A recent Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) report, Decentralization in Client Countries, finds that in a third of cases the Bank contributed positively to the effectiveness of recipient country attempts to decentralise responsibility for public service provision to local government. However, the report finds the quality of Bank intervention to be mixed with the Bank often failing to provide consistent or coherent support. The perennial problem of weak monitoring is highlighted once again (see Update 63) as is the Bank’s focus on indicators rather than performance. The Bank is said to have made a de facto strategic decision to support decentralisation, support that is “often insufficiently grounded in an understanding of the country’s political economy, particularly at the local government level.”