Each record describes something a country built that the indicators do not capture. The source provides the published number; the mechanism is our interpretation.
Scores describe outcomes. These records describe how a country acted, what it needed and what happened. 742 of 742 records include a mechanism. They do not affect scores.
Brazil ended four decades of high inflation with a staged currency reform, taking annual consumer price inflation from 2,075.9 percent in 1994 to 3.2 percent in 1998.
3.2 % per year, annual consumer price inflation, 1998. World Bank, from IBGE, retrieved 2026-08-26.
The move, and what it needed
A stable unit of account was introduced alongside the failing currency, prices were re-anchored to it while it was still only a reference, and it became legal tender only once the anchoring had happened.
Preconditions
A technical team with authority to sequence the reform
Enough reserves to defend the new currency
Public exhaustion with inflation deep enough to accept the transition
Where else it has been used: The staged unit-of-account move is the transferable idea and it has been studied everywhere. The exchange rate anchor that held it in place broke in 1999, which is the part not to copy.
Limits: Disinflation was held in place with an overvalued exchange rate and high interest rates, and that arrangement broke in the 1999 devaluation and again in the 2002 confidence crisis. One macroeconomic outcome is not a general measure of how fast Brazilian institutions respond to new conditions. The design and the sequencing are the capability here, and no number in this record captures them.
๐ง๐ทBrazilsince 1975still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Brazil answered the 1973 oil shock by mandating ethanol blending and building a national fuel alcohol industry, taking production from 580 thousand cubic metres in 1975 to 38,199 in 2025, and from 2003 flex-fuel engines moved the choice to the driver.
A blending mandate created guaranteed demand, subsidised credit built the mills against it, and flex-fuel engines two decades later moved the choice from the state to the driver.
Preconditions
A crop and land base able to supply at scale
A state able to hold a mandate for decades
Domestic vehicle manufacturing that can be made to adapt
Where else it has been used: The mandate-then-credit sequence is transferable and has been tried widely. The flex-fuel step is what made it durable and it required the car industry to move.
Limits: The programme was heavily subsidised in the 1980s and nearly collapsed when oil prices fell in the 1990s, so the line is not a story of steady success. Production volume says nothing about land use, cane labour conditions, or how the emissions accounting works out. What this evidences is a state changing an entire fuel system in response to an external shock, which is the construct the indicator asks for.
๐ฆ๐ทArgentinasince 1991dismantledbears on Institutional responsiveness
Argentina ended hyperinflation by fixing the peso to the dollar by law in April 1991, taking annual inflation from 4,923 percent in 1989 to 3.9 percent in 1994, and the regime held until it collapsed in the 2001-2002 crisis.
Congress fixed the exchange rate one-to-one to the dollar by statute and barred the central bank from printing unbacked pesos, which converted a monetary promise nobody believed into a law that was costly to break.
Preconditions
Dollar reserves large enough to back the monetary base
A legislature willing to bind itself and its successors
Prices and contracts already partly dollarised, so the anchor was credible on day one
Where else it has been used: Currency boards were copied widely in the 1990s, from Estonia to Bulgaria, and they worked as stabilisers. Argentina is the case every copy now studies for the exit problem: the law had no honest way out.
Limits: The IMF and World Bank series for Argentina do not reach these years, so the numbers come from a teaching case that republishes the official table, and the 1989 figure is a December-to-December change where other publications give 3,079 percent as the annual average. Ending inflation is what the indicator asks for, but the fixed parity that delivered the stabilisation also removed the tools that could have absorbed the shocks of 1999-2001, so the case evidences a response that consumed its own durability. The collapse later cost Argentina its statistical credibility too, which is why the official series is hard to cite today.
๐ฉ๐ชGermanysince 2008delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Germany answered the 2008-2009 collapse in manufacturing orders by paying firms to cut hours instead of jobs, and short-time work covered 1.44 million workers at the May 2009 peak, about 5 percent of insured employment, while unemployment barely rose.
The employment agency reimburses firms most of the net wage for hours not worked when demand collapses, converting the existing unemployment-insurance fund into a payroll bridge, and the 2009 government lengthened the entitlement and cut the paperwork.
Preconditions
A standing legal instrument and fund, so scaling needed a regulation rather than a new law
Works councils and employers used to negotiating hours
A shock read as temporary, since the bridge only pays off if demand returns
Where else it has been used: Short-time work schemes spread across the OECD after 2009 and nearly everywhere in 2020. The lesson that travelled worst is fiscal: the bridge is cheap only when the crisis is short.
Limits: The count says how many workers were covered, not what the scheme cost, how much of the covered work would have survived anyway, or whether it slowed reallocation to better firms, which are the standard criticisms. The instrument long predates 2008; what the episode evidences is the speed at which an existing legal instrument was expanded inside one year. The same instrument covered over six million people in 2020, so the 2009 number is not its ceiling.
๐น๐ทTurkeysince 2001operating below its peakbears on Institutional responsiveness
Turkey answered its 2001 banking collapse with central bank independence, bank restructuring and fiscal rule, taking inflation from 54.4 percent in 2001 to 8.6 percent in 2004, and after 2018 the same framework was overridden until inflation reached 72.3 percent in 2022.
A crisis government handed monetary policy to an independent central bank by law, recapitalised and closed broken banks through an autonomous agency, and held a primary surplus, which together made the anti-inflation promise credible for fifteen years.
Preconditions
A crisis deep enough to make the political cost of reform payable
External anchors, the IMF programme and EU accession prospect, that rewarded holding the framework
A technocratic team with authority to execute across ministries
Where else it has been used: The package was the standard post-crisis prescription and worked as designed. What the case adds is the second half: formal independence survived on paper while governors were replaced until policy followed the executive, a path other countries have since repeated.
Limits: Inflation is an outcome with many causes: the 2001-2004 fall also rode an IMF programme and a global disinflation, and the post-2018 rise includes a currency crisis and imported energy prices, so neither number isolates the institutions. The record runs both ways by design: the same state that built a working stabilisation framework later demonstrated that the framework had no defence against its own executive. The institutions were not abolished, which is why the status is eroded rather than dismantled.
๐ง๐ทBrazilsince 1972delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Created in 1972, Telebras coordinated Brazil's state telecom system until its 1998 privatisation, when 54 concessionaires were split out and the state moved from operating the network to regulating and universalising service.
The state first assembled a fragmented telecom sector into one planning and investment system, then dismantled that holding structure when a new regulatory and private operating model was judged more suitable for expansion.
Preconditions
Authority to consolidate regional operators under one national plan
A public investment and research base large enough to build the network
A legal and regulatory framework able to transfer operating assets without abandoning the public objective
Limits: The number of controlled companies shows the structure of the old system, not whether privatisation delivered affordable, reliable service everywhere. The transition also left a continuing Telebras with a different role, so the record concerns a model that ended rather than a company that disappeared.
๐ช๐ชEstoniasince 1990still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
The Estonian Defence League was re-established in February 1990, before the country regained independence, and operates as a voluntary national defence organisation under the Ministry of Defence with territorial units and its own training structure.
A state rebuilt a territorial volunteer defence organisation before independence was restored, preserving a civic channel for mobilisation alongside the formal defence forces.
Preconditions
A population willing to sustain a voluntary defence organisation
A legal route from civic organisation to public defence responsibility
A ministry able to train and coordinate territorial units
Limits: The re-establishment date and organisational description show institutional intent and continuity, not readiness, effectiveness or public support. The source describes the Defence League itself, so it does not independently test its performance.
๐ฐ๐ทSouth Koreasince 2009still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Korea established the Korea Internet and Security Agency in July 2009 by integrating three predecessor organisations, giving the country one public body for internet development, security and international information technology cooperation.
Three specialised organisations were combined into one agency so that internet development, security and international cooperation could be handled through a shared public capability.
Preconditions
A government willing to merge overlapping specialist bodies
Technical staff and institutional knowledge that can survive the merger
A mandate broad enough to connect infrastructure, security and cooperation
Limits: The integration date and mandate show a public response to a changing digital environment, not the agency's effectiveness against cyber threats or its performance across every programme. The agency is the source for its own institutional history.
๐ฉ๐ชGermanysince 1955dismantledbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
West Germany built a federal warning service after 1955; after the Cold War the federally owned service was dissolved, its ten warning offices were abandoned and the nationwide siren alarm network was dismantled or transferred to municipalities, ending a system that had relied on about 1,700 volunteer helpers.
After the Cold War, the federal government treated a nationally coordinated warning service as obsolete, dissolved its dedicated organisation and shifted much of the remaining equipment and responsibility to local authorities without a ready replacement with the same audible reach.
Preconditions
A federal system able to finance and coordinate warning infrastructure across municipalities
Local authorities willing to accept ownership and operating costs after transfer
A replacement communications plan that works when electricity or mobile networks fail
Where else it has been used: The post-Cold War drawdown was common across Europe. Germany's later investment in warning apps, cell broadcast and renewed siren funding shows the cost of dismantling a capability before the next hazard makes its value visible.
Limits: The number of offices and volunteers describes the architecture that was removed, not how many people the sirens actually reached or how well the replacement warning channels worked. Responsibilities moved to Lรคnder and municipalities rather than disappearing from every locality, and some sirens were retained for fire services. The Bundestag report is an official retrospective, not an independent test of warning performance.
๐ณ๐ฑNetherlandssince 2006delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The Netherlands ran Room for the River from 2006 to 2019, delivering 39 measures at 34 locations along the IJssel, Waal, Nederrijn and Lek for about four million residents at a total cost of โฌ2.3 billion.
After the near-floods of 1993 and 1995, central government and regional authorities moved dikes inland, lowered floodplains and dug side channels so high water could spread safely, using one programme to coordinate Rijkswaterstaat, water boards, provinces, municipalities, landowners and residents.
Preconditions
A national water authority with technical and land-management capacity
Water boards and local governments able to share decisions and long-term maintenance
Multi-year funding and a credible process for acquiring land and compensating residents
Where else it has been used: The approach has been studied and adapted in other deltas. What travels is the portfolio logicโmany local measures under one hydraulic modelโnot a single signature project, and it depends on institutions that can keep negotiating for fifteen years.
Limits: The measure and location counts show delivery, not the ex post reduction in flood risk, maintenance, cost-effectiveness or local equity. The official programme account does not independently test hydraulic performance, and the four-million figure is the population in the programme area rather than a safety outcome.
๐ณ๐ฑNetherlandssince 2004operating below its peakbears on Institutional responsiveness
The Netherlands' tax administration put tens of thousands of childcare-benefits parents into debt between 2004 and 2019; by February 2026 the recovery operation had recognized more than 43,000 parents as harmed among about 69,000 applicants and guaranteed each recognized parent at least โฌ30,000.
A rigid fraud-control regime treated small administrative errors as evidence of wrongdoing and allowed repayment demands to compound across years; after public and parliamentary scrutiny, the state created a separate recovery organisation, integral assessments, debt relief and a standard โฌ30,000 first payment.
Preconditions
Benefits data and automated risk rules powerful enough to stop payments at scale
Weak internal challenge and fragmented appeal routes that let an error persist across agencies
A parliamentary and judicial route capable of forcing an apology, new rules and a large-scale redress operation
Where else it has been used: The transferable lesson is institutional: auditability, human review and a single route for appeal matter as much as detection. A recovery fund can pay money after failure, but it cannot recreate the years of security that a responsive administration would have protected.
Limits: The application and recognition counts describe the scale of harm and the administrative response, not whether compensation restores lost homes, jobs, health or trust. The โฌ30,000 floor is a legal payment rule rather than a measure of full loss, and the government reports the recovery operation about itself. The case therefore shows a serious failure and a continuing repair effort, not a settled measure of responsiveness.
๐ณ๐ฑNetherlandssince 2013still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
On 1 January 2013 the Netherlands merged 25 autonomous regional police corps and the national KLPD into one organisation with ten regional units, a national unit and a shared Police Services Centre, centralising specialist capacity while retaining local teams.
The government replaced autonomous regional corps with one national command and shared services, while keeping districts and frontline teams close to municipalities; specialist intelligence, organised-crime and technology functions could therefore be coordinated across the country without abolishing local policing.
Preconditions
A legal mandate strong enough to overcome the autonomy of existing regional forces
A common information, training and human-resources system for the merged organisation
Local commanders and municipalities able to preserve neighbourhood accountability inside a national structure
Where else it has been used: National police reforms are common where crime and digital threats cross borders. The Dutch design shows the trade-off clearly: centralise scarce expertise and procurement, but keep frontline teams and local authority visible enough that nationalisation does not become withdrawal.
Limits: The number of units shows an organisational response to cross-border crime and technology, not faster emergency response, better investigations or lower crime. A merger can also create transition costs and distance from local accountability that this architecture count cannot see. The police account describes the reform and does not independently evaluate its outcomes.
๐ณ๐ฑNetherlandssince 2014still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The Netherlands tests NL-Alert twice a year and, in the 1 December 2025 national test, 92 percent of residents aged 12 and over said they received the message on their mobile phone; 90 percent received it only on that channel and 2 percent received it on mobile plus public digital signs.
The government uses cell broadcast through every telecom provider, adds public transport and advertising displays, tests the channel twice a year and measures reach by age and safety region so a warning can carry both a location-specific message and an action to take.
Preconditions
Telecom operators able to broadcast one authorised message to a defined geographic cell area
A legal and operational chain from national ownership to local safety regions that decide when to alert
Public channels and campaigns that can reach people who are outside, at a border or unable to rely on a smartphone
Where else it has been used: Cell-broadcast warning systems are spreading internationally. The Dutch lesson is to measure reach repeatedly and keep non-phone channels in the design; a technically elegant alert that leaves the same people unreachable is not a resilient warning system.
Limits: The reach figures are self-reported survey responses to a test message, not observed receipt during a live crisis, comprehension of the instruction or compliance with it. The survey covers residents aged 12 and over and still found 8 percent not reached; people without a working phone, people abroad and older residents are not interchangeable gaps. The report also notes a method break in the historical series.
๐ณ๐ฑNetherlandssince 2005still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
The Netherlands built delegated authority into its public-service login so a family member, carer or adviser can act for someone else without taking their password; in 2024 DigiD Machtigen handled 15,563,897 queries from 798 connected services at 99.84 percent availability against a 99.5 percent norm.
15,563,897 queries, digid machtigen queries by connected services, 2024. 798 services, connected services, 2024. Logius, 2024 service figures, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
The state separated authentication from authority: a person grants a named representative access to one service for a defined period, while the representative uses their own credential and the system can record or revoke the mandate.
Preconditions
A trusted identity rail for both the person granting access and the representative
Service-specific permissions and expiry rules rather than one blanket delegation
Postal, telephone and assisted-digital routes for people who cannot create a mandate online
Where else it has been used: Delegated digital access is increasingly important as governments move services online. The Dutch lesson is to design representation as core infrastructure, not as an informal workaround that forces people to surrender credentials.
Limits: Queries, connected services and uptime show a maintained delegation rail, not whether the right person receives help, whether abuse is prevented or whether delegated transactions resolve well. A service can be technically available while a person remains unable to nominate a representative or understand the scope of access. The operator's counts also do not show how many residents still rely on paper or informal password sharing.
๐ณ๐ฑNetherlandssince 2004dismantledbears on Institutional responsiveness
The Netherlands ended DigiNotar's PKIoverheid service after the 2011 breach generated at least 531 forged certificates; 333 could be revoked and the government tightened certificate requirements, role division and supervision after the incident.
531 certificates, forged certificates generated during the breach, 2011. 333 certificates, forged certificates that could be revoked, 2011. Dutch Safety Board, DigiNotar incident investigation, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
When a private certificate provider was compromised, the state took operational control, moved users to other providers and rewrote the PKIoverheid requirements so Logius and the regulator had clearer roles and stricter oversight. The response improvised around the risk that revoking every certificate at once could interrupt essential government data flows.
Preconditions
A government-managed trust framework with contractual authority to remove a compromised provider
Alternative certificate providers able to absorb public-sector services during a forced migration
Incident investigation and supervisory institutions that can turn a breach into changed requirements rather than a one-off fix
Where else it has been used: Certificate-authority failures elsewhere led to similar moves toward tighter root-store governance and incident-response playbooks. The Dutch lesson is that a trust system needs a rehearsed provider-failure path; audits and a nominal single point of trust are not a recovery plan.
Limits: The certificate counts measure the scale of a compromise and the clean-up problem, not the number of people harmed or the security of the replacement trust chain. The Safety Board found that an unknown number of forged certificates entered circulation and that one was known to have been used in Iran; it did not establish direct financial or privacy damage in the Netherlands. Ending one provider and tightening oversight shows a response to failure, not proof that digital-government security became permanently robust.
๐ณ๐ฑNetherlandssince 2015dismantledbears on Institutional responsiveness
The Netherlands operated the Programmatic Approach to Nitrogen (PAS) from July 2015 until the Council of State invalidated its legal basis in May 2019; by the end of 2023, 2,557 affected PAS reporters had sought permits and only 115 had a recorded solution.
