Crowdsourcing meets Creditworthiness: Municipal Finance Community of Practice
Early 2014, PPIAF's Sub National Technical Assistance program launched a Community of Practice for Municipal Finance Practitioners. The Community is part of the City Creditworthiness Initiative, which is designed to systematically identify and reach reform minded cities with customized technical assistance, and engage with them on a programmatic basis, to assist them in accessing long-term financing for green growth and climate smart infrastructure. PPIAF is supporting this Initiative in partnership with the World Bank’s Low Carbon Livable Cities Initiative and the Rockefeller Foundation.
The objective of the online Community is to facilitate collaboration amongst municipal finance practitioners. There is enormous potential that could be gained by encouraging connections with and between practitioners and allowing conversations to flow. We see this community as a “knowledge stewarding community” that will facilitate the sharing of experiences as well as organize, manage and steward a body of knowledge from which members can draw. Municipal finance practitioners make numerous financial tradeoffs and decisions - on a daily basis - to meet the development needs and demands of their cities’ varied constituencies. This Community strives to tap into this collective (often tacit) knowledge and serve as a safe and informal environment for sharing experiences and exchanging ideas.
The community is a little over a year old and has already attracted 250 members and it is one of the top 5 communities under the World Bank’s “Community for Development” (C4D) platform. We are excited by the rich and insightful content that our members are generating, and the range of opportunities for collaboration that the community is identifying. For instance, a discussion on the site regarding pooled financing strategies employed by municipalities has attracted input on the experiences of a range of countries, including Colombia, Mexico, and Canada. In addition, a soon to be launched crowdsourcing initiative on the site will provide the community with the chance to contribute to and enhance the quality of guides that assist municipalities to find solutions to the challenges and obstacles they confront on the path to creditworthiness.
To connect with the community and share knowledge, please click on the following link: https://collaboration.worldbank.org/groups/city-credit-worthiness