Recommendations

Participants in the scenario exercise also offered a wide range of perspectives and reactions to these alternative futures. For example: • “The recovery will be fragile and long. Health, education, and social transfers plus jobs will take center stage.” • “COVID-19 has demonstrably magnified patterns of exclusion. When inequalities become more apparent, history shows that this could trigger social movements for justice.” • “If we use tech solutions to address the needs of the poorest first, we may end up with a completely different set of services for our clients.” • “Agility and resilience will become more important than technological solutionism and specialization. Above all, being clear how we make decisions as a society over the use of technologies is crucial for determining successful outcomes.” • “Governments are beginning to realize the need for the interoperability and exchange of data. As more content goes online, this creates new responsibilities for how data are managed and who has the right to access them.” • “What is the space for global collective action and granular innovation? Can the

World Bank navigate and assist in both?” • “Can we bring these scenarios to conversations with our clients? There is a need for a national dialogue on potential futures. Decisions that may seem inconsequential today could have profound consequences in the future.”

No clear consensus emerged as to the single most likely future. Participants did see evidence that several of these futures could coexist at any one time within the South Asia region, requiring vigilance of emerging trends and agile responses. This observation also supports the argument that scenarios are best used as a composite set of alternative futures (see box 7.1), thereby helping analysts to identify the scope for preemptive corrective actions by stakeholders to influence future outcomes.

The scenario exercise yielded the following recommendations: • Ensure that the World Bank tackles inequalities and digital exclusion. In periods of heightened uncertainty and pressure to respond to crisis situations quickly and at scale, support offered by the World Bank should remain anchored in the institution’s core mission: assisting vulnerable groups (such as the urban poor, women and girls, migrants, and digitally nonconnected groups) and supporting systemic reforms. To this end, World Bank support should concentrate on a handful of high-priority actions (so-called no regret measures), while drawing up actionable road maps for the medium term with top-down as well as bottom-up inputs

from stakeholder groups. A key step toward restoring trust and livelihoods will be to invest in a resilient public service infrastructure and strengthen the delivery capacity at the subnational and local levels to reach intended beneficiaries, taking advantage of technologies where appropriate. • Leverage the World Bank’s convener role. COVID-19 has accelerated technology awareness and digital adoption to unprecedented levels globally. This is thus an opportunity for the World Bank to champion real-time learning about digital implementation experiences that have applicability beyond the pandemic (such as reaching beneficiaries at speed, devising local dashboards for crisis responses, and integrating geospatial data for mapping access routes to health services). Virtual conversations through knowledge exchanges and piloting with STI networks could be scaled up rapidly, bringing together participants from the public, private, civil society, and academic spheres. At the same time, the World Bank is well positioned to play a coordinating role among development partners to ensure an optimal degree of technology integration and reduce duplication of efforts. • Pursue technology partnerships between the World Bank and the private sector, scientific community, and academic and community innovators. Partnerships with private technology companies and innovators could target specific human development programs (such as translation technologies for local content creation; remote digital diagnostic services; and health, education, and social protection programs at scale to vulnerable populations). Such arrangements would also encourage companies to contribute to development and address emerging technology governance issues.

Another modality is to scout for emerging technology applications by participating in local innovation ecosystems that address the human capital needs of the poor. In addition, the Bank should pursue partnerships with key stakeholders in government, the private sector, civil society, and other international organizations to develop rules and regulations, best practices, and accountability mechanisms to improve the governance of converging technologies, thereby reducing their possible negative impacts on human capital. • Boost technology awareness through World Bank–organized scenario exercises.

The COVID-19 crisis has served as a reminder to governments and task teams in development agencies that speed of response matters, whether in the use of data, the rapid reconfiguration of supply chains, or the digital delivery of government assistance to intended beneficiaries. As new issues emerge, the need for ongoing guidance and feedback loops is particularly acute in technology-related areas. To respond to the growing demand for targeted knowledge support, the Bank should consider expanding just-in-time access to global expertise and participation in operationally oriented communities of practice such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Scenario exercises at the country or sector level2 provide flexible formats in which to raise technology awareness, engage in dialogue, gather available evidence on what works and what does not through rapid policy reviews, and explore alternative