The state tied permission for new nitrogen-emitting activity to promised future reductions and ecological recovery; when the Council of State found that the programme did not meet EU nature-law requirements, the legal shortcut collapsed and ministries and provinces had to rebuild permitting and legalisation around demonstrable emissions space.
Preconditions
A judicial review route able to test a national programme against binding European environmental law
A monitoring and modelling system such as AERIUS that can allocate and revisit emissions space
Cross-government authority and budget to redesign permits while protecting affected operators and restoring ecological conditions
Where else it has been used: The case travels as a warning about policy built on discounted future action: adaptive capacity includes the ability to abandon a legally unsafe shortcut and support those stranded by it, not only the ability to announce a new target.
Limits: The figures show the administrative aftermath of a court-invalidated permitting framework, not the total nitrogen trend, the condition of every Natura 2000 site or the full distribution of responsibility for the policy. The Court of Audit counts requests and solutions reported through the government process; a recorded solution can mean a permit is unnecessary as well as that one was granted. The reversal demonstrates a failure to make future mitigation legally certain, while the later legalisation effort remains a separate and unfinished response.
๐จ๐ฑChilesince 2010delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the 2010 earthquake and tsunami, Chile's reconstruction programme repaired or replaced more than 223,000 homes across seven regions; MINVU reported 99.93% progress by February 2020 and changed protocols, seismic standards and risk-mitigation requirements.
223,000 homes repaired or replaced, homes repaired or replaced in 27f reconstruction, 2020. 99.93 % of reconstruction programme, reported progress of 27f reconstruction programme, 2020. Ministry of Housing and Urbanism (MINVU), 27F reconstruction report, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
Chile coordinated a multi-region housing and urban recovery programme through national standards, subsidies and local delivery, then used the reconstruction experience to revise emergency protocols, seismic requirements and mitigation practice.
Preconditions
A national housing ministry with the budget and authority to coordinate across regions and municipalities
Construction and engineering standards suited to earthquake and tsunami risk
A damage register, delivery pipeline and feedback from the recovery effort that can be converted into changed rules
Where else it has been used: Post-disaster reconstruction programmes often travel as templates, but the Chilean lesson is the feedback loop: speed and volume matter, while durable preparedness depends on turning delivery failures and field experience into enforceable standards before the next shock.
Limits: The housing and progress figures are government-reported and do not independently verify build quality, equitable access, long-term habitability or whether risk was reduced for every community. A programme marked 99.93% complete is not evidence that every livelihood, public facility or ecosystem recovered, and the final homes were still in execution at the time of the 2020 report.
๐จ๐ดColombiasince 2022still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
In 2024 Colombia's Registradurรญa deployed version 2.0 of its digital ID app and sent 2,642,775 polycarbonate digital identity cards to offices nationwide while continuing a pilot to refine digital services.
The national identity authority coupled a secure physical credential with a mobile app, biometric records and staged pilots, using real election and citizen-service needs to test new functions before widening the digital service.
Preconditions
A trusted civil registry and biometric infrastructure that can issue and verify one identity
A public operator able to maintain both a physical credential and a mobile service during transition
Pilot users, service partners and support channels that can expose problems before a national feature becomes mandatory
Where else it has been used: Digital identity upgrades travel when a country has a reliable foundational register, but the Colombian case underlines the need to measure activation, assisted access and privacy alongside issuance.
Limits: Cards sent and produced measure administrative throughput, not possession, activation, usage or protection against fraud. The Registradurรญa describes the app as still under pilot review and does not provide an independent assessment of accessibility, privacy, exclusion or whether digital services reduce the burden of proving identity. A production count is evidence of a national rollout, not proof of a complete digital identity system.
๐จ๐ดColombiasince 2011still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
In 2024 Colombia's Unidad para las Vรญctimas ordered 307,619 administrative indemnifications benefiting 285,537 victims, approved 79 collective reparation plans and closed three plans for communities affected by the armed conflict.
307,619 indemnifications, administrative indemnifications ordered, 2024. 285,537 victims, victims benefiting from administrative indemnifications, 2024. Unidad para las Vรญctimas, 2024 accountability report, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
Colombia built a standing administrative route from a national victims register to individual payments, collective plans and territorial support, allowing the state to process a very large caseload while adding differentiated treatment for communities, ethnic groups and vulnerable people.
Preconditions
A legal entitlement and registry that make victims visible to a national administrative system
Budget, local offices and fiduciary processes able to deliver payments and plans over many years
Coordination with municipalities, community representatives and other social services so compensation is not the only response
Where else it has been used: Post-conflict reparations systems travel as legal and administrative ideas, but Colombia shows the scale challenge: a durable process can institutionalise recognition while still leaving a long queue and unresolved security conditions.
Limits: Administrative orders and collective-plan closures show the reach of a reparations bureaucracy, not whether victims received money promptly, were made whole, felt safe or regained livelihoods. The Unit reports its own outputs and the eligible population is much larger than the annual caseload. A payment or plan milestone cannot resolve the justice, security and territorial conditions that produced the harm.
๐จ๐ดColombiasince 2011still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the 2010โ11 La Niรฑa floods, Colombia's Fondo Adaptaciรณn had advanced resettlement, reconstruction and improvement for more than 39,000 households by its 2021โ23 evaluation, presenting the work as reducing climate exposure and fiscal risk.
After a nationwide flood emergency, Colombia created a dedicated recovery fund that combined housing reconstruction with resettlement and risk-reduction works, using the recovery pipeline to move some households away from recurring hazards rather than simply replacing what was lost in place.
Preconditions
A national disaster fund with authority to coordinate housing, infrastructure and land decisions across departments
Damage and exposure information that can identify safer sites and prioritise households
Long-term finance and local implementation capacity beyond the first emergency-relief phase
Where else it has been used: Recovery funds and safer-resettlement programmes travel after major floods, but the Colombian case shows that recovery becomes preparedness only when the post-disaster pipeline changes exposure and land-use decisions rather than rebuilding the same vulnerability.
Limits: The evaluation's household count and exposure claims are public-administration figures, not an independent test of construction quality, long-term safety or whether the households remain out of harm's way. It combines resettlement, reconstruction and improvement across different projects and years, so it cannot be read as a single completion rate. Reduced exposure also depends on land-use control, maintenance and future climate conditions outside this record.
๐ฏ๐ตJapansince 2016still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
By July 2024 Japan reported 93.08 million My Number Cards held, about 75% of the population; 73.71 million had valid health-insurance-card registrations in June 2024, while 566 businesses used the public-key identity infrastructure.
Japan built one nationally recognised credential and progressively connected it to health insurance, public accounts, online procedures and private identity verification, using legal changes and a central digital agency to extend the rail while responding to implementation problems.
Preconditions
A national resident-number and civil-registration system that can anchor one credential
A central authority able to align ministries, municipalities, hospitals, banks and software providers
Correction, support and privacy mechanisms that can handle errors as the identity rail expands
Where else it has been used: Foundational digital identity can travel, but Japan's experience shows the difficult second phase: linking a widely issued card to many services while retaining a way to correct records and support people who cannot rely on an app.
Limits: Card holdings and registrations measure administrative reach, not active use, accuracy, privacy, accessibility or whether services became easier. The Digital Agency aggregates government and survey data, and the health-insurance and private-sector figures cover different dates and definitions. A high stock of cards can coexist with misregistrations, support burdens and people who cannot use a digital credential.
๐ฏ๐ตJapansince 2011still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Japan completed the planned 29,654 public-housing units by December 2020, completed 18,226 higher-ground residential-land units, opened about 570 kilometres of reconstruction roads by December 2021 and restored all damaged railways by March 2020.
29,654 housing units, public-housing units completed in the reconstruction plan, 2020-12. 570 kilometres, reconstruction roads opened to traffic, 2021-12. Reconstruction Agency of Japan, progress to date, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
Japan set a ten-year reconstruction frame, created a dedicated agency and combined higher-ground relocation, public housing, roads, rail restoration and livelihood support, reviewing the programme as the ordinary disaster areas moved from emergency recovery toward long-term revitalisation.
Preconditions
A national fiscal and administrative framework able to coordinate prefectures and municipalities after a catastrophic shock
Land-use, housing and infrastructure plans that can move people and assets out of hazard zones
A staged review process that separates completed physical works from the longer social and nuclear-recovery problems
Where else it has been used: Large post-disaster reconstruction agencies are a common response, but Tลhoku demonstrates why the physical delivery ledger must remain beside population, livelihood and social-recovery measures rather than being treated as the whole recovery.
Limits: Completion of housing, roads and railways shows delivery against a public programme, not whether communities regained population, livelihoods, trust or long-term safety. The agency notes that nuclear-disaster areas and support for evacuees continue, and the figures mix planned units, roads and different completion dates. A completed asset is not the same as a recovered place.
๐ต๐ชPerusince 2005still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Peru's Juntos conditional cash-transfer programme, created in 2005 and placed under MIDIS in 2012, operated in 1,885 districts and benefited 793,623 households by August 2024 through SISFOH-targeted support.
Peru linked regular cash transfers to health and education conditions and used the intergovernmental SISFOH targeting system to identify poor households, giving a national programme a way to reach dispersed communities while retaining a welfare-policy feedback and evaluation function.
Preconditions
A household targeting registry that national and local institutions can maintain and update
Payment rails and local schools and health posts able to verify conditions without making access impossible
A ministry with the budget and monitoring capacity to adjust coverage as poverty and shocks change
Where else it has been used: Conditional transfers travel widely, but Juntos shows the dependency often hidden by the beneficiary number: targeting, local service quality and reliable payment systems decide whether a national register becomes a capability or just a list.
Limits: Household coverage shows administrative reach, not whether transfers arrive on time, improve health or schooling, reduce poverty durably or exclude eligible families. MIDIS reports the programme totals and the targeting system, while causal effects require evaluations rather than beneficiary counts. District presence can also mask uneven access across a mountainous and remote country.
๐จ๐ทCosta Ricasince 2005still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Costa Rica's MICITT reported in October 2023 that more than 60 public institutions used certified digital signatures across more than 100 citizen services, with almost 75,000 certificates issued during that year.
Costa Rica combined a law granting electronic documents legal force with a national certification hierarchy, MICITT oversight and Banco Central support, then let agencies reuse the credential for signatures and online procedures instead of inventing separate trust systems.
Preconditions
A legal framework that makes a digital signature equivalent to a handwritten one
A certificate authority and identity-enrolment process that citizens and institutions can access
A central coordinator able to publish standards and help agencies migrate real procedures
Where else it has been used: Digital-signature systems travel more easily than full digital government because they start with a legal trust decision. Costa Rica shows that certificates become useful only when agencies convert them into complete services rather than a token login.
Limits: Institution and service counts show adoption of a legal and technical rail, not completion rates, user equity, fraud resistance or savings. Certificates issued are not the same as active users, and the adoption figures are reported by the coordinating ministry rather than independently audited across agencies.
๐จ๐ทCosta Ricasince 2010still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Costa Rica's IMAS reported that its national Childcare and Early Development benefit reached 25,704 children in 2024 with an investment of โก13.2 billion, while interinstitutional referrals used SINIRUBE to match eligible families to available places.
Costa Rica linked IMAS, PANI, CEN-CINAI, local authorities and private providers through the REDCUDI network, using the SINIRUBE social registry to refer eligible families into available childcare capacity rather than asking each institution to target alone.
Preconditions
A shared beneficiary registry with rules for privacy, eligibility and referral
Multiple public and private providers that can accept common standards and funding
A financing mechanism able to sustain places across agencies and localities
Where else it has been used: Integrated childcare networks travel as a coordination problem, not just a subsidy. Costa Rica's model highlights the registry and referral layer that lets scarce places move toward eligible families while leaving delivery plural.
Limits: Beneficiary and spending totals show administrative reach, not child development, quality, waiting lists or whether the service enables parents to work. The programme combines several providers and modalities, so the national total can hide very different experiences and does not independently audit outcomes.
๐ช๐จEcuadorsince 2000still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Ecuador adopted the US dollar as legal tender in January 2000 during a banking and currency crisis; a Central Bank review reports inflation falling from 96.1% in 2000 to below 8% in 2003 while the new regime removed the exchange-rate tool.
Facing a collapsing currency and banking system, Ecuador made a legally binding switch to the US dollar, converted prices and contracts, and rebuilt financial supervision around a regime that citizens could not devalue by political decree.
Preconditions
Political authority to make a fast, irreversible monetary commitment during a crisis
Access to enough foreign currency and a banking system that can clear dollar payments
Fiscal and financial reforms that prevent the new anchor from being undermined by domestic insolvency
Where else it has been used: Dollarization travels as a crisis commitment, not a generic stability policy. Ecuador's experience makes the trade-off explicit: credibility can be imported, but monetary flexibility and lender-of-last-resort capacity cannot.
Limits: The fall in inflation is an outcome of a regime change during a crisis, not a clean causal estimate of dollarization alone; oil prices, banking repair and fiscal policy also moved. The arrangement stabilises the nominal anchor but gives Ecuador less room to respond to external shocks through its own exchange rate or money supply.
๐ช๐จEcuadorsince 2016delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After Ecuador's 7.8-magnitude earthquake in April 2016, the national emergency committee reported 17 shelters and 59 temporary shelters active, assisting 25,931 people while mobile health units and security forces were deployed across affected provinces.
Ecuador used a national COE structure with provincial mesas to combine emergency logistics, health, security, road repair and social assistance, while publishing situation reports that gave agencies a common operating picture during a fast-moving shock.
Preconditions
A statutory emergency-management authority with a chain of command across provinces
Pre-existing military, police, health and municipal logistics that can be pooled quickly
A reporting cell able to update needs, shelters and service restoration as conditions change
Where else it has been used: Emergency coordination structures travel when they are rehearsed before the shock. Ecuador's report shows the value of a common operating picture, but the response layer still has to connect to a multi-year recovery authority.
Limits: This is an early response snapshot rather than a completed reconstruction account. Shelter and deployment counts show coordination under pressure, not whether displaced households returned safely, infrastructure was rebuilt resiliently or support reached every affected community.
๐ต๐ฆPanamasince 2009still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Panama's 120 a los 65 programme paid a non-contributory pension to an average of about 123,000 older people per payment during July 2019โJune 2024, with B/.890.835 million programmed over the period and a national beneficiary register used to target eligibility.
Panama created a tax-funded pension for older people outside formal contributory schemes, then used the Registro Nacional de Beneficiarios and scheduled payments through banks and hard-to-reach-area operations to make eligibility portable across provinces and comarcas.
Preconditions
A national identity and beneficiary register that can verify age, residency and pension status
A budget commitment that survives changes in the contributory pension system
Payment logistics and local access points able to reach people outside the banking network
Where else it has been used: Non-contributory pensions travel where formal employment leaves older people uncovered. Panama's case shows that the registry and payment route are as important as the transfer promise, especially in remote and Indigenous territories.
Limits: Beneficiary and budget figures show administrative reach, not adequacy, take-up, payment regularity or reductions in poverty and health insecurity. The average covers several years and the register can miss older people in remote areas; the programme's own report is not a causal evaluation.
๐ต๐ฆPanamasince 2023operating below its peakbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
During the extreme 2023โ24 drought, the Panama Canal Authority adjusted draft and booking rules to preserve water for the canal and the lakes supplying more than half of Panama's population, reducing daily transits from the normal 36 to 22 in December 2023 while keeping the waterway operating.
22 transits per day, daily transits during the december drought restriction, 2023-12. 36 transits per day, normal daily transit capacity, normal conditions. Autoridad del Canal de Panamรก, drought transit advisory, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
The canal authority used hydrological forecasts, vessel booking quotas and draft restrictions to ration a shared water system, protecting drinking-water reserves while preserving a predictable minimum service for maritime customers.
Preconditions
Real-time water and traffic data with an authority empowered to change operating rules
A single institution able to trade off shipping revenue against urban water security
Customers and pilots who can plan around transparent, staged restrictions rather than abrupt closure
Where else it has been used: Water-stressed infrastructure needs an operating playbook, not only new capacity. Panama's drought response shows how transparent rationing and forecasts can preserve a service while a longer watershed solution is built.
Limits: The reduction is a documented loss of peak transit capacity during one drought, not evidence that the watershed problem is solved or that every user receives equal service. The canal authority sets the rules and reports the trade-offs; the record does not quantify the effect on households, ecosystems or shipping costs, and later rainfall can restore capacity without removing the underlying vulnerability.
๐ง๐ดBoliviasince 2009still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Bolivia's Bono Juana Azurduy opened its 2024 payment round through 47 authorised financial institutions in all 340 municipalities and six Indigenous territories, tying the transfer to prenatal, delivery and early-childhood health checks; the programme reported 1,525,566 pregnant women and 1,783,936 children reached between 2009 and 2023.
Bolivia linked a modest cash incentive to a sequence of prenatal, delivery and child-health checks, then used a nationwide bank network and mobile intersectoral brigades to move the programme beyond urban clinics and into Indigenous territories.
