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The less threatening, "softer-sell" approach that a freestanding technical assistance project is thought to provide was favored by some Bank staff as a vehicle for pay and employment reform (as well as other forms of institutional restructuring). In cases where the institutional infrastructure for reform, such as trained personnel managers and a functioning personnel management system, needs to be established, technical assistance projects were deemed particularly useful. That these could proceed independently of SAL conditionality was sometimes considered to be an advantage. The Jamaica Public Administration Project, for example, assumed a strategy intentionally distancing personnel management and salary reforms from the overall employment cuts and wage bill reductions that were a part of the Fund's program. Salary increases for higher level staff were linked to Jamaica's SAL III, however, and it is still unclear if the slow implementation of these reforms uias due to or in spite of SAL conditionality. In general, SALs and freestanding T.A. projects are not considered to be mutually exclusive. Instead, they are seen as complementary instruments with somewhat different objectives.

In a few cases, the best instrument for bringing about desired changes in employment and pay policy was ongoing Country Economic and Sector Work and sustained policy dialogue. This is particularly applicable to relatively more advanced countries. In Sri Lanka, for example, the Bank's involvement in pay and employment was through sector work and continuing policy discussions with high level government officials interested in bringing about salary structure reforms. These officials were reported to have made use of what they considered to be high quality professional advice on the part of the Bank to reinforce their own argument for reform to other members of the national bureaucracy. The result was a 1986 salary adjustment and a possible technical assistance operation to support the policy work of an interministerial commission. Ongoing sector work and policy dialogue was also the primary approach used in Thailand and Bangladesh, although in the latter case this is now being reinforced by conditionality on a public administration reform study under Imports Program Credit 13.

# Internal Bank Coordination

Coordination and communication of Bank activities on public pay and employment has sometimes been weak. Interventions on these issues have often been made through individual sectors witheut coordination with overall country program initiatives, except in the case of public expenditure reviews which do seem to faciittate intersectoral contact. Moreover, Bank operations staff are often unaware of what others in their region are doing in this area. Even among Public Sector Management Divisions, information has heretofore been spread mostly by word of mouth. Coordination and commmunications between the Bank and the Fund on pay and employment varies significantly from one country to another. In some cases, Fund-Bank programs are closely linked; in others, there is virtually no interaction on the issue.

# Bank Staff Capacity

With the exception of those operations that have been managed by the regional Public Sector Management Divisions, the Bank's involvement in