Partnerships Provide Learning Opportunities for Policymakers in Urban Areas
WBI’s Urban program establishes partnerships with international organizations, local institutions, and national and regional intermediaries to facilitate the establishment of an urban learning and knowledge-exchange infrastructure.
Challenge
WBI’s Urban program establishes partnerships with international organizations, local institutions, and national and regional intermediaries to facilitate the establishment of an urban learning and knowledge-exchange infrastructure. The program helps city officials in key areas of urban management.
Approach
Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Tec de Monterrey) in Mexico manages a distance-learning university with a network of remote learning sites across Latin America. WBI has worked with Tec de Monterrey to deliver e-learning courses on public and private sector related issues for a range of audiences. The partnership has also produced a web portal that serves as a learning and knowledge exchange platform for municipal officials across Latin America: Centro para Emprendedores de la Administración Pública.
WBI started the first certification program in urban management, initially in partnership with ASCI, a national training institute based in Hyderabad, and then with other state-level training institutes—Yashada in Maharashtra, the Mysore Institute of Urban Development in Karnataka, the Kerala Institute of Local Administration, the City Managers Association in Orissa, and BIPARD in Bihar. The objective is to create a network of centers of excellence on urban management producing a cadre of city managers equipped to govern and to better provide services to urban citizens across India. The program is overseen by a National Advisory Committee on Certification chaired by the Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation with the participation of state governments.
Results
WBI’s partnership with Tec de Monterrey has resulted in training more than 30,000 municipal managers and local government officials over the past eight years. These 100-hour courses include municipal financial management, urban crime prevention, e-government, anticorruption, and corporate governance. The courses address specific challenges facing local governments.
The model used for certification program in urban management is being scaled up nationwide through the national government’s urban renewal program. WBI’s key contribution to the network institutions has been to support content development, peer review, and pedagogical approaches for using case studies, new learning techniques, and learning technologies to scale up outreach.