Preconditions
A beneficiary and health-record system able to verify visits without excluding people with incomplete documentation
Payment institutions and mobile teams that can reach remote and Indigenous communities
Primary-care facilities with enough staff and supplies for the conditions to mean more than a paperwork exercise
Where else it has been used: Conditional health transfers travel best when the payment rail and the service network are designed together. Bolivia's case makes the last-mile condition visible: national coverage is a logistics problem as much as a budget line.
Limits: Municipal and financial-channel coverage shows administrative reach, not whether every eligible mother is paid on time, attends the required visits or experiences better maternal and child outcomes. The ministry reports the programme's own totals, while the record does not establish the causal effect of the transfer or the quality of the health facilities where conditions are verified.
๐ง๐ดBoliviasince 2007still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Bolivia's Renta Dignidad, created by Law 3791 in 2007 and paid since 2008, reached 1,241,440 beneficiaries in 2024 with Bs5.289 billion disbursed through the national social-security administration.
Bolivia converted a universal old-age entitlement into a predictable non-contributory payment, administered through the long-term social-security system and financed as a standing national obligation rather than a short project.
Preconditions
A population register and identity process that can establish age and prevent duplicate payments
A fiscal transfer and payment network that reaches older people outside contributory employment
Rules that protect payment continuity while the financing base and population structure change
Where else it has been used: Social pensions travel where informal work leaves many people outside contributory schemes. Bolivia shows the reach a standing entitlement can create, while leaving the financing and adequacy questions explicit.
Limits: Beneficiary and disbursement totals show the scale of a transfer system, not whether the benefit is adequate, paid reliably in every remote area or sufficient to reduce old-age poverty. The report is an administrative account and does not provide a counterfactual estimate of welfare effects or the programme's fiscal resilience under demographic change.
๐ต๐พParaguaysince 2005still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Paraguay's Tekoporรฃ Mbarete social-protection programme protected more than 175,000 families nationwide in 2024, paid monthly after a 2023 redesign and reported 95% bankarisation plus georeferencing of 11,316 participating homes.
Paraguay combined a recurring transfer with family guides, monthly payment and a georeferenced beneficiary register, then pushed bank access into a programme that had previously paid less frequently and reached families unevenly.
Preconditions
A social registry and field network able to identify, revisit and update vulnerable households
Payment rails that can reach rural and Indigenous families without making bank access a new exclusion test
Health, education and social-work services capable of turning a transfer into sustained household support
Where else it has been used: Social-protection systems travel when the registry and payment rail travel with the benefit. Paraguay's redesign shows how frequency, field accompaniment and financial inclusion can be treated as one delivery problem.
Limits: Family coverage and payment-channel penetration show administrative reach, not whether transfers arrive on time, meet household needs or improve health, schooling and income. The report is the government's own account and does not provide a counterfactual impact estimate; georeferencing also cannot by itself reveal who remains excluded from the registry.
๐ต๐พParaguaysince 2021still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Paraguay's tax administration approved 651,894,711 electronic tax documents during 2024 and reported 6,659 electronic billers using the SIFEN system, combining mandatory onboarding for larger firms with the free e-Kuatia'i route for small taxpayers.
Paraguay made the tax document a machine-readable event: SIFEN set a national standard, validated documents centrally and combined a mandatory calendar for larger taxpayers with a free tool and electronic signature path for smaller ones.
Preconditions
A tax authority with legal power to set the document standard and phase in compliance
Reliable identity, signature and validation services that firms can integrate at low cost
A support and exception process for small businesses with limited connectivity or software capacity
Where else it has been used: Electronic invoicing travels as a state-business coordination project, not merely an IT purchase. Paraguay's combination of a central validation rail and a free small-firm route is the part worth comparing.
Limits: Document and taxpayer counts show system throughput and adoption, not the revenue effect, compliance cost, uptime or whether informal firms can participate without disproportionate burden. The tax authority reports the implementation totals, and the staged mandate means the 2024 base was not yet a census of all taxpayers.
๐ฆ๐ทArgentinasince 2009still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Argentina's Asignaciรณn Universal por Hijo (AUH) reached 4,083,987 children and adolescents in June 2024, with 2,324,716 adult titulars receiving the benefit through the national social-security administration and its health, vaccination and education conditions.
Argentina made children the legal beneficiaries of a national cash transfer, used ANSES identity and household records to deliver it at scale and held back a share until families documented health, vaccination and education conditions.
Preconditions
A national identity and social-security database that can link children, adult titulars and payment accounts
Schools and health services able to verify conditions without turning documentation into a barrier
A durable budget and appeal process that can keep the entitlement responsive through inflation and labour-market shocks
Where else it has been used: Child benefits travel when the register, payment system and service verification are treated as one capability. Argentina's AUH illustrates both the reach of that architecture and the need to measure exclusion and real purchasing power separately.
Limits: Beneficiary counts show the reach of a transfer system, not whether payment is adequate, households complete the required checks or children experience better outcomes. ANSES reports the administrative totals, while the record does not establish a causal effect or reveal how many eligible families remain outside the registry.
๐ฆ๐ทArgentinasince 2010still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Argentina's SUBE system distributed more than five million cards and recorded about 6.7 million new cards in 2024, while expanding the network to more than 30,000 recharge points and making SUBE Digital available in every locality.
Argentina built one interoperable fare and data layer across jurisdictions, then used the transaction record to target subsidies, integrate transfers and add a mobile payment option without abandoning the physical card for people who need it.
Preconditions
A national standard that transport operators and provincial and municipal systems can adopt
Retail and digital channels that keep cards and recharging usable outside major cities
A public data and subsidy authority able to reconcile transactions with operator payments
Where else it has been used: A common fare rail travels when it solves a state problem as well as a passenger problem. SUBE's value is the combination of inclusion, operational data and subsidy control, not the card alone.
Limits: Cards and recharge points measure access to the payment rail, not travel-time improvements, fare affordability, service reliability or the accuracy of subsidies. The ministry's figures describe distribution and availability, while the record does not independently audit usage, system uptime or the effect of later open-payment reforms.
๐ต๐ญPhilippinessince 2018still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
The Philippine Statistics Authority reported 90,017,565 people registered to PhilSys by 19 September 2024, or 97.8% of the year's 92 million registration target, with the ID designed for government and private-sector transactions.
The Philippines made one permanent identifier the base for public and private transactions, combined PSA registration with mobile and local-government channels and added physical, paper and digital credentials so the system could reach people with different levels of connectivity.
Preconditions
A civil-registration authority able to reconcile demographic and biometric records at national scale
Registration sites and mobile teams that can reach islands, remote barangays and young children
Clear legal rules and relying-party integration so the credential is accepted beyond the issuing agency
Where else it has been used: Foundational IDs travel when enrolment, authentication and service integration are funded as one system. PhilSys shows how quickly registration can scale, while delivery and acceptance remain separate tests.
Limits: Registration against a target shows the reach of an identity enrolment campaign, not whether records are accurate, cards arrive promptly, agencies actually accept the credential or people receive better services. The PSA reports the milestone and target; this record does not independently assess exclusion, privacy or authentication performance.
๐ต๐ญPhilippinessince 2008still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
The Philippines' 4Ps conditional cash-transfer programme reached 4,064,354 households by 30 June 2024 across 41,746 barangays, 148 cities and 1,485 municipalities, with beneficiaries linked to health, education and nutrition conditions.
The Philippines combined a national household-targeting system with conditional grants, local verification and regular programme monitoring, allowing a central social-protection rule to operate through thousands of barangays and municipal service networks.
Preconditions
A household registry that can be updated as poverty, migration and family composition change
Schools, health facilities and local governments able to verify conditions without making remote families carry the full administrative burden
Payment and grievance channels that let beneficiaries correct records and challenge missed or suspended grants
Where else it has been used: Conditional transfers travel through local service capacity. The Philippine case is useful because its national scale makes the registry, verification and grievance machinery visible rather than treating the cash grant as the whole programme.
Limits: Household and barangay coverage show administrative reach, not whether payments arrive on time, children attend school, health outcomes improve or eligible families are excluded. The implementation report is the programme's own account and does not replace an independent causal evaluation or measure the quality of local services that conditions depend on.
๐ต๐ญPhilippinessince 2013still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After Typhoon Yolanda, the Philippines' recovery programme had provided shelter assistance to about 1.14 million families by September 2016; the National Housing Authority had completed 29,661 permanent units while 102,240 more were under construction across six regions, 14 provinces and 115 cities and municipalities.
The Philippines combined emergency shelter assistance with a multi-agency recovery plan, permanent housing and local-government coordination, while documenting the land, permitting and procurement bottlenecks that slowed the transition from relief to safer settlement.
Preconditions
A recovery authority able to coordinate national agencies, local governments, donors and affected communities
Pre-agreed land, titling and no-build-zone rules that can be activated after a disaster
Monitoring that tracks completed and occupied units, not just funds released or houses contracted
Where else it has been used: Disaster recovery travels as a governance sequence: cash and shelter first, then land, housing and livelihoods. Yolanda is valuable because its implementation record shows both the reach and the friction in that sequence.
Limits: The figures are a 2016 implementation snapshot, not a final account of long-term recovery, land tenure, livelihoods, relocation quality or resilience to the next storm. The same source records major housing delays caused by no-build zones, land conversion, titling and local approvals; shelter counts therefore should not be read as proof that recovery was complete or equitable.
๐ฎ๐ฉIndonesiasince 2014still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Indonesia's Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional (JKN) health-insurance system had 275,413,133 registered participants, 97.50% of the population, by 31 July 2024; 219,263,970 participants were active.
Indonesia combined a national entitlement with a single administrative pool, subsidised poor households and required employers and local governments to enrol their populations, making portability across the archipelago possible.
Preconditions
A population register and membership identifier that can deduplicate people across schemes
A financing rule that lets the state subsidise households unable to pay
Claims and provider data capable of monitoring both coverage and active status
Where else it has been used: Near-universal insurance travels poorly when enrolment is easier than keeping contributions current. Indonesia's separate registered and active counts make that implementation gap visible.
Limits: Registration is not the same as timely access, quality of treatment or financial protection: the same report shows 56.15 million participants were inactive, including people in arrears or undergoing eligibility verification. The participant totals are compiled by the social-security council from BPJS and civil-registration data and are not an independent audit of claims or health outcomes.
๐ฎ๐ฉIndonesiasince 2014still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Indonesia's disaster agency runs InaRISK as an open, integrated risk-management platform; its 2024 national dashboard covered about 7,100 kecamatan and combined BNPB, geospatial, statistical, health and education data for exposure and risk mapping.
BNPB put hazard, exposure, vulnerability and capacity layers behind one public map, giving national and local planners a shared geography for deciding where preparedness resources should go.
Preconditions
Common administrative geographies and data standards across ministries
A technical agency able to maintain geospatial layers between disasters
Local authorities able to turn a risk map into drills, land-use rules and response plans
Where else it has been used: Risk maps travel when they are treated as operating infrastructure rather than one-off reports. InaRISK is a useful delivery case while leaving the harder questionโwhether the map changes readinessโopen.
Limits: A mapped risk and exposure layer is an input to preparedness, not evidence that warnings arrive, evacuation works or recovery is fast. The dashboard combines modelled hazards and administrative datasets that can change with new boundaries and inputs; it does not provide a comparable outcome measure of lives, assets or services protected.
๐ป๐ณVietnamsince 2021still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security reported more than 70.2 million electronic-identification accounts issued by January 2024, with VNeID designed to replace paper documents and authenticate public and private services against the national population database.
Vietnam made one population-data-backed identity the default credential for administrative services, then connected health, driving, social-security and financial attributes to it instead of asking each ministry to issue another account.
Preconditions
A population database with a stable identifier and identity-proofing process
Legal authority to make one credential valid across ministries and service providers
Interoperability and privacy controls for the sensitive records attached to the identity
Where else it has been used: A national identity app travels only when service owners actually retire their parallel logins. Vietnam's account count shows the rollout; adoption and safeguards remain separate tests.
Limits: Accounts issued are not the same as active use, successful service completion or public trust in a single identity provider. The number is reported by the ministry that runs the system and the article also records unresolved rules for organisation identities, authentication levels and how widely the service can be distributed.
๐ป๐ณVietnamsince 1995still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Vietnam Social Security reported 95.523 million people enrolled in health insurance in 2024, covering 94.29% of the population and approaching the country's 95% universal-coverage target for 2025.
95,523,000 people, health-insurance participants, 2024. 94.29 % of population, population covered by health insurance, 2024. Vietnam Social Security, coverage progress report, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
Vietnam merged the administrative systems for social and health insurance, used compulsory and subsidised categories to widen the pool and kept a long-running public target visible as coverage moved from a minority programme toward universality.
Preconditions
A national social-security agency with local offices and a common beneficiary record
Public subsidies for people whose income makes contributions unaffordable
A provider and claims system capable of serving a rapidly expanding insured population
Where else it has been used: Coverage expansion is easier to copy than the administrative merger behind it. Vietnam's long series is useful because it shows the institutional work between a legal entitlement and near-universal enrolment.
Limits: Enrolment and coverage do not show whether people can obtain timely, affordable and high-quality care, or whether minority and remote communities receive the same service. The series is reported by the agency administering the scheme, and the population denominator and programme rules have changed over the three decades in the source.
๐ป๐ณVietnamsince 2024still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After Typhoon Yagi struck northern Vietnam, the government reported on 16 September 2024 that power had returned to 92.5% of customers in affected localities and that 8,386 of 9,235 damaged mobile base stations had been restored.
Vietnam used central emergency direction, utility and telecom repair teams, and a shared damage report to restore lifeline networks while the storm response was still unfolding, keeping power and communications as parallel recovery priorities.
Preconditions
An emergency command chain able to direct utilities across provinces
Asset inventories and field reporting that identify damaged substations and base stations quickly
Repair crews, spare parts and access routes that can operate while floods and landslides continue
Where else it has been used: Recovery capacity is visible in the speed and completeness of restoration, not only in relief spending. Yagi provides a dated operational checkpoint while leaving long-term adaptation open.
Limits: This is an early restoration snapshot, not a final account of deaths avoided, housing and livelihood recovery, or resilience before the next storm. The ministry report covers affected northern localities and restoration status, while the figures do not independently verify the quality or durability of repaired power and communications assets.
๐ฒ๐พMalaysiasince 2021still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Malaysia's national COVID-19 immunisation programme had administered 57,119,777 doses by 31 December 2021, while the MySejahtera application was used to collect 974,134 adverse-event responses for vaccine safety monitoring.
57,119,777 doses, covid-19 vaccine doses administered, 2021-12-31. 974,134 responses, adverse-event responses submitted through mysejahtera, 2021-12-31. Malaysia Ministry of Health, Annual Report 2021, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
Malaysia paired a central vaccination command with a single citizen-facing app for registration, appointments, certificates and safety reporting, then used public clinics and contracted providers to move millions of doses through one operational workflow.
Preconditions
A national health identity and digital appointment channel
Cold-chain logistics and a network of public and private vaccination sites
A safety-monitoring process that can connect self-reports to vaccine records
Where else it has been used: A crisis app is useful when it is attached to the delivery chain, not just a status screen. Malaysia's dose and reporting counts show both throughput and the limits of self-reported monitoring.
Limits: Doses and safety-report counts show the ability to mobilise a national vaccination operation, not coverage equity, completed-course protection, clinical outcomes or whether every adverse event was reported. The annual report is produced by the ministry running the programme and the MySejahtera responses are passive self-reports, so neither number is an independent measure of safety or effectiveness.
๐ฒ๐พMalaysiasince 2023still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Malaysia's National Disaster Management Agency (NADMA), water and meteorological agencies and telecommunications companies sent more than five million flood-warning SMS messages during the 2023/24 monsoon season and upgraded 442 transmission-tower sites to keep warnings and communications functioning.
NADMA joined hydrology, weather, communications regulation and commercial telcos into one warning workflow, using the mobile network's national reach while requiring operators to harden the physical sites that warnings depend on.
Preconditions
A single emergency agency able to trigger messages across competing networks
Hydrological and weather data tied to geographies that operators can target
Network resilience work funded before the monsoon rather than after an outage
Where else it has been used: Public warnings travel when the alert authority, forecast data and last-mile carrier are joined. Malaysia's system shows the coordination architecture; warning quality still needs independent testing.
Limits: Message volume and tower upgrades show an alert channel and network hardening, not whether warnings arrived before local flooding, were understood, or changed evacuation behaviour. NADMA reports the output itself, and the source does not provide false-alarm rates, geographic reach or outcomes for people who received the messages.
๐น๐ญThailandsince 2002still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Thailand's National Health Security Office has sustained the tax-funded Universal Coverage Scheme since 2002; in fiscal 2023 it covered more than 47.2 million people and contracted 17,247 public and private health units to provide care.
Thailand created a statutory national purchaser, financed coverage from the public budget and repeatedly revised the benefits package and access rules instead of treating the 2002 launch as a one-off reform. A common fund could contract a mixed provider network and use the national ID rather than a paper card to carry eligibility.
