Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Blogging at the World Bank


Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski, who works on blogs and social media for the World Bank, said: "Dani (Kaufmann) has the profile of a good blogger: open, conversational, opinionated and, most important of all, passionate. He understands that blogging, and social media in general is a powerful new form of expression. With Shanta (Shantayan Devarajan), the CommGap team (Communication for Governance and Accountability Program), and Dani, I am excited to see the Bank embrace social media."

The Governance Blog joins the other recently launched blogs that are helping to break ground on the social media front: CommGap's Public Sphere, East Asia & Pacific on the Rise, and Devarajan's End Poverty in South Asia. "The PublicSphere blog has been going since January," said Sina Odugbemi, program manager in CommGap, who recently joined the Bank from DfID. "We've had thousands of readers so far, most of them from outside the Bank. It's a way for us to engage with a global community on a whole range of issues related to the interactions among public opinion, the public sphere, and governance," Odugbemi said....

Kaufmann, whose trademark, even in his research, is being a straight shooter, says about his newest medium: “I like the language of blogging—the straightforwardness is very salutary. I like it when you don’t have to write in ‘Bank-ese.’”

-We Continue to Innovate: From Surveys to Blogging

Congratulations to Governance Matters Blog and to Mr. Daniel Kaufmann who has been instrumental in creating a Bank blog focussed on governance issues. Still it seems Bank's work are too much in silos and there isn't much talk on cross themes.

The following post was on East Asia blog;
Number 1 essential to fighting corruption: political will

I would have liked to see a reaction from the those at Governance Blog. With all the focus on Africa why isn't there a blog focused on Africa? IMF has taken lead in creating a blog on public financial management.

Who do you think at World Bank should be blogging? Robert Zoellick, Danny Leipziger, Anwar Shah, Charles Kenny, etc.,

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