Effective Public Investment Management (PIM) requires purposeful leadership and specialized staffing, competencies, and skills in the public sector.  Public sector staff need specific knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors to carry out their roles and responsibilities effectively. To generate good public investment outcomes, it is crucial to have the right personnel in the right positions, both in central PIM unit roles but also across various government levels (including Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), Sub-National Governments (SNGs), and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). To make the PIM systems work, this requires establishing appropriate organizational arrangements that enable efficiency, clear procedures, and foster continuous staff development and work satisfaction. At the same time, these personnel should be supported with appropriate training resources and strong digital workflows. These need to be aligned with international best practices and their country-specific institutional contexts.

The World Bank’s 8 Must-Haves (8MHs) identify the key PIM cycle functions that public sector personnel are expected to fulfill in improved infrastructure outcomes.1 While some PIM aspects can be outsourced, essential skills remain necessary to define, contract, and utilize these inputs effectively. Gaps in specific PIM skills echo some of the wider challenges in successful Public Administration Reform (PAR) across the region. Skills deficits in key Public Financial Management (PFM) functions impede daily technical operations and can constrain reform leadership amid European Union accession efforts.

Learning results should be clear and sustainable. This calls for a systematic approach to skills development and capacity building, as training on PIM often occurs in ad hoc fashion with vague or limited impacts. However, current examples of developing PIM curricula, training-of-trainers and partnering with public sector academies to deliver training and capacity building show promising results. While these modalities offer a more sustainable capacity-building model, frameworks for PIM skills and capacities require further development.

PIM skills and results need to be assessed against clear outcome metrics. Beyond putting core systems in place, the success of PIM policies and practices is measured by their impact. Key outcome indicators include the number and value of projects subject to PIM at minimum standards prescribed by policies; cost and time overruns during implementation; the number and value of projects subject to climate change and environmental due diligence; and the efficiency of public investment spending and perceived quality of public infrastructure. This calls for a systematic approach to evaluate effective organizational structures, competency frameworks, and performance metrics for individuals and task teams. At the same time, digitalization and emerging technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming the PIM landscape and necessitating relevant skills development for effective utilization.