Preconditions
A legal entitlement and budget process that survives changes of government
A purchaser with data and bargaining capacity across public and private providers
A population register and administrative claims system that can verify eligibility
Where else it has been used: Thailand's purchaser model is studied across low- and middle-income countries. The transferable move is durable pooled financing plus an agency that can learn the benefit package, not the exact 30-baht co-payment.
Limits: Beneficiary and provider counts show institutional reach, not equal quality, timeliness, financial protection in every case or the health outcomes attributable to the scheme. NHSO is the programme manager and reports its own administrative totals; the provider count includes units with different capacities and does not show how many patients each served. The record also covers one of three tax-funded schemes, not every route to Thai health coverage.
๐น๐ญThailandsince 2022still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Thailand's Digital ID Framework aligned government and private identity providers around common standards in its 2022โ2024 first phase; the Electronic Transactions Development Agency reports at least 113 million users across the major ThaiD, Tang Rat, Paotang and NDID platforms and services.
ETDA acted as a coordinating standards body while the interior ministry, a state bank and financial-sector network each kept a user-facing identity channel. A common framework allowed those channels to connect to government and private services without forcing the country to wait for one monolithic identity provider.
Preconditions
A population-data authority able to anchor identity assurance
A standards body with convening power across state agencies, banks and platforms
Security, consent and recovery rules for people who lose a device or need assisted access
Where else it has been used: Federated identity ecosystems travel more easily than a single national login, but only if the trust and liability rules are explicit. Thailand's overlapping platforms make the scale visible and the deduplication problem visible too.
Limits: The 113-million figure is an aggregate of platform-reported users and can include overlapping accounts, so it is not a count of unique people or proof that all services accept the same credential. The ETDA review describes framework progress and platform stocks, not authentication success, exclusion, security incidents or the cost of integration. The framework's second phase was still expanding its target groups and service coverage when the source was published.
๐น๐ญThailandsince 2025still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Thailand launched T-Alert in September 2025 as a nationwide cell-broadcast warning system: it covers eight hazard categories, was built with the disaster agency, digital ministry, telecom regulator and AIS, True and NT, and followed three staged tests in 2025 before use in real floods and other incidents.
Thailand joined a disaster-warning centre to the telecom regulator, digital ministry and all three major mobile operators, using cell broadcast so the authority can target a geography without a subscriber list. Staged tests at building, district and provincial levels preceded wider use, while hazard-specific thresholds and field data determine when to alert.
Preconditions
A legally recognised authority able to issue a national alert through every operator
A common cell-broadcast gateway and compatible handset standards
Hazard data and local incident workflows that can turn a forecast into a bounded target area
Where else it has been used: Cell broadcast is spreading as a complement to sirens and SMS. Thailand's staged rollout shows the coordination needed to make a multi-operator warning channel real, while its handset limits keep redundancy essential.
Limits: The hazard count and test phases show a national warning architecture, not warning lead time, receipt by every at-risk person, false-alarm rates or evacuation outcomes. Cell broadcast depends on compatible 4G/5G devices and current operating systems, while older phones require another channel. The government reports the rollout and examples of use; independent tests of alert comprehension and last-mile action are still needed.
๐ช๐ธSpainsince 2014still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Spain built Cl@ve as a common public-sector platform for identification, authentication and electronic signatures; the Spanish Tax Agency reported 20.867 million taxpayer identifiers enrolled in Cl@ve Mรณvil by 31 December 2024, including 12.323 million citizens active in the app.
Spain created one public-sector identity layer that agencies could embed in their own procedures, then added a mobile channel while retaining other assurance routes. A central platform reduced repeated account creation and let a high-volume agency such as the Tax Agency test and scale the identity flow.
Preconditions
A stable taxpayer and population registry that can anchor identity assurance
A central operator able to publish standards and support many agencies
Fallback credentials and assisted routes for people who cannot use a smartphone
Where else it has been used: Shared authentication rails travel when agencies agree on assurance and liability. Spain's separate identifier and active-user counts are a useful reminder that reach is not the same as unique people or successful service journeys.
Limits: Enrollment and active-app counts show a reusable identity rail, not whether every public service is reachable, whether people without smartphones can use it or whether authentication is secure against all fraud. The Tax Agency reports its Cl@ve Mรณvil figures and counts taxpayer identifiers separately from citizens, so the two numbers must not be added into a population total. The platform is shared across the public administration, but the record does not isolate its causal effect on service completion.
๐ช๐ธSpainsince 2021still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the Cumbre Vieja eruption began on 19 September 2021, Spain coordinated a stateโCanary Islandsโisland recovery commission; by February 2024 the state reported โฌ929 million mobilised and 650 CO2 monitoring devices installed, allowing more than 220 families to return safely to homes in affected areas.
929,000,000 euros, state resources mobilised for la palma recovery, 2024-02. 650 devices, co2 monitoring devices installed in affected areas, 2024-02. Government of Spain, La Moncloa recovery commission report, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
Spain created a mixed commission linking the central government, the autonomous region, island government and municipalities, then paired large-scale aid with a locally targeted monitoring system. The CO2 programme turned a continuing hazard into a measured re-entry protocol rather than treating the end of the eruption as the end of the emergency.
Preconditions
Clear authority to coordinate national funds with regional and municipal reconstruction decisions
Scientific monitoring that can translate a changing hazard into household-level safety rules
A recovery budget that remains available after media attention and the acute emergency decline
Where else it has been used: Post-disaster recovery travels through coordination and monitoring more than through a single grant. La Palma shows how a small island can use national fiscal capacity while keeping local authorities in the operational loop.
Limits: Mobilised resources and monitoring devices measure administrative response and a specific safety intervention, not the completeness of reconstruction, the speed and fairness of compensation or long-term livelihood recovery. The โฌ929 million is a government total against its valuation of damage and includes different instruments over several years. The return of more than 220 families to monitored homes is an operational output, not proof that every affected zone was safe.
๐ต๐ฑPolandsince 2015still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Poland made the mDowรณd digital identity document in the mObywatel app legally equivalent to the physical identity card inside Poland; the Ministry of Digital Affairs reports that eight million people use the document, which can also support PESEL blocking and other public-service interactions.
8,000,000 people, people using the mdowรณd digital identity document, 2026-08. 1 nationally recognised digital identity document, legal status of mdowรณd inside poland, 2026-08. Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs, mObywatel usage update, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
Poland put a verifiable identity document and several high-value public functions in one mobile wallet, then gave the digital document explicit legal standing so offices, banks and other authorised institutions could accept it. A central app reduced the need for each service to build its own mobile credential.
Preconditions
A trusted national population register and physical identity issuance system
A state operator able to sign and revoke verifiable mobile documents
A legal rule that tells frontline institutions when a digital document is equivalent to paper
Where else it has been used: Digital wallets travel when legal recognition follows technical deployment. Poland's adoption shows the pull of a useful document, while the single-app design keeps recovery and exclusion as live governance questions.
Limits: The user count measures adoption of a government wallet, not successful completion of public services, equal access for people without compatible phones or the privacy and fraud risks of concentrating documents in one app. The ministry reports a rounded current total and does not state how often each user presents the credential. Legal equivalence applies in Poland and does not automatically make the document a cross-border EU credential.
๐ต๐ฑPolandsince 2016still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Poland's ZUS-administered child-benefit system has paid support since 2016 and moved applications and payments online; by November 2023, the government reported nearly seven million children reached and almost PLN255 billion transferred, before the monthly benefit rose from 500 to 800 zลoty in January 2024.
Poland turned a broad entitlement into a single national payment workflow, then shifted administration to ZUS and required online applications through ZUS, Emp@tia or bank channels. Automatic uprating from 500 to 800 zลoty preserved continuity for existing families without a new eligibility decision.
Preconditions
A population and social-insurance register that can match children to guardians
A payment agency with nationwide bank-transfer and fraud-control capacity
Assisted application routes for households that cannot navigate online forms
Where else it has been used: Large child-benefit systems travel when payment infrastructure is simpler than case-by-case welfare administration. Poland's digital-only application rule shows the efficiency gained and the inclusion risk that must be managed alongside it.
Limits: The cumulative transfer and child counts show administrative reach, not poverty reduction, fertility effects, take-up among eligible families or the programme's fiscal sustainability. The government reports rounded totals and the period includes a change from 500+ to 800+, so the numbers do not describe one constant benefit. Payments are made to bank accounts, leaving delivery quality dependent on digital access and accurate beneficiary records.
๐ต๐ฑPolandsince 2018still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Poland's Government Security Centre launched Alert RCB as an opt-out-free emergency SMS channel in 2018; in its first year it activated the system 23 times and, working with mobile operators, sent about 200 million warning messages to phones in threatened areas.
RCB receives hazard information from crisis services and meteorological agencies, defines a threatened geography and legally requires every mobile operator to broadcast the same short warning without prior subscription. The channel is deliberately simple and complements local sirens and emergency services.
Preconditions
A central crisis authority able to trigger messages across all mobile operators
A geographic targeting system at least as precise as the powiat
Operator capacity and redundant channels for outages, roaming and people outside coverage
Where else it has been used: Mass SMS warnings travel when the state can use operators as a coordinated last-mile network. Poland's early data also makes the latency and duplication limits explicit rather than hiding them behind a reach percentage.
Limits: Messages and activations measure the scale of a warning channel, not delivery time, comprehension, false-alarm rates or whether people changed behaviour. The bulletin notes that large-area alerts could take two to three hours to distribute and that phones outside network coverage might not receive them. Roaming can also produce duplicate messages, so SMS volume is not a unique-person count.
๐ธ๐ชSwedensince 2003still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Sweden's bank-issued BankID became a shared identity layer for public and private services: in 2024 it handled 7.6 billion identification or signature transactions for 8.6 million users across 7,500 connected services, with 99.99% availability.
Major banks formed a common issuer and technical standard, then public authorities and firms adopted the same authentication and signing flow instead of each building a separate credential. That let one already-identified customer base become national digital infrastructure without a single government agency issuing every credential.
Preconditions
Banks with near-universal customer relationships and reliable know-your-customer records
A stable personal identity number that public and private services can use as the joining key
Public-sector willingness to accept a privately operated identity at a common assurance level
Where else it has been used: BankID travels as a federated-identity pattern: the reusable move is a shared trust and liability framework, not the mobile app alone, and countries without a similarly concentrated banking or identity base will need a different issuer coalition.
Limits: BankID is a private bank consortium rather than a state identity card, and access requires a Swedish personal identity number, an issuing bank and the ability to use the app without assistance. Transaction volume and availability show a functioning identity rail, not equal access, fraud resistance, or the quality of the public services reached through it.
๐ธ๐ชSwedensince 2003still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Sweden's regions and municipalities run the 1177 national health hub through Inera, combining a common website, logged-in care services and the nationwide nurse helpline; 1177.se recorded just over 260 million visits in 2021.
Regional health systems kept operational responsibility but agreed on one national entry point, shared content standards and a common identity-backed service layer. The arrangement turns a fragmented provider landscape into a recognisable front door without removing regional control over care.
Preconditions
A durable inter-regional body able to maintain common content, interfaces and support
A national identity and consent model for exposing records and care transactions
Regional funding and governance that can keep local services connected to the shared platform
Where else it has been used: 1177 travels as a federated public-service portal: a common national front door can coexist with decentralised delivery when the shared layer is narrow, maintained and trusted.
Limits: The 2021 web total includes an exceptional pandemic information load. The visit figure is on page 33 of the report, and the report does not count helpline calls. Regions still run their own advice operations and decide which logged-in services and records are visible, so national branding does not mean identical service quality or outcomes everywhere.
๐ธ๐ชSwedensince 1986still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Sweden's Viktigt meddelande till allmรคnheten (VMA) system combines radio, television, mobile messages, apps and outdoor sirens; SOS Alarm's 2025 report records 37 VMA alerts issued in 2024, alongside the four scheduled annual siren tests.
Authorised authorities can request one centrally coordinated warning, while SOS Alarm and broadcasters distribute it through several channels and the siren network is exercised on a fixed public schedule. Redundancy makes the warning less dependent on any one medium and gives residents a familiar routine for checking what a signal means.
Preconditions
A legally defined authority and a single operational gateway for issuing warnings
Agreements with broadcasters, mobile operators and municipalities that keep channels interoperable
Regular public tests and clear instructions that convert a signal into protective action
Where else it has been used: VMA travels as a layered-warning pattern: countries can add mobile and app channels without discarding sirens and broadcast, but only if the trigger authority and message vocabulary stay unambiguous.
Limits: Alert count measures the activation of a warning chain, not the share of people who received, understood or acted on a message. Outdoor sirens do not cover every location, mobile delivery depends on network and handset conditions, and scheduled tests are evidence of maintenance rather than proof of performance in a major disaster.
๐ฎ๐ชIrelandsince 2015still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Ireland built MyGovID as a reusable online identity for welfare, tax, transport, education and childcare services; the 2025 Digital Decade country report records more than 2.7 million verified accounts in December 2024, close to 65% of adults.
Ireland joined identity verification run by the Department of Social Protection to a common sign-on adopted by other departments, so each service could reuse one assurance process rather than issue its own credentials. The account layer makes cross-department integration visible to citizens while leaving service ownership distributed.
Preconditions
A national identity-verification process that can be reused by multiple departments
A stable personal service number and legal basis for linking benefits and tax services
A central product owner with authority to set authentication and accessibility standards
Where else it has been used: MyGovID travels as a government-wide identity pattern: a single sign-on only joins services when the back-end data, assurance rules and fallback routes are coordinated as carefully as the login screen.
Limits: Verified accounts are a reach measure, not proof that every service is available or easy to use. The account requires identity-verification steps and a Public Services Card or equivalent route, and the adult-share denominator excludes children and people who remain offline; one account can also be used for many services without showing the quality of those transactions.
๐ฎ๐ชIrelandsince 2020delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Ireland's HSE vaccination programme built a national booking, supply and reporting operation during COVID-19; by 21 July 2021 its dashboard recorded 5,344,686 administered doses, including 2,854,040 first doses.
Ireland combined HSE clinics, general practitioners, pharmacies, a central registration process and national data reporting under one prioritisation strategy. The shared dashboard let planners see supply and administration together while local providers supplied the last mile.
Preconditions
A health service able to allocate scarce doses through a published national priority order
Cold-chain logistics and a common reporting system linking hospitals, GPs, pharmacies and clinics
Trusted clinical advice that can change eligibility and dosing rules without fragmenting delivery
Where else it has been used: The vaccination pattern travels as a federated emergency operation: a central queue and data standard can coordinate many providers, but the last-mile workforce and supply contracts determine whether the plan becomes injections.
Limits: The July 2021 dashboard is an interim administrative snapshot and warns that recorded totals lag some GP vaccinations. Dose counts measure throughput, not equitable access, protection, adverse events or the speed of the programme's later phases; the campaign also depended on global supply and changing clinical guidance. HSE has since withdrawn its dashboard archive, so the record cites a Wayback Machine snapshot (10 December 2023) of the original PDF.
๐ฎ๐ชIrelandsince 2009still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Ireland created NAMA in response to the property and banking crisis, acquired distressed loans and worked them down through asset sales and development; by the end of 2023 it had generated โฌ47.7 billion in cash and transferred more than โฌ4.25 billion to the Exchequer while preparing an orderly wind-down.
47,700,000,000 euros, cash generated by nama since inception, 2023-12. 4,250,000,000 euros (over), cumulative transfers to the exchequer, 2023-12. National Asset Management Agency, 2023 year-end review, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
Ireland isolated distressed property loans in a specialist agency with a statutory mandate, state-backed financing and commercial asset-management skills. Separating workout decisions from the surviving banks created a long time horizon for sales and development while making the agency's cash and wind-down obligations reportable.
Preconditions
Legislation that gives a crisis agency clear powers to acquire, restructure and dispose of assets
A credible funding and valuation framework that can survive political and market pressure
Transparent reporting and a sunset or wind-down plan so an emergency institution does not become permanent
Where else it has been used: NAMA travels as a crisis-workout pattern: a temporary balance-sheet institution can create room for recovery, but its public return must be read alongside the losses and guarantees that made the intervention possible.
Limits: Cash generated and Exchequer transfers are financial outputs, not a counterfactual estimate of how the crisis would have unfolded without NAMA. Asset sales depend on market conditions, the agency's mandate was exceptional and temporary, and the figures do not capture distributional effects, losses borne elsewhere in the banking system or the full public cost of the rescue.
๐ฎ๐ชIrelandsince 2017still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Ireland's national meteorological service uses a standard YellowโOrangeโRed warning system and briefs the National Emergency Coordination Group so government departments and agencies can coordinate ahead of severe weather; warnings are issued up to 48 hours before anticipated conditions.
Met รireann translates forecast uncertainty into a small, nationally understood set of action levels, then places the forecast inside a whole-of-government coordination forum. That joins technical information to a standing decision process instead of leaving each department to interpret raw weather data independently.
Preconditions
A national meteorological service with authority and credibility to issue one public scale
A cross-government coordination group that can turn warnings into transport, health and local-response actions
Clear thresholds and public guidance that link each colour to a precaution rather than a vague alert
Where else it has been used: The warning pattern travels when a forecast scale is paired with a coordination forum: colour labels alone do not create preparedness unless agencies know who convenes, decides and communicates next.
