Kathreb

Thursday, May 19, 2005

OED Criticises the Bank

The financial times has an article about a newly released OED Report that apparently criticises the Bank's emphasis on social spending over a greater focus on economic growth. This is a very contentious issues. Do you focus on economic growth, which mainly benefits those already with higher wealth and closer access to power at the cost of not focusing so much on equality and development of the poorest regions who don't have opportunities in the early growth stages of a country to take advantage? The main feature of Wolfensohn era at the Bank has been to concentrate on development (ie: social spending) along with economic growth. To have this criticised at the time of his leaving is firstly a bit of a sour note for him to leave on and secondly a bad omen if Wolfowitz decides to use this to re-focus the Bank back to the days when it was criticised for not being humane enough in its policy advice. Anyway, I haven't read the report but will enjoy doing so as it looks like an interesting read.

And now I am off to pack my bags for Laos! I didn't have time to get a camera, yet.

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Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Brown Bag: Building Confidence in the Public Sector: The Importance of Ethics in Everyday Actions

Former mayor of Santa Clara, Judy Nadler came to the WB this week to give a talk on the importance of Ethics in the public sector. She gave a fascinating talk about how, as mayor of Santa Clara, she helped to develop and implement ethics at all levels and the kind of challenges that arise in doing so. She also gave some interesting stories about the ethical woes faced in San Jose when building the new hi-tech IT system at the new City Hall. There was some unfair bidding and inappropriate consultancy that led to a scandal apparently.

Judy Nadler is now a Senior Fellow in Government Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and she provided some handy web addresses to meet all your ethics in government needs. As follows: Council on Governmental Ethics, Center for Governmental Studies, Institute for Local Self Government, Institute for Global Ethics, Center for Ethics in Government, CityEthics.org, International City Management Association, and California Fair Political Practices commission.

And on the topic of ethics, I think it is neither professional nor appropriate for a company to use my comments section to put in a link to their stupid website. What the hell is is wrong with people who think its okay to do that!?

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Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Pondering

I think that is about the longest I've gone without blogging for no good reason since I started this operation. Kudos to the eight of you who continue to visit out of devotion or boredom and for remaining faithful despite an 18 month slow but consistent decline in quantity and quality of blogs here at kathreb. I'm guessing its boredom but I appreciate your visits no less for that.

A big part of the problem is having nothing to write about. This blog was started for the purpose of tracking and recording my readings and thoughts on issues related to Korea. Other topics that caught my interest also made it onto the blog but the central focus was always Korea. But keeping up with Korea while in America to the detail that I used to in Korea is difficult and grossly unnecessary.

So the question is: do I keep the blog, or let it go? Clearly, if I keep the blog, I need to change the "mission statement" and find a new motivation for writing beyond Korean issues. Losing my audience seems like a superfluous concern.

The answer, such as it is: I'm putting the blog on trial during which time I'll test a few ideas. I'm going to Laos for work in a couple of weeks (I will be spending my miserable birthday on a plane attempting to drink it dry). Before embarking I'm going to buy a digital camera to take wonderful heartfelt pictures of places my work takes me. This may not work as my work is taking me to the inside of a conference room for the most part. I will put them on my blog. Okay, that's ONE idea...maybe I'll think of something wonderful and exciting that everyone will be interested in reading later.

Trial Period: Two months - May 12-July 12.

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