The PFM Board at One Year

By John Short, PFM Board partner

On April 10, the PFM Board celebrates its first year of existence. In that year there have been almost 500 registered members with some 117,000 page views from nearly 3,000 people from 11,200 visits in 153 countries. There have also been 641 posts in 188 topics which are broadly organised around the PEFA framework.

Registering and posting on the PFM Board is straightforward – register and post – there is no screening and vetting. This has its own costs and benefits. The costs are that irrelevant and irreverent posts do get posted and this requires active after-the-event management to eliminate them. This is done throughout the day. The benefits are instant posting and interaction which allows topics to be developed without time lag and external intervention. The two “Fireside Chats” that the Board has hosted, the first with Frans Ronsholt generated 21 Q&A interactions while the second on Integrated Planning and Budgeting with Gord Evan had 30 interactions within a short time period.  The Board has also allowed PFM professionals to discuss country specific issues and has an Albanian language interaction on lessons learning between Albania and Kosovo. The Board has also provided an opportunity to for documents that have emerged in one country, but have a wider relevance, to be brought to the attention of members and visitors. This has particularly been the case on tax policy and tax administration issues. More recently, access to the presentations from the CIPFA PFM conference that took place in London on 15 - 17 March has been posted on the Board.

The aim of the Board is to provide a place “where practitioners meet to discuss Public Financial Management”. This has been achieved, but can be expanded by having more members who can share their experiences in an easy and unconstrained way.

Note: The posts on the IMF PFM Blog should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy.

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