Limits: Lead time and colour levels describe the warning protocol, not forecast accuracy, public comprehension or whether local authorities reduced harm. The system is hazard-specific and weather-dependent, and a warning is only one input into the National Emergency Coordination Group's operational decisions.
๐ง๐ทBrazilsince 2023still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Brazil's Congress and president established a permanent annual valorizaรงรฃo do salรกrio mรญnimo in Law 14.663/2023, setting the national floor at R$1,320 from May 2023 and linking later adjustments to INPC inflation plus real GDP growth from two years earlier.
Congress codified an INPC-plus-lagged-GDP rule, while the Executive issues the annual decree that sets the floor. Linking a visible wage rule to regularly published national indicators makes annual change routine and contestable instead of an ad hoc negotiation.
Preconditions
Reliable, timely inflation and national-accounts statistics that can anchor the adjustment formula
National labour-law and payroll enforcement that reaches formal employers and protects the statutory floor
Budget coordination because pensions, social benefits and public-sector pay are indexed to the minimum wage
Where else it has been used: Wage indexation travels as a rule-design pattern, not a universal number: countries can combine inflation and growth, but must decide how to protect purchasing power without amplifying fiscal or employment shocks.
Limits: A statutory floor is not the same as wages actually paid or compliance with labour law. The formula does not show real purchasing power, employment, informality, regional cost differences, enforcement or causal effects, and later fiscal-cap legislation altered the practical ceiling on increases. This record documents a national rule for routine adjustment rather than an outcome evaluation.
๐ณ๐ฌNigeriasince 2021operating below its peakbears on Institutional responsiveness
By June 2024, the Central Bank of Nigeria reported 28.46 million eNaira customers onboarded but only 197,041 active wallets, showing that the national CBDC rollout had not converted broad registration into sustained use.
The CBN responded to digital-payment change by launching a sovereign wallet and connecting it to banks, payment providers and identity checks. The gap between customers onboarded and wallets active shows the second task of institutional change: converting a national launch into a habit that survives competing channels.
Preconditions
A central bank with legal authority to issue and regulate a digital form of national currency
Interoperability with banks, payment-service providers and identity databases rather than a standalone app
A use case such as reliable transfers or public payments that gives households and merchants a reason to return
Where else it has been used: CBDC rollouts travel as an adoption problem: technical issuance can be national on day one, while active use depends on incentives, reliability and integration with the payment ecosystem.
Limits: The Central Bank's administrative counts distinguish onboarding from activity but do not explain why wallets became inactive, measure transaction quality or compare the CBDC with Nigeria's much larger private payment rails. The report is the regulator's own account, and the active-wallet figure is a snapshot rather than a causal evaluation of the rollout.
๐ช๐นEthiopiasince 2005still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Ethiopia's government-run Productive Safety Net Programme reached about 8 million people, while 6.8 million received short-term employment in public-works activities that support household income and community resilience.
8,000,000 people, people benefiting from the productive safety net programme, 2026-02-28. 6,800,000 people, people receiving short-term public-works employment, 2026-02-28. World Bank Group, Ethiopia country programme overview, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
Ethiopia made drought support predictable through a national safety-net platform that combines transfers for labour-poor households with public works and can scale assistance when shocks arrive. The programme links immediate consumption protection to land, water and community assets rather than treating relief as a one-off distribution.
Preconditions
A household and geographic targeting system that can identify chronic food insecurity before a crisis peaks
Local administrative and public-works capacity able to deliver cash, food or employment across remote districts
Early-warning and financing arrangements that release additional support when drought or other shocks exceed normal programme capacity
Where else it has been used: Shock-responsive safety nets travel when predictable core transfers and scalable emergency finance share one delivery system; a relief fund without that backbone cannot expand quickly when conditions change.
Limits: Beneficiary and public-works counts show administrative reach, not whether transfers arrive on time, food security improves, assets survive drought or households graduate from support. The World Bank summary describes a government programme supported by development partners and does not replace an independent impact evaluation or a complete account of conflict-affected regions.
The Dominican Republic expanded its National 9-1-1 Emergency and Security System to 27 provinces by July 2026, covering 94.64% of the population, or more than 9.6 million people.
The Dominican Republic joined police, health, fire and public-works responders behind one emergency number and expanded the dispatch network province by province. A common protocol and radio system let separate agencies act on the same incident instead of asking residents to coordinate them themselves.
Preconditions
A national dispatch centre with authority to route incidents across police, health, fire and transport agencies
Interoperable communications, location data and response protocols that work across provinces
A financing and expansion plan that adds ambulances, staff and local coverage as the service footprint grows
Where else it has been used: Emergency systems travel when a single public interface is backed by interoperable responders and a measured expansion path; the phone number alone is not the capability.
Limits: Population coverage and provincial integration show reach, not call-answering speed, dispatch accuracy, survival, crime reduction or equitable service quality. The figures come from the presidency's account of the system, and 5.36% of the population remained outside the stated coverage at the reported date.
๐ญ๐ณHondurassince 2015still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Honduras's Sistema Nacional de Emergencias 911 coordinated and attended 762,601 of 788,573 emergency tickets in 2024, reporting 96.71% efficacy through five regional coordination centres.
96.71 % of emergency tickets coordinated and attended, emergency-ticket coordination and attendance efficacy, 2024. 762,601 tickets, emergency tickets coordinated and attended, 2024. Sistema Nacional de Emergencias 911 de Honduras, Memoria Anual 2024, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
Honduras put emergency intake, dispatch and inter-agency coordination behind one national 911 service, then operated regional coordination centres to route incidents to the relevant responders. A shared ticket and protocol gives separate agencies a common incident record instead of leaving callers to coordinate them.
Preconditions
A national authority able to route incidents across police, health, fire and other response agencies
Interoperable communications, location data and protocols that work between regional centres
Operating budgets and performance reporting that keep centres staffed and reveal where tickets are lost or delayed
Where else it has been used: Emergency coordination travels when a common intake record is backed by interoperable responders and transparent throughput measures; the number alone cannot substitute for the dispatch network behind it.
Limits: The annual report's ticket counts and efficacy percentage show administrative throughput, not response time, dispatch accuracy, survival, crime reduction or equitable service quality. The figures are the emergency system's own operational accounting, and ticket counts can include calls requiring different agencies or multiple actions; the report does not independently audit the denominator or outcomes.
๐จ๐บCubasince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Cuba's national COVID-19 vaccination campaign had given at least one vaccine dose to 94% of the country's population by 31 December 2021, according to the Pan American Health Organization.
Cuba treated COVID vaccination as a national public-health delivery operation, using its existing primary-care and community health network to move doses from central procurement and production into local clinics. The campaign's reach depended on routine registration and trusted local health workers rather than a stand-alone emergency site.
Preconditions
A nationwide primary-care network with local staff and population registers
Domestic or secured vaccine supply plus cold-chain and scheduling capacity
Public-health surveillance and communication that can identify priority groups and monitor uptake
Where else it has been used: High-coverage emergency vaccination travels when routine primary care, a population register and a dependable supply chain already exist; a campaign launch without those delivery rails cannot reach most households quickly.
Limits: The PAHO coverage figure shows reach of at least one dose, not completion of a primary series, booster uptake, protection against infection, mortality avoided, equity across provinces or the campaign's logistical cost. It is based on reported national data, and the profile does not independently audit Cuba's dose records or distinguish domestically produced vaccines from other supplies.
๐ธ๐ปEl Salvadorsince 2021operating below its peakbears on Institutional responsiveness
El Salvador's 2025 reform made private-sector Bitcoin acceptance voluntary, limited the law to private participation and repealed Articles 4, 8 and 9 of the 2021 Bitcoin Law.
El Salvador launched a national Bitcoin mandate and later used legislation to narrow it: the 2025 reform removed mandatory acceptance, repealed three core articles and confined the legal framework to voluntary private participation. The case makes institutional responsiveness visible as the ability to unwind a national experiment when its obligations no longer fit.
Preconditions
A legislature able to amend the legal basis of a national digital-payment programme
Operational monitoring and fiscal or financing feedback that can expose a gap between launch and sustained use
A transition plan that removes public obligations while leaving private actors a voluntary route to continue
Where else it has been used: Policy reversals travel when governments design an exit path before a national experiment becomes permanent infrastructure; without legal clarity, a rollback can leave users, merchants and public agencies with stranded obligations.
Limits: The amendment records a legal rollback, not actual Chivo use, fiscal cost, user adoption, merchant behaviour or whether voluntary acceptance changed after the reform. The comparison with the original law describes the statutory sectors affected; it does not measure how widely the 2021 mandate was followed. The legislative text also cannot by itself establish implementation timing or operational outcomes.
๐ญ๐นHaitisince 2011operating below its peakbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
WHO and UNICEF estimated Haiti's national DTP3 routine-immunization coverage at 51% in 2022, down from 68% in 2011, while documenting vaccine and syringe stockouts and weak administrative reporting in the national programme.
Haiti's Expanded Programme on Immunization lost routine coverage as stockouts, insecurity and weak reporting interrupted the chain from national procurement to local clinics. The decline shows how a public-health capability can erode when replenishment, supervision and data feedback fail together, even while the programme remains formally in place.
Preconditions
Reliable vaccine and syringe procurement with buffer stocks that can reach every department
A functioning cold chain and clinic network able to offer repeated doses rather than one campaign visit
Accurate child registers and district reporting that expose missed cohorts quickly enough for outreach and corrective supply
Where else it has been used: Immunization systems can recover through catch-up campaigns and community outreach, but the Haiti case warns that a formal national programme is not durable without stock management, trusted local access and data that decision-makers believe.
Limits: The 51% figure is a WHO/UNICEF estimate with low confidence and is not a direct census of vaccinated children: the profile records poor administrative reporting, national stockouts and disagreement from Haiti's Ministry of Health. The estimate does not show which districts lost coverage, whether children completed doses later, or the causal contribution of insecurity, financing, supply or clinic access; it is evidence of a reported national delivery failure, not a clean impact estimate.
๐จ๐ทCosta Ricasince 2021still operatingbears on Export diversification
Costa Rica's export agency PROCOMER reported that 40 SMEs graduated from its 16-week Ramp Up 2024 programme, delivered with INA and the Sistema de Banca para el Desarrollo, bringing the number of firms benefiting since the programme began in 2021 to 175.
PROCOMER, the national training institute and a development bank combine practical training in finance, strategy, governance and sustainability with export-market connections. The package builds the organisational routines and compliance readiness that small firms need before an overseas buyer or distributor can become repeat business.
Preconditions
An export agency that can identify firms, broker market access and coordinate services rather than offering disconnected workshops
SMEs with a product, management time and enough operational capacity to act on finance, quality and sustainability work
Training, development finance and buyer or standards networks that remain available after graduation
Where else it has been used: Export-readiness programmes travel when capability-building is tied to real market links and finance; a course certificate without buyer validation, working capital or standards support rarely diversifies exports by itself.
Limits: Graduation and reach counts show programme delivery, not verified export growth, new markets, product diversification, export survival or causal impact. PROCOMER describes the firms as strengthening export capability; the source does not establish that all graduates exported or that the programme changed Costa Rica's aggregate concentration.
๐ซ๐ทFrancesince 1975still operatingbears on Long-term unemployment share
France's national statistics office Insee reported that people unemployed for at least one year represented 23.3% of all unemployed people in 2024, while the long-term unemployment rate was 1.7% of the active population, down from 3.1% in 2015.
23.3 % of unemployed, long-term unemployed as share of all unemployed, 2024. 1.7 % of active population, long-term unemployment rate, 2024. Insee, Evolution du chรดmage / Employment Survey 2024, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
France's employment system combines unemployment insurance, employment-service counselling and targeted training or hiring support, helping some jobseekers move through the labour market before unemployment becomes persistent. The falling long-term rate is an outcome to investigate, not proof that one programme caused it.
Preconditions
A labour-force survey and employment-service records that distinguish duration consistently
Income support and active labour-market services that preserve contact with jobseekers while they search
Employers, training providers and regional intermediaries able to convert counselling into credible vacancies or skill transitions
Where else it has been used: Long-term-unemployment reductions travel when income support, matching and skills services are connected to real employer demand; a falling rate can otherwise reflect exits from the labour force rather than successful re-employment.
Limits: The figures describe labour-market duration, not the causes of unemployment, the quality of re-employment or whether training and employment services produced the decline. Insee's household-survey definitions and population scope matter, and a low long-term share can coexist with high short-term churn or discouraged workers outside the unemployment measure.
๐ต๐นPortugalsince 2014still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Portugal's digital-government platform reported 4.4 million active Chave Mรณvel Digital credentials and 141 million authentications by 23 October 2025, with 490 entities using Autenticaรงรฃo.gov.
4,400,000 active digital identities, active chave mรณvel digital credentials, 2025-10-23. 141,000,000 authentications, authentications through autenticaรงรฃo.gov, 2025-10-23. Portugal Digital / ARTE, Identidade Digital statistics, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
Portugal made one state-certified mobile credential usable for authentication and signatures across public services and participating private services, so each new service can reuse an existing identity rather than build a separate account system.
Preconditions
A trusted civil-identity register and a legal basis for remote signatures
Interoperable authentication APIs and agencies willing to adopt one national gateway
Registration, recovery and offline support for people who cannot rely on a smartphone
Where else it has been used: A shared digital identity travels when legal recognition, cross-agency interoperability and assisted access travel with the credential; a login count alone can hide exclusion or weak service completion.
Limits: These are administrative adoption and usage totals, not measures of service quality, inclusion, authentication success, fraud or trust. An active credential is not necessarily a unique active person, and the government platform reports the totals itself; the figures do not show whether citizens can complete the services they authenticate for.
๐ต๐นPortugalsince 2005still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Portugal's IRN reports 369,447 societies created through Empresa na Hora over its first 20 years; the service is available at more than 200 posts and averages 41 minutes from formation to registration.
A single state counter combines name approval, incorporation and registration, passes the record between public services electronically and later extends the same workflow online, converting a multi-agency legal process into one accountable transaction.
Preconditions
A shared company register and legal authority for one service to complete several acts
Interoperable registries and pre-approved names that remove sequential approvals
A fallback for complex companies and foreign founders whose cases do not fit the standard route
Where else it has been used: One-stop registries travel when back-office data sharing is real and the simple route is measured end to end; a fast counter that leaves tax, licensing and beneficial-ownership steps separate only moves the queue.
Limits: The throughput and elapsed-time figures measure a standard incorporation route, not the full time or cost of becoming operational, survival, access for less standard firms or the quality of subsequent regulation. IRN reports its own service and cumulative count, and the average can hide variation by company type, name choice and whether applicants arrive prepared.
๐ต๐นPortugalsince 2018still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Portugal's integrated rural-fire system reported 85 of 97 national-action projects in progress and 48 percent cumulative execution in 2024; โฌ638 million was spent that year, with 55 percent on prevention, even as 137,651 hectares burned.
After the 2017 fires, Portugal replaced a mainly suppression-led model with a cross-government system linking prevention, landscape management, preparedness, suppression and recovery, coordinated by AGIF and reported against a national action programme.
Preconditions
A permanent coordinating agency with authority to aggregate eleven ministries and dozens of entities
Shared risk data and annual reporting that make prevention visible beside emergency response
Municipalities, landowners and emergency services able to turn national priorities into local work
Where else it has been used: Integrated fire governance travels when prevention budgets, operational command and landowner incentives share one accountable plan; extra firefighting capacity alone does not change the hazard.
Limits: Projects in progress and spending are capacity measures, not proof that communities are safe; the 2024 burned-area and mortality figures show the residual risk plainly. Annual fire outcomes also depend on weather, land use and ignition behaviour, so the record cannot identify the causal contribution of coordination, prevention or suppression spending.
๐ต๐นPortugalsince 2006still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
AMA's 2022 activity report records 48 Simplex administrative-simplification measures, 24 PRR and modernisation milestones executed, and 62 innovation, participation and simplification activities across the agency's portfolio.
Portugal pairs a rolling political simplification agenda with a public-sector innovation lab: Simplex names and tracks changes, while LabX researches user needs, co-creates prototypes and tests service redesign before agencies adopt it.
Preconditions
A centre of government able to convene ministries around cross-cutting administrative changes
A safe experimental space with permission to test services with citizens and officials
Owners and monitoring that carry a successful prototype into law, procurement and routine operations
Where else it has been used: A simplification-and-experimentation loop travels when pilots have a route into the rulebook and service budget; a lab without an adoption owner becomes a workshop catalogue.
Limits: Counting measures and workshops shows an administrative improvement pipeline, not reduced burden, faster case resolution or better user outcomes. AMA reports its own activity, and combining the recurring Simplex programme with LabX experiments hides which initiatives reached routine service delivery and which remained pilots. AMA has since been renamed ARTE and no longer hosts the report, so the record cites a Wayback Machine snapshot (6 May 2024) of the original PDF.
