In effect, good
governance offers
tools for the middle-ground between program design and its execution.
This paper provides a definition of good governance in education and a
framework for
thinking about governance issues as a way of improving performance in the
education
sector. Performance indicators are proposed that offer the potential for
comparison, and
whose collection is not overly complex or costly, and that have relevance at
the national
level as well as at the school level. These indicators, when available, are
useful tools for
cross-country comparisons and for tracking relative education performance,
and provide
the context for the discussion of good governance and performance in
education.
The crucial elements for good governance and high performance include
standards,
incentives, information, and accountability, all of which support
implementation. The
paper reviews budget and financial management issues; examines human
resource policies
and performance; discusses the issues surrounding informal payments for
education
services; and briefly summarizes the evidence on corruption perceptions in
education. This
review of ideas and evidence is intended to contribute to the design of
projects, and
assessment of options for improving education service delivery performance.
While virtually none of the indicators or evidence applies to all countries,
they provide a
basis for measuring performance. Experiences from other countries are
useful in designing
programs or conducting analytic work where performance is an issue. This
paper is not
meant as a catalogue of the possible but rather as an effort to define and
analyze the
governance and performance issues in education while realizing that much
more work
needs to be done to understand how to raise education sector performance.52
References
ADB/OECD (2006), Curbing Corruption in Public Procurement in Asia and
the Pacific.
ANNEX 1. SELECT AGGREGATE GOVERNANCE INDICATORS

Governance encompasses multiple aspects. These include the capacity of the

government to formulate sound policies, manage resources, and provide
services efficiently; the effective processes that allow citizens to select, hold
accountable, monitor, and replace government; and the respect of
government and citizens for the institutions that govern economic and social
interactions. Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi (2007) break these
down into six specific areas: voice and accountability; government
effectiveness; control of corruption; regulatory quality; rule of law; and
political stability and absence of violence. Of the six, the first four are
directly relevant to good governance in education.Voice and accountability
captures the extent to which a country’s citizens are able to
participate in the selection of their government, as well as the extent towhich
public institutions are held accountable. It allows citizens to express their
preferences and be involved in the decision-making processes. This
dimension also covers freedom of
expression, freedom of association, and the presence of a free media. In
education, a
system with a high level of accountability, one possessing checks and
balances; transparent
decision-making; access to information; and effective monitoring and
evaluation, can
improve resource management, reduce corruption, and enhance public
service delivery,
and ultimately, improve education quality.
Government effectiveness is reflected in the quality of policy formulation
and
implementation, the effectiveness of public service delivery, the quality of
the civil service,
and the degree of policy independence from political pressures. In education,
this
dimension is concerned with, for example, the efficiency of education
systems in areas
such as licensing requirements; hiring procedures for teachers and school
administrators;
and the presence and enforcement of national and local statutes on delivering
quality
education for all.
Control of corruption captures the extent to which there are checks to ensure
that public
power is not abused for private gain or that there is no “capture” of the state
by elites and
private interests. In the education sector, forms of corruption include but are
not limited to
nepotism; purchasing of posts; irregularities in the procurement of education
supplies and
facilities; bribery in admission and examination; and teacher absenteeism.

Web based education system is quite popular among students,which is an outcome of

advancement in multimedia technology. This leads to instruction-on-demand and helps
the students to study during when he is on move oe desires to study in free time. Online
examinations and online interviews are set to enter in a big way.

http://www.scipub.org/fulltext/jss/jss1281-
83.pdf
Abstract:
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are increasingly becoming crucial part of the
education system. ICT has changed the style of functioning of the educational system and its
governance.

This paper is considering the rapid spread of ICT applications has brought about markedly drastic
technological, social and economic transformations. These changes have
caused educational institutions, administrators, teachers to rethink their roles, teaching and vision
for future. The sustainability of a nation in the era of knowledge economy depends on the
effective educational system. Productivity is an economics concept where productivity is
considered as the comparative analysis of input and outputs. In educational system the inputs are
teachers, students, classroom material, equipment of teaching, methods of teaching and outputs
are quantity and quality of student learning. The proper integration of ICT with teaching/learning
environment increases education and increased productivity. ICT provides various opportunities
to educational learners and make teachers aware of their new roles & responsibilities in teaching
and learning process. The growing use of ICT will change many of the strategies employed by
both Teachers and Students in the learning process. The role of ICT the educational
administration is recurring and unavoidable. ICT has enabled us to monitor and evaluate what is
learned, how it is learned and when and where learning took place. It is also enable
the educational management system to discharge various functions such as, conduction of
exams, coordination between potential institutes, alumni network. ICT also work for nontraditional
students by providing internet based education to them anytime and anywhere and these internet
technologies enables innovative ways of teaching e.g. Tata Sky educational system. ICT is going
to play a vital role in bringing about qualitative change in every aspect of our life in general and
that of governance of education.

Keywords: ICTs, ICT-Based/Virtual Education, Distance Education, Higher Education

JEL Classifications: NA