๐ต๐นPortugalsince 1965still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Portugal's DGS reported 86 percent immunisation of eligible infants in the first RSV campaign, 98โ99 percent first-year coverage for the universal childhood schedule, and nearly four million seasonal vaccines administered in 2024โ2025.
A national schedule, procurement and registry make routine childhood vaccination a standing service, while seasonal campaigns add new products, broaden delivery through pharmacies and publish coverage by age and municipality so the system can adapt to a changing respiratory threat.
Preconditions
A trusted national immunisation schedule and supply chain
Primary-care, hospital and pharmacy channels able to share records and deliver at scale
Local surveillance and public communication that can identify pockets of low coverage
Where else it has been used: Vaccination systems travel when routine infrastructure can absorb a new campaign quickly and coverage is visible below the national average; a one-off mass purchase without records and delivery channels fades when the emergency does.
Limits: Coverage is not the same as immunity, health impact or equal access, and the rounded seasonal-dose total is not a count of unique people. These figures mainly cover Portugal Continental and the DGS reports the programme's administrative data; high routine coverage can coexist with gaps in older groups, migrants or particular municipalities.
๐ต๐นPortugalsince 2020dismantledbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Portugal launched the voluntary STAYAWAY COVID exposure-notification app on 1 September 2020; the European Commission's case study records more than 3.2 million downloads and says the app was later suspended.
Portugal combined a national health authority with research and technology partners to deploy an anonymous Bluetooth exposure-notification app quickly, using voluntary adoption rather than a centralised movement database.
Preconditions
A trusted health authority able to validate positive-test codes
Interoperable laboratory and notification systems that make an alert actionable
Public trust in privacy safeguards and a clear endpoint when the emergency passes
Where else it has been used: Digital emergency tools travel when they connect to routine health workflows and retain legitimacy after the crisis; a download surge without operational integration is easy to dismantle.
Limits: Downloads do not show active use, the share of infected people entering test codes, alerts delivered or epidemiological effect. The voluntary, privacy-preserving design depended on test-result integration and public trust, and suspension after the emergency means the adoption peak was not a durable surveillance capability.
๐ฎ๐ณIndiasince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
India used CoWIN to register and scale COVID-19 vaccination nationally, recording more than 2.2067 billion vaccinations and 1.1093 billion registrations by 21 November 2023.
The Union government put registration, appointment, inventory-linked certification and national reporting on one platform, allowing states and vaccination sites to operate against a common record during a fast-moving shock.
Preconditions
A national identity and mobile-number layer capable of handling very large registration loads
Vaccination sites and state health teams connected to a shared reporting protocol
A central operations team able to change workflows as supply and eligibility rules shifted
Where else it has been used: Crisis platforms travel when a common data model links local delivery to central visibility; registrations and doses do not by themselves establish that the system reached the hardest-to-serve groups.
Limits: The counts are platform records, not unique people or a measure of protection, equity, adverse events or health outcomes. The ministry's explainer reports the totals itself and does not provide reconciliation rules, regional access gaps or the counterfactual contribution of CoWIN versus the underlying health and logistics system; the emergency programme has also ended.
South Africa operated Gauteng's e-toll system from December 2013 until the government withdrew the toll declaration effective 11 April 2024, ending urban e-toll charging after roughly 10.4 years.
After motorists resisted the user-pay system and the funding model stalled, a joint transport, finance and provincial process replaced toll revenue with an alternative debt and maintenance arrangement and repurposed the gantries.
Preconditions
A legal authority able to withdraw a toll declaration while keeping the upgraded roads in the national network
A cross-government committee able to negotiate debt, maintenance and replacement funding
Enough public pressure and political attention to reopen a scheme that had already been implemented
Where else it has been used: Responsiveness travels when institutions can change a live programme without abandoning its underlying asset; delayed reversal still leaves a long tail of debt and trust costs.
Limits: The duration is calculated from the ministry's stated December 2013 start and 11 April 2024 end rather than published as a single statistic. Cancellation shows that government eventually changed a rule after resistance and a debt impasse, but it does not show how quickly the response was reached, the road programme's net value or the fiscal cost of replacing toll revenue.
๐ฒ๐ฝMexicosince 2023still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Mexico's medicines and health-products regulator COFEPRIS completed 509,921 procedures entirely online with traceability by 5 September 2024, replacing paper hand-offs for a large share of its regulated users.
The regulator converted submission, tracking and completion into one traceable digital workflow, so applicants could see a case move without physically carrying documents between offices.
Preconditions
A regulator with authority to make its own procedural systems mandatory
Document and identity standards that can be checked electronically
A case-management system able to expose status without exposing protected data
Where else it has been used: Digital regulatory workflows travel when traceability is designed into the case record; moving a form online without a visible status trail leaves the old bottleneck intact.
Limits: COFEPRIS publishes the number of completed digital procedures but not a before-and-after median processing time, rejection rate or compliance outcome. It is a regulator's own operational tally, and the article does not establish that every procedure type or every applicant could use the digital path.
๐ฒ๐ฝMexicosince 2024delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Mexico's national civil-protection system coordinated a countrywide earthquake exercise in September 2024 in which 9,727,000 people participated, with alerts carried over 14,490 public loudspeakers and a multi-agency task force of 1.9 million personnel.
The national protection agency set one scenario, aligned federal, state and municipal responders, pushed the same alert through public infrastructure and used the exercise to expose protocol gaps before a real shock.
Preconditions
A legal civil-protection system linking three government levels
An alert network and emergency command structure that can be tested at once
Schools, workplaces and households willing to participate in a common scenario
Where else it has been used: National drills travel when rehearsal is treated as an operational test rather than a ceremony; participation counts need follow-up on the failures found and fixed.
Limits: A drill records mobilisation and protocol testing, not performance in a real disaster. Participation is self-reported by agencies and organisations, and the loudspeaker count covers only listed jurisdictions; the exercise used a hypothetical earthquake and cannot establish casualty reduction or recovery speed.
๐ฒ๐ฝMexicosince 2014dismantledbears on Institutional responsiveness
Mexico abolished the 2014 decree creating PROSPERA on 31 May 2019 and ordered its people, assets and budget to transfer to the new Benito Juรกrez scholarship coordination within 90 days.
The executive used a new coordinating body and a single transition clause to move PROSPERA's staff, resources and education components into a different delivery model rather than preserve the old agency by inertia.
Preconditions
Central budget and administrative authority over the programme's people and funds
A replacement institution ready to receive the transferred functions
A legal instrument that can abrogate the old mandate and specify a deadline
Where else it has been used: Programme replacement travels when a government can name the receiving institution and fund the handover; a deadline on paper is not evidence that service continuity survived it.
Limits: The decree proves a formal policy and organisational change, not that the 90-day transfer happened on time or that beneficiaries experienced a seamless handover. It also does not compare PROSPERA's outcomes with the replacement scholarships, and the transition combined a programme redesign with a change in political administration.
๐น๐ทTurkeysince 2023still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the February 2023 earthquakes, Tรผrkiye's AFAD established 350 tent cities providing shelter for 2.5 million people, moved about 700,000 people into 414 container cities before the first winter and delivered 46,000 permanent homes within the first year.
AFAD combined a national incident command system with temporary settlements, cash support and a hand-off to permanent housing, keeping shelter, health, education and debris removal in one recovery operation.
Preconditions
A statutory national disaster agency with authority to coordinate ministries and provinces
Pre-existing logistics, procurement and temporary-settlement templates
Land, contractors and financing available for a second phase of permanent housing
Where else it has been used: Recovery systems travel when temporary shelter and permanent rebuilding are designed as one pipeline; a large first response can still leave a long tail if the hand-off is not funded.
Limits: These are government-reported outputs after a catastrophe, so they demonstrate response and recovery logistics more directly than ex ante preparedness. Shelter and home counts do not show safety, quality, displacement duration or whether the response reached every affected household; recovery was still continuing when the report was published.
๐ซ๐ฎFinlandsince 1991still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Finland requires a shelter in every building above a size threshold, nationwide since 1991, and by 2023 had about 50,500 shelters with places for about 4.8 million people, in a country of about 5.6 million.
The state put the cost of protection on construction itself: the Rescue Act obliges owners of large residential and workplace buildings to build a shelter, which peacetime uses as storage, car parks or sports halls on condition it can be cleared within 72 hours.
Preconditions
A threat perception shared across parties since the Second World War
A building code and permit inspection that enforce the duty before construction
Housing built mostly as concrete multi-storey blocks
Where else it has been used: Switzerland runs the same building duty. Germany and Sweden let theirs lapse after 1990 and are now rebuilding from a smaller stock.
Limits: Both numbers are rounded by the ministry, which says the decades-long history makes precise register data hard to compile. Places are unevenly spread: the same release puts Helsinki at 34 percent more places than residents and South Ostrobothnia at places for 48 percent of its population, so the national figure overstates rural protection. A place is a built room, not a tested capability; the ministry's later condition review found most shelters in good order but some equipment needing maintenance. Shelters protect against attack and hazardous releases and say little about recovery from floods or pandemics, which the indicator also asks about. 1991 is when the duty became nationwide; designated municipalities built shelters for decades before.
๐ฉ๐ชGermanysince 1965dismantledbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Germany held 1,967 public shelters with about 1.6 million places in 2008, decided with the states to abandon them, and decommissioned them until March 2022, leaving 579 shelters with 477,593 places, none of them functional or operational.
The federal government and the states read the end of the Cold War as the end of the threat, stopped maintenance and budgeted to decommission and release the shelters, until the interior ministry froze the process by decree three weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Preconditions
A peace dividend read as permanent across parties
Shelters owned federally but sited in municipalities with other uses for the land
No statutory floor on protection places that a budget line could not override
Where else it has been used: Sweden and the Baltic states ran down civil defence in the same years and began rebuilding after 2014; Finland and Switzerland kept their building duty and are the comparators the German debate now cites.
Limits: The 2008 figure is rounded by the government and covers only the western states and Berlin: shelters of the former GDR never entered the federal concept, so the stock was never national. Shelter places are an old measure of protection, and the government now argues bunkers cannot meet modern warning times and plans to rely on basements, car parks and metro stations, so the loss of places overstates the loss of preparedness if that concept is delivered. It had not been when this answer was given. The started year is the 1965 Shelter Construction Act; the federal funding programme for public shelters ran from 1968 to 1996. The source is a PDF; the numbers are in the answers to questions one and seven.
๐จ๐ฆCanadasince 1998still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
In December 1993 the Chief Actuary projected that the pay-as-you-go contribution rate would reach 14.2% by 2030 and that the fund would run out by 2015. The federal and provincial governments agreed a reform package in 1997. It took effect on 1 January 1998, raised the combined contribution rate in steps to 9.9% by 2003, replaced pay-as-you-go financing with steady-state funding and invested net cash flows through the CPP Investment Board. The 2024 valuation puts the minimum sustaining rate at 9.19% from 2034, below the legislated 9.9%, with assets of $651 billion.
The Chief Actuary's statutory triennial reports put a dated number on the funding gap. Federal and provincial finance ministers then negotiated one package that raised contributions, trimmed benefit growth and moved new money into market investment under an arm's-length board, and wrote into the statute that any future benefit increase must be fully funded.
Preconditions
An actuarial office whose projections both orders of government accept as the shared baseline
A joint amendment rule that forces federal and provincial governments into one negotiated package
Enough time before the projected exhaustion date to phase in a contribution rise
Where else it has been used: The 1997 package required any future benefit increase to be fully funded. The additional CPP in force since 1 January 2019 is fully funded, and the 32nd report sets its own minimum contribution rates on that basis.
Limits: The construct is speed, and this reform was not fast. Four years passed between the December 1993 warning and the amendments taking effect in January 1998, and the rate took until 2003 to reach 9.9%. Whether that counts as responsive depends on a comparison the record cannot supply: it shows a rule changed in time, before the projected 2015 exhaustion, and not that it changed quickly. The headline numbers are a legislated rate and a projection, not an observed outcome. The evidence that the reform held, a 9.19% minimum rate against 9.9%, is the Chief Actuary's model under his own assumptions. That office sits inside OSFI, so this is a federal body assessing a federal-provincial plan. The fix was paid for mostly by workers and employers through a contribution rate up about 70% from 1997, plus slower benefit growth, which a reader may count as a cost of the delay as much as a sign of capability. Quebec runs its own plan, so the CPP covers the rest of Canada. The amendment formula requires the agreement of provinces holding most of the population, and that slows any reform as well as stabilising it.
๐จ๐ณChinasince 2020dismantledbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
China's State Council joint prevention and control mechanism ran a national COVID-19 containment regime from January 2020, under which the mainland had reported 4,634 COVID-19 deaths when vaccination began on 15 December 2020; it dismantled the regime by circular on 7 December 2022, and the National Health Commission then reported 59,938 COVID-related deaths in medical institutions between 8 December 2022 and 12 January 2023.
The State Council joint prevention and control mechanism used mass testing, health codes and area lockdowns to hold infections near zero for nearly three years, then withdrew the whole apparatus by one circular within weeks, before raising vaccination coverage among the oldest residents. The capacity to suppress was built; the capacity to exit was not prepared in parallel.
Preconditions
A command structure able to impose testing, movement codes and lockdowns uniformly across provinces
A population and economy able to absorb repeated closures, which wore out by late 2022
An exit plan, above all high vaccination of the oldest cohorts and hospital surge capacity, which was missing when the regime was lifted
Where else it has been used: Other zero-COVID jurisdictions (New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan) exited after vaccinating their elderly first; the Chinese exit is the case where suppression ended before that precondition was met.
Limits: Both numbers are the government's own and both are made under counting rules that understate deaths: the 59,938 covers only deaths inside medical institutions, and independent estimates put excess deaths far above the official count, so the official figure is a floor, not the toll. The two metrics cover different periods, populations at risk and counting rules (a cumulative count over 11 months against a five-week in-hospital count), so their ratio is not a mortality comparison. The SCIO text carrying 4,634 is an advocacy piece republished by the State Council Information Office, not a statistical release. The record does not show the costs of containment itself (lockdowns, lost output, mental-health and access-to-care harms), which were part of why it ended, nor that the dismantling followed Omicron's transmissibility rather than a planned exit. What it shows about preparedness is the exit gap: the State Council portal reported on 30 November 2022 that only 65.8 percent of people aged 80 and over had completed primary vaccination (english.www.gov.cn/statecouncil/ministries/202211/30/content_WS6386aabec6d0a757729e3d55.html), a week before the regime was lifted, and 90.1 percent of the reported deaths were aged 65 and above. The construct fit is contestable: the record evidences a national shock-containment capacity and its abrupt removal, not a standing disaster-recovery system. No official series of excess mortality for 2022-2023 has been published that would let the reversal be sized properly.
๐ณ๐ฌNigeriasince 2014delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After an infected traveller brought Ebola virus into Lagos on 20 July 2014, Nigeria's government set up an emergency operations centre with WHO country office support, traced contacts in Lagos and Port Harcourt, and held the outbreak to 19 cases and 7 deaths before WHO declared the country free of transmission on 20 October 2014.
The Federal Ministry of Health and Lagos State stood up an emergency operations centre within days of confirmation, repurposed the polio programme's staff and GPS tracking for contact tracing, and funded isolation and treatment centres quickly.
Preconditions
An existing surveillance and field workforce, here the polio eradication infrastructure, that could be redirected overnight
A domestic laboratory able to confirm the virus within days
Political authority to release emergency funds and coordinate federal and state agencies under one command
Where else it has been used: Nigeria's emergency operations centre model was formalised in the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and cited by WHO as the preparedness standard for at-risk countries; the transfer depends on having a pre-existing field programme to repurpose.
Limits: This is one outbreak seeded by a single imported chain in two cities, so it shows a response to one shock and not a standing national capacity. The page is a WHO narrative, not a dataset, and WHO and partners supported the response, which also leaned on emergency-operations staff, GPS tools and infrastructure and technologies in place for polio eradication, as the WHO page puts it. Nothing here shows Nigeria's performance in later shocks such as Lassa fever, cholera, floods or COVID-19, and a counterfactual of how far the virus would have spread is not measured.
๐ณ๐ฎNicaraguasince 2000still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Nicaragua's national disaster system, SINAPRED, evacuated 160,597 people and sheltered 59,964 ahead of hurricanes Eta and Iota in November 2020, when about 3 million people were exposed, and 21 lives were reported lost.
Nicaragua's government built a statutory disaster system under Law 337 that runs a national operations committee and a technical arm (INETER), and used it in 2020 to move about 160,000 people out of the path of two major hurricanes within two weeks.
Preconditions
A statutory chain of command from national committee to municipal and community brigades
Forecasting and early warning that give days of lead time before landfall
A centralised state able to order and enforce evacuation, which in Nicaragua's case comes with weak independent oversight of its reported results
Where else it has been used: The same sequence of statutory system, community brigades and pre-landfall evacuation underlies Cuba's hurricane record; where the state is less centralised, the evacuation step depends more on trust in warnings than on command.
Limits: The World Bank document is an appraisal-stage project information note written days after landfall (dated 23 November 2020), and its evacuation, shelter and death figures are the Nicaraguan government's own preliminary counts relayed by the Bank, not an independent verification; the Nicaraguan government's casualty reporting has been disputed in other emergencies, notably COVID-19. The figures show people moved and lives reported lost, not how many people at risk were not reached, the conditions in shelters during a pandemic, or the speed and quality of recovery: the same document puts damage and losses at USD 738.6 million, about 6.2 percent of GDP. Low deaths also depend on where the storms struck (the sparsely populated North Caribbean Coast) and on forecast lead time from regional meteorological centres, so the count is not a clean measure of SINAPRED alone. The 1994-2013 average of 160 hydrometeorological deaths a year is a different set of hazards and is context, not a counterfactual. SINAPRED's own site did not open from here (connection timeout), so the government primary source could not be checked. One hurricane season is a single test.
๐ญ๐นHaitisince 2013operating below its peakbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After Haiti's Ministry of Public Health (MSPP) and water directorate DINEPA launched the National Plan for the Elimination of Cholera in 2013, the country reported no confirmed cholera case from January 2019 to January 2022, but transmission returned in October 2022 and the MSPP epidemiology directorate had reported 76,675 suspected cases in all 10 departments by 18 December 2023.
Haiti's MSPP and DINEPA pursued elimination through case surveillance, case-area rapid response teams and targeted vaccination, with partner financing, and drove confirmed transmission to zero. When insecurity, displacement and water-system collapse returned in 2022, the response chain broke and cholera spread back to every department.
Preconditions
Laboratory-confirmed surveillance with field teams able to reach every reported case within days
Safe water and sanitation coverage that removes the transmission route, not only emergency treatment
Enough security and sustained financing to keep response teams and supplies moving after donor attention fades
Where else it has been used: Case-area targeted response has been copied in other cholera-endemic settings, and Haiti shows it can push transmission to zero without fixing the water system, which leaves the result reversible.
Limits: The two numbers are in different units: a three-year run with zero confirmed cases is set against a cumulative count of suspected cases, so the record shows a loss of the elimination outcome, not a measured fall in a capability. Part of the apparent elimination may be under-detection; WHO reports national figures and does not audit them. Suspected-case counts depend on clinical definitions and reporting under gang violence that cut access to clinics and labs, so the 76,675 figure is likely an undercount and not comparable with the 2010 to 2019 series. The re-emergence was driven mainly by insecurity, displacement and the collapse of water supply, which the elimination plan's water and sanitation targets never fixed; it is weak evidence about the surveillance and rapid-response capacity itself. Much of the response (rapid response teams, oral vaccine, water investments) was financed and technically run with PAHO, UNICEF, CDC and NGOs, so attribution to Haitian institutions alone is partial. The started year, 2013, is the year the plan was announced and funding requested, since the PAHO page is a funding call, and not a dated start of delivery; control activities had run since the October 2010 outbreak. The secondMetric comes from a separate WHO page.
๐จ๐บCubasince 1997still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Cuba's Civil Defence system and the provincial and municipal Defence Councils it activates evacuated and protected more than 735,000 people across eastern Cuba ahead of Hurricane Melissa, which struck as a Category 3 storm on 29 October 2025, according to UN OCHA.
Cuba's Civil Defence, under the armed forces ministry, activates provincial and municipal Defence Councils on a meteorological alert, and they move residents of low-lying and fragile housing to shelters or relatives' homes and secure crops and assets before landfall. The phased alert system set in law lets local authorities order evacuation without waiting for national instruction.
Preconditions
A trusted national meteorological service whose forecasts trigger pre-agreed alert phases
Local government and mass organisations that know every household and can order and organise movement block by block
Annual drills and a population that expects to evacuate, so compliance is routine rather than negotiated
Where else it has been used: Caribbean and Central American governments have studied the model through UNDP and regional disaster agencies; the early-warning and phased-alert parts travel, while the compulsory, block-level mobilisation depends on Cuba's political organisation.
Limits: The 735,000 figure is the Cuban authorities' count relayed by OCHA, not independently verified, and it counts people moved, not lives saved: no official source located today states the death toll avoided, and the claim does not assert one.The system is military-led and rests on compulsory mobilisation through a one-party state's local structures, which may not transfer. Preparation is the strong half; recovery is weak: two weeks after landfall 53,000 people remained evacuated, nearly 150,000 homes were affected and nearly 60 per cent of Santiago de Cuba province had no electricity. The started year is the decree that set the current system of measures; the Civil Defence itself dates from the 1960s, which no official page opened today states with a year. The page is a UN news story, not a dataset, and a single event is one observation.
๐จ๐บCubasince 2021operating below its peakbears on Institutional responsiveness
On 1 January 2021 Cuba's government replaced its dual-currency system with a single exchange rate of 24 pesos per dollar for the whole economy. By 1 October 2026 the Central Bank of Cuba published three official dollar rates, of 24, 120 and 689 pesos.
The Council of State unified the currency by decree on a fixed date at a fixed rate. When reserves and supply did not support 24 pesos per dollar, the Central Bank layered new official segments, a 120 rate for individuals and then a daily floating rate for exporters, on top of the old rate rather than moving it.
Preconditions
Hard-currency reserves able to defend a fixed rate, which Cuba lacked
A state wholesale sector whose prices and contracts were written at 24 and would be repriced by any move
A tolerated informal currency market that kept setting the price the official rate ignored
Where else it has been used: Venezuela and Argentina have run the same layered-rate sequence after a unification; in each, the new segments were added as exceptions before the old rate was abandoned.
Limits: The API fields are named tasaOficial, tasaPublica and tasaEspecial. We map them to Segments I, II and III because the bank's rate page shows the same 689.00 figure under its three-segment tabs. The API does not state that mapping, so it is our reading. The API history starts in December 2025, at 410 for the floating segment, so the official series does not document when the single rate first split. A 120-peso rate for individuals existed by 2025, but this record cannot date it from an official source. The unification's other half, withdrawing the convertible peso (CUC), stands and is not counted as lost. A hostile reviewer would say the record shows a monetary outcome, not the speed of rule-making. The case for filing it here is that the state held a fixed rate while the informal market moved away from it, then added segments instead of adjusting the one rate. The record does not show the informal rate, inflation or shortages. The Gaceta's website lists Decreto-Ley 17/2020 as 'Derogada' without saying what replaced it. The MEP page reprints a state-media article and sometimes fails to load.
๐จ๐ญSwitzerlandsince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
The Swiss Federal Council adopted an emergency ordinance on 25 March 2020 and, through 125 banks including PostFinance under federal guarantee, granted 137,870 Covid-19 credits worth CHF 16.9 billion between 26 March and 31 July 2020, with 76,034 applications submitted in the first eight days.
The Federal Council wrote an emergency ordinance in 12 days that let firms self-declare eligibility for a bank loan of up to 10 percent of turnover, which recognised guarantee cooperatives backed 100 percent with federal money, so the banks' existing client relationships and digital channels did the distribution within hours of a request.
Preconditions
A constitutional emergency power that lets the executive legislate within days, with parliament ratifying afterwards
Existing guarantee cooperatives and a dense banking network that already knew every small firm's turnover
A one-form online application and acceptance of fraud risk, policed after payout rather than before
Where else it has been used: Germany, Austria, France and Italy ran state-guaranteed loan schemes at the same time; the Federal Council's own comparison credits the Swiss speed to the digital application step and the public-private set-up rather than to the size of the guarantee.
Limits: The source is the Federal Council evaluating its own programme, and the figures come from the programme's own platform (covid19.easygov.swiss). The construct is the speed at which rules and programmes change; the metric counts credits granted, which measures uptake, and the speed is carried by the dates (ordinance prepared in 12 days, adopted 25 March, credits from 26 March) rather than by a timestamp series comparable across countries. The speed was bought by suspending the normal process: the ordinance rested on the Federal Council's emergency power under Art. 185(3) of the Constitution, and credits were granted on a one-sided self-declaration with only rudimentary checks. The same report puts the upper bound of abusive applications at 5.5 percent of credits if every pending proceeding ended in conviction, with 416 convictions (0.3 percent) by mid-June 2023, and 51 percent of the credit volume (CHF 8.6 billion) still outstanding then, so the final loss is not known; the 0.37 percent loss rate is as of mid-2023. Delivery ran through private banks, so the speed is shared credit between the state and the banking network, and the number does not show how many firms survived because of the credit. The PDF's own prose rounds the first-eight-day figure to 'rund 76 000 gewรคhrten' credits, while the 76,034 is stated as applications submitted ('Antrรคge ... eingereicht'). The source is a 108-page PDF; the figures sit in the summary, Table 1 and section 3.3.
๐จ๐ญSwitzerlandsince 1963still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Under the shelter-building duty introduced with Switzerland's 1963 civil protection legislation, the Federal Office for Civil Protection reported about nine million shelter places in some 370,000 private and public shelters in 2023, a national coverage rate above 100 percent of the resident population.
Federal law obliges anyone building housing in a commune short of places to build, equip and maintain a shelter, or pay a replacement contribution (CHF 1,400 per place today) that communes spend on public shelters; cantons keep an assignment plan that allocates every resident a place.
Preconditions
Sixty years of building permits passing through one federal rule, so the stock accumulates with the housing stock
Communes and cantons with the registers to assign residents to places and update the plan
A political consensus, from the Cold War on, that civil defence is a cost property owners carry
Where else it has been used: Finland runs a similar duty and keeps it operating; Germany designated public shelters and then dropped them after 2007, which is the reversal this record should be read against.
Limits: The construct asks for demonstrated capacity to prepare for and recover from major shocks; shelters are preparation for armed conflict and have never been used for that purpose, so the record shows a stock built, not a capacity demonstrated. Both figures are rounded ('rund', 'ca.') on an information page, not a statistical table, and the page is from August 2023; the July 2026 page repeats the 370,000 shelters but not the place count, and describes the goal of one place per resident as 'nahezu erreicht', nearly reached rather than exceeded. 'Over 100 percent' is a national aggregate: the publisher itself says inner cities and peripheral regions still lack places and growing areas need more, so coverage where people live is lower than the headline. The basis is the permanent resident population, so tourists and short-stay residents are not counted. Most places are in private basements used for storage in peacetime and need preparation time before occupancy, and much of the stock dates from the Cold War. The 1963 start is the civil protection act; the separate building-measures act and the construction of the stock followed over decades, and the cost was borne largely by property owners rather than the state.
๐ป๐ชVenezuelasince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Venezuela's health authorities reported to WHO that 22,157,232 people, 78 per 100 population, had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose by 29 December 2023, from a first dose given on 22 February 2021, with 14,287,370 (50 per 100) completing the primary series.
Venezuela's health ministry ran a mass COVID-19 campaign through its public clinic network and mass vaccination points, and reached a majority of the reported population with a first dose within three years.
Preconditions
A public clinic and community network able to run mass vaccination points nationwide
Population registers good enough to count who received a second dose, which the drop-off suggests were weak
A supply of doses large enough for a national campaign, however obtained
Where else it has been used: Cuba (cub-covid-vaccination) ran a campaign on domestic vaccines with a much higher completion rate; the Venezuelan case shows the first-dose reach a centralised network can deliver and the follow-up it cannot.
Limits: The figures are Venezuela's own reports to WHO (DATA_SOURCE 'REPORTING'), with no independent coverage survey behind them, from a government whose routine immunization data WHO and UNICEF grade as lacking accepted empirical support (see ven-pai). The per-100 rates divide by a population estimate that is highly uncertain after the emigration of millions of Venezuelans, so the 78 and 50 could be off in either direction. The 28-point gap between first dose and completed series, and boosters at 2 per 100, show a campaign that stalled after first doses; the record is a partial delivery, not full protection. The VACCINES_USED field is empty, so the record cannot show which products were used or whether each held WHO emergency use listing, and the source does not show where the doses came from, so the record evidences distribution only. Vaccination is a response to one shock, not proof of general preparedness, and the file was last updated in December 2023. The source is a CSV with no prose; the numbers are read from one row.
๐ฆ๐บAustraliasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Australia's Treasury designed, Parliament legislated and the tax office began paying the JobKeeper wage subsidy just over five weeks after its announcement on 30 March 2020, and in its first phase it supported on average around 925,000 businesses and 3.6 million individuals each month before ending on 28 March 2021.
Treasury designed a flat-rate wage subsidy and the Australian Taxation Office paid it through the single-touch payroll and business registration systems it already ran, so Parliament could legislate eligibility and money reached employers within about five weeks.
Preconditions
A tax office already holding near-real-time payroll and turnover data for most employers
A Parliament able to pass emergency legislation within days with bipartisan support
Fiscal room to accept large deadweight in exchange for speed
Where else it has been used: Germany's Kurzarbeit, the UK furlough scheme and New Zealand's wage subsidy did the same job in the same months; the schemes that already existed in law, like Kurzarbeit, paid sooner, and the new ones depended on how much payroll data the tax authority already held.
Limits: Treasury is evaluating its own programme, and the five-week figure is a statement in prose, not a timestamped series. Speed was bought by routing payment through existing tax-office systems and a flat $1,500 fortnightly rate, which shipped known errors: the same report finds around $8.9 billion went to businesses whose turnover rose, and the 2023 Independent Evaluation of the JobKeeper Payment (https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-10/p2023-455038.pdf) records that around 2 million short-term casual and temporary-visa employees were excluded, that the first-phase cost estimate of $130 billion, which a reporting error had inflated, was revised down to $70 billion, and that JobKeeper was announced 'later than job retention schemes in comparable countries'. The total cost was $88.8 billion. One emergency response shows the state can change programmes quickly under extreme pressure; it does not show routine responsiveness of rules in normal times, which is what the indicator's construct mostly asks about. Coverage counts are monthly averages from tax-office payment data, not unique people.
Announced on 25 March 2020 and paying from April, the Dominican government's Quรฉdate en Casa transfer was built on the existing SIUBEN registry and PROSOLI payment system and, by the president's report to the Senate of 10 July 2020, reached more than 1.6 million households, 780,000 of them new to social assistance.
The social policy cabinet (GCPS) chaired by the Vice-Presidency raised the transfer for 811,003 households already on PROSOLI and added new households classified as poor or vulnerable in SIUBEN, while ADESS partnered with banks and card networks and signed on more than 2,000 new retailers to pay them.
Preconditions
A proxy-means social registry (SIUBEN) with recent survey data to target new households without new fieldwork
A working electronic payment administrator (ADESS) and a retailer network that could be extended
Emergency fiscal room
Where else it has been used: Most Latin American governments scaled transfers through their social registries in 2020; the countries with registries covering a larger share of the population needed fewer on-demand fixes.
Limits: The headline count is the government's own figure, relayed by the World Bank, and the same footnote says different sources and timelines report different figures: the Vice-Presidency announced 899,354 existing PROSOLI households plus 600,646 temporary ones on 2 April 2020. The report was written in 2020 and its spending figures through December are projections. Speed came from infrastructure built long before: SIUBEN identified the households and PROSOLI and ADESS paid them, so the record shows a registry being used under pressure rather than a rule changed from nothing, and SIUBEN covered only about 60 percent of the population, which is why on-demand applications (about one million claims, 70,000 admitted, per the Vice-President) were needed. The programme was temporary by design and was extended by decree to December 2020 and then phased out; nothing here shows the responsiveness carried over to later shocks. Coverage is households paid, not poverty averted.
๐ช๐ชEstoniasince 2021still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After COVID-19 exposed supply gaps, Estonia set up a state stockpiling company in 2021 that holds food, healthcare, veterinary and fuel stocks. By the National Audit Office's January 2026 review, its food stocks covered 10% of the population for 30 days, against a government target of 14 days for the whole population, and just over 90% of the required pharmaceutical stock was in place.
The government turned its fuel-reserve agency (OSPA) into a single stockpiling company under the economy ministry and gave it food, medicines, protective equipment and veterinary stocks. Responsibility had been spread across ministries, which COVID-19 showed left the country buying supplies in the middle of an emergency.
Preconditions
An existing fuel-stock agency with procurement, rotation and storage contracts to extend
A domestic food market large enough to hold delegated stocks, which the agency says is the binding limit here
Ministries that agree in advance on who releases a stock and how it reaches people, which is the step still missing for food
Where else it has been used: The 2020 announcement names Finland's centralised security-of-supply model as the example. Estonia copied the single agency but not yet the scale, because its market is too small to hold Finnish-style delegated stocks.
Limits: This is evidence that capacity was built and also that it falls short. The audit itself says it could not judge whether the food stocks are sufficient. Our arithmetic, not the auditor's: 10% of the population for 30 days is about three person-days per head, roughly a fifth of the 14-day target. Only the summary is public, because the full report is restricted for five years, so the underlying volumes and methods cannot be checked. About two-thirds of the food stock is flour, and the contract partner holds half of that as grain, which is raw material. The stocks are delegated, held by contracted firms rather than the state. The agency set its own lower target, the ministries accepted it, and the government target has not been formally changed, so it is unclear which target the system answers to. Release has been rehearsed only for pharmaceuticals, which have been drawn three times. The release of food, veterinary products and protective equipment has not been agreed or practised: the veterinary release exercise was postponed from autumn 2025 to March 2026, food release is first to be practised in the Ilves 2026 national exercise, and some release guidance is due only by the end of 2027. Nothing here shows performance in a real shock. The status is operating rather than eroded because no peak was lost: the stock never reached its target. The founding year rests on the agency's own site and a 2020 ministry press release.
๐ฌ๐นGuatemalasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Guatemala's Ministry of Social Development (MIDES) made the first Bono Familia payments in May 2020, two months after the pandemic emergency was declared. By December 2020 the programme had reached 2.7 million beneficiaries, 21 times the 128,036 beneficiaries of the regular Bono Social cash transfer in 2019.
A law created a Q6 billion emergency fund and MIDES, which had no social registry, used electricity distributors' customer records to identify households, telecom operators to register and notify them, and banks' virtual accounts and ATMs to pay them. Its caseload grew 21 times in eight months.
Preconditions
Near-universal electricity metering, so a utility customer list could stand in for a social registry
A banking network willing to open virtual accounts at scale and pay out through ATMs and retail points
A congressional appropriation passed within weeks of the emergency declaration
Where else it has been used: Utility and telecom data used as a stand-in registry appeared across Latin America in 2020. The usual lesson is that the stand-in is retired after the shock and the regular programme returns to its small base; the brochure still calls for a national social registry, which suggests the stand-in was not institutionalised here.
Limits: The publishers are Guatemala's development partners (the World Bank lent to its 2020 crisis response) and this is a lessons-learned brochure, not an independent evaluation, and no Contralorรญa audit was consulted. Beneficiaries are registrations tied mostly to electricity meters, not verified unique people or households. Eligibility ran through electricity consumption, so households without power came in only through special cases capped at 10% (143,014 special cases). The 21-times figure compares a three-payment emergency transfer with a conditional programme of a different design, so it measures scale-up, not like-for-like coverage. The poverty effect is a World Bank simulation. The responsiveness did not last. The same document says cash transfer programmes shrank between 2012 and 2021, except in 2020. Bono Social reached only 152,702 households in 2018 at 0.05% of GDP, and the brochure lists open challenges in carrying the payment model into regular programmes. One episode of fast emergency scale-up does not show that rules and programmes in general change quickly.
๐ซ๐ทFrancesince 2005operating below its peakbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
France's health ministry and its stockpile agency built a strategic pandemic stock of about 1.7 billion FFP2 and surgical masks by 2009, but by the start of the covid-19 crisis it held only about 100 million valid masks, according to the Senate commission of inquiry.
The health ministry and EPRUS, later Santรฉ publique France, built a national stock of nearly two billion masks after the H5N1 scare. The directorate-general for health then let expiring and non-conforming lots go without replacement. It ordered 613 million surgical masks destroyed in 2018 and did not renew them, so the stock was close to empty when covid-19 arrived.
Preconditions
A dedicated stockpile agency with a budget line that survives years without a crisis
A replacement schedule tied to expiry dates and to changes in product standards, not to annual budget pressure
Political ownership of a stock target, so that a quiet downgrade from 'stock' to 'need' is visible and has to be defended
Where else it has been used: Most OECD countries rebuilt their medical stockpiles after 2020. The French case shows that procurement is not the hard part. The hard part is keeping the stock in date, and now the crisis-era stock faces its own expiry in 2026.
Limits: The status is the contestable part. The collapse from 2009 to 2019 is well documented, but the state rebuilt the stock during and after the crisis: Santรฉ publique France's January 2024 inventory, quoted in a 2025 Senate bill, counts 2.1 billion masks, more than the 2009 figure. The case for 'eroded' rests on two things. About 706 million of those masks had already expired, which leaves roughly 1.39 billion in date, a subtraction we made and the source does not publish. The same text says every mask bought during the crisis expires in 2026. The 2009 figure is itself overstated as capability, because the 613 million surgical masks bought in 2005 and 2006 later failed a 2014 standard. Measured in conforming masks, today's stock may exceed the 2009 one, so a reviewer could fairly argue for 'operating'. The Cour des comptes chapter on mask stock management (RALFSS, May 2025) did not open from this machine, because the host refused the connection, so its figures are cited only through the Senate text. The Senate figures were compiled by the commission from Santรฉ publique France data and are given in round numbers. Mask counts measure one input to pandemic readiness. They say nothing about distribution capacity, domestic production or the rest of the stock: drugs, gowns, gloves.
The UAE's health authorities ran a national COVID-19 vaccination campaign from late 2020 that WHO records as having given at least one dose to 9,991,089 people, a first-dose coverage of 100 per 100 people on WHO's capped measure, and 24,922,054 doses in total by 6 July 2022.
Federal and emirate health authorities registered vaccines early, supplied them free to citizens and residents through public and private clinics, drive-throughs and mass centres, and tied access to daily life to vaccination status through the AlHosn app.
Preconditions
A small, concentrated population with nearly universal digital identity and smartphone use
Fiscal room to buy doses early from several suppliers, including through a clinical-trial partnership
Authority to make vaccination status a condition of entry to workplaces and public venues
Where else it has been used: Fast campaigns in small, wealthy states such as Israel and the UAE were widely cited in 2021. The digital-pass part travelled more readily than the procurement part, which depended on early bilateral deals.
Limits: The figures are the UAE's own reports to WHO, not an independent count, and the last update is July 2022. The per-100 share is capped at 100 by WHO and the UAE's population denominator is unusually uncertain because most residents are foreign nationals on visas, so a 100 percent first-dose coverage claim cannot be taken literally; the absolute counts are safer, and they may include doses given to short-stay visitors. The start-date evidence is the Abu Dhabi emirate's media office describing its own emirate, which also says vaccines reached frontline workers from September 2020, so 2020 is the start of use, not of a public national campaign on a fixed date; the federal health ministry's site did not open from here. Coverage is an output of a shock response. It does not show deaths averted, cold-chain performance, equity across nationalities and labour camps, or preparedness for the next shock.
๐ต๐ฆPanamasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Panama's government created the Plan Panamรก Solidario digital voucher during the 2020 COVID-19 closures, reaching 90,492 people in its first month (April 2020), 458,662 in May and a peak of 949,343 in November 2020, then tapered it as employment returned and ended it in 2023.
The national government, through MIDES and the Autoridad de Innovaciรณn Gubernamental, built a digital voucher tied to the national identity number and paid merchants directly, so it could switch on a nationwide transfer within weeks of the closures and switch it off gradually as people went back to work.
Preconditions
A national identity number usable as the key for eligibility and payment
A digital-government agency able to build and run a registration and recharge platform at national scale
A merchant network willing to accept vouchers and a treasury able to pay them promptly
Where else it has been used: Pandemic voucher schemes ran across Latin America in 2020; Panama's shows that an exit rule (re-screening through a social file as employment returned) is part of a responsive programme, not an afterthought.
Limits: The figures are the ministry's own management report at the end of a government's term, sourced to the digital-government authority's platform, and are not audited. Monthly beneficiary counts show how fast the programme scaled, not whether it reached the right people: MIDES itself introduced the Ficha Social later to screen out people who did not need it, which implies early targeting was loose. The table counts people receiving a recharge in a month, and the report's own headline of about 1.3 million people ever covered is a different, cumulative measure. The voucher was a temporary emergency measure ended by design, so a later case with no comparable shock cannot be read from it. Speed came partly from an emergency mandate and from spending about B/.2.08 billion paid to merchants between 2020 and March 2024 (Cuadro No. 15), which says nothing about fiscal sustainability. The figures sit in a PDF table, and the server rejects requests without a browser-like user agent, so checking takes manual work.
๐น๐ญThailandsince 2020operating below its peakbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Thailand's State Audit Office found in 2024 that the public warning system, for which the state allocated THB 1,074.95 million in fiscal years 2020 to 2022, and whose telemetry the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation publishes through its DPM Alert app, was not working as intended: 318 of 555 telemetry stations (57.30%) failed to measure continuously for more than two days, and 54 of 82 sampled warning towers and receivers (65.85%) were not ready to sound an alert, which the auditor attributed to damaged or deteriorated key parts.
Thailand's disaster department funded and installed warning towers, telemetry and a public app, but left maintenance after warranty, data integration and provincial alerting duties without owners, so the installed network decayed into equipment that was present but not ready to sound.
Preconditions
A maintenance budget and named custodians for every device after the supplier warranty ends
A routine national test that records which towers actually sound and feeds repairs
Provincial and local units obliged to issue and log alerts within the warning window, with someone checking they did
Where else it has been used: Siren and telemetry networks erode the same way elsewhere once the post-disaster budget passes. Thailand's audit is unusual for counting the decay device by device, which is what made the later shift to cell broadcast an evidence-based choice rather than a fashion.
Limits: The page is hosted on the State Audit Office's own site, but it is a newspaper clipping (Siang Samphan, dated 28 March 2024) of the office's release, not the full audit report; the report itself was not opened. The release names no agency; attributing the network to DPM rests on the DPM Alert app. Part of the telemetry was still under the supplier's defect warranty, so its 57.30% failure rate is underperformance of new equipment, not decay; the erosion is carried by the tower test. The device test covers 82 devices in seven provinces chosen by the auditors, not a national random sample, so 65.85% is not a national failure rate. The 'peak' in secondMetric is the installed size of the telemetry network, not an observed year in which all 555 stations worked: the audit does not say when, or whether, the network last ran at full function, so the erosion is from design capacity rather than a measured earlier high. The started year is the first fiscal year of the audited budget window. The audit tests readiness of equipment, not outcomes in a real disaster, and it predates the September 2025 T-Alert cell-broadcast rollout recorded separately as tha-t-alert, which may have replaced part of the function. The finding of THB 514 million in poorly spent funds is the auditor's judgement of value for money.
๐ฆ๐ทArgentinasince 2011still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The national water resources secretariat contracted the state technology firm INVAP in 2011 to build Argentine weather radars, and by December 2024 the network operated 14 radars feeding an operations centre at the national weather service, after 11 had covered 40 percent of the territory together with three INTA radars in 2023.
The water resources secretariat bought radars from INVAP, the state-owned engineering firm, instead of importing them, and later contracted INVAP to operate and maintain the network while the national weather service ran a central operations centre.
Preconditions
A domestic firm with prior radar and complex-systems experience (INVAP)
A ministry willing to fund a multi-stage build across changes of government
Provinces supplying sites, power and fibre under cooperation agreements
Where else it has been used: Most countries import weather radars; Argentina's choice to build them domestically is the unusual part, and the slow third stage shows the cost of depending on one national supplier and one budget line.
Limits: A radar count is an input to early warning, not demonstrated capacity to prepare for and recover from a shock, which is what the indicator asks for; nothing here shows that warnings reached people or reduced losses. Both figures are the government's own announcements, and the count is inconsistent across them: 11 radars plus a prototype in March 2023 and 14 in December 2024, so it is unclear whether the prototype is counted. The 2011 start is a contract signature, and the sources do not date the first operational radar. The March 2023 announcement announced a third stage of 10 more radars (RMA12 to RMA21) for 70 percent coverage, and by December 2024 only about three had been added. Later installations in 2025 were reported but not verified here at an official source. The 40 percent coverage figure includes three radars owned by INTA, outside the network.
๐ท๐ผRwandasince 2024delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Rwanda's Ministry of Health declared a Marburg virus disease outbreak on 27 September 2024 and declared it over on 20 December 2024. WHO reported 66 confirmed cases and 15 deaths, a case fatality ratio of 23 percent, with the last confirmed case on 30 October.
Rwanda's Ministry of Health and Rwanda Biomedical Centre ran an incident-management structure with WHO and partner surge support. They traced and tested contacts at scale, with 7,874 Marburg tests by 6 December. Cases were moved to a dedicated treatment centre with critical care, and the WHO 42-day rule was followed before the end was declared.
Preconditions
A national public health institute with in-country filovirus PCR capacity
An administrative system able to trace contacts quickly in a dense capital
Standing relationships with WHO, Africa CDC and US agencies that could deploy surge teams within days
Where else it has been used: The Ebola response model from West Africa and the DRC, adapted to a mostly urban, hospital-centred outbreak in a capital city.
Limits: This is one 12-week event, not a standing programme, and a single outcome cannot separate preparedness from luck or case mix. The low fatality ratio is partly a case-mix effect. Almost 80 percent of cases were health workers, from two health facilities in Kigali (WHO: almost 78 percent of confirmed cases; 46 percent of all cases aged 30 to 39), treated at a dedicated MVD treatment centre with WHO critical-care support. They are not comparable to rural community cases in earlier outbreaks. That most cases were health workers is itself evidence of an infection-control failure at the start: the virus spread inside hospitals before it was detected. WHO's page does not say how long transmission ran before detection. The response was not purely national. WHO provided surge clinical support, IOM supported points-of-entry capacity, and US CDC, USAID and Africa CDC supplied laboratory supplies and technical support, and the DON lists therapeutics and vaccine research as a response function, so the investigational products may have contributed in ways this record cannot separate. The DON does not give the historical fatality range, so the comparison with earlier outbreaks is not made from this source. The figures are WHO restating Ministry of Health reports, so the government is reporting on its own response.
๐ธ๐ฌSingaporesince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Singapore's Ministry of Finance introduced the Jobs Support Scheme in the Unity Budget of 18 February 2020, raised and extended it through the Resilience, Solidarity and Fortitude Budgets, the fourth of them presented on 26 May 2020, and disbursed $22.6 billion of wage support from April to December 2020.
The Finance Ministry built one wage-subsidy scheme on the existing payroll and pension contribution records, paid it automatically without applications, and then changed its rate and duration in each supplementary budget as the lockdown was imposed and extended.
Preconditions
A payroll and social contribution register that already identifies every local employee and employer
Fiscal reserves that Parliament could draw on without borrowing
A cabinet and Parliament able to pass supplementary budgets within weeks
Where else it has been used: Similar automatic wage subsidies ran in other countries during the pandemic, including Australia's JobKeeper and Germany's Kurzarbeit, which already existed; the distinctive part here was paying without applications through existing contribution records.
Limits: Every figure is the Ministry of Finance assessing its own measures. Disbursement measures how fast money moved, not whether the rules changed for the right reasons or whether the jobs would have been lost without it; the ministry's own job-saving figure on the same page is a modelled estimate, and the record does not carry it. The speed rested on accumulated reserves that most of the benchmarked countries do not have, so the case shows what a cash-rich centre of government can do, not responsiveness under fiscal constraint. Four budgets in about 14 weeks counts revisions; it does not show that each revision was well targeted, and wage subsidies paid on every local employee reached firms that would have kept their workers anyway. The scheme was temporary by design and wound down after the crisis, so the record is a concluded delivery and not evidence of standing institutional agility.
๐ธ๐ฌSingaporesince 1976still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Singapore's drainage authorities, the Drainage Department and later PUB, expanded the national drainage system under a drainage master plan, with a development drainage code from 1976, and reduced flood-prone areas from about 3,200 hectares in the 1970s to less than 25 hectares by 2025, with about $2.5 billion spent on drainage upgrades since 2011.
A single drainage authority drew a national master plan, built and widened canals and drains against it, and wrote flood protection into the development code so that every new building carried its own platform level and runoff controls.
Preconditions
One authority with jurisdiction over drainage across the whole territory
Planning control strong enough to impose platform levels and detention requirements on every developer
A small, fully urbanised catchment where engineering can reach most flood-prone land
Where else it has been used: The source-control rule, detention tanks and rain gardens required on larger sites since 2014, is the part that travels to larger cities; the full reduction depended on a city-state's control of land use.
Limits: Flood-prone area is PUB's own definition, counted by the agency that is responsible for reducing it, and the method behind the count is not published with it. The 1970s baseline is a rounded single figure with no year. An intermediate official figure, 40 hectares in 2013 in the PUB annual report, is consistent with a falling series, but the curve cannot be rebuilt from one dataset. The drop combines drainage works with land reclamation, raised platform levels and redevelopment, so it does not isolate the drainage programme. Flash floods still occur at listed hotspots, and the number says nothing about recovery from a major shock, because Singapore has not had a catastrophic flood in the period to test it. Most of the reduction predates the climate projections the ministry now plans against, so it shows capacity built against past rainfall, not readiness for sea-level rise. The started year is when the drainage code began, not the first drainage works.
๐ณ๐ฎNicaraguasince 2015still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Nicaragua's Ministry of Finance joined the CCRIF regional catastrophe insurance pool in 2015, renewed every year to at least 2021, raised its cyclone cover ahead of the 2020 season, and received five payouts totalling US$32.25 million, including US$30.6 million after hurricanes Eta and Iota.
The Ministry of Finance bought parametric insurance from a regional risk pool, sized the cyclone cover each season on the national meteorological institute's forecast, and drew the payout within two weeks of a storm to bridge the gap before other funding arrived.
Preconditions
A regional pool that spreads risk across many small economies so premiums are affordable
Donor or development-bank finance for entry fees and premiums while the budget cannot carry them
A hazard agency whose forecasts the finance ministry trusts enough to change its cover
Where else it has been used: The regional pooling model also runs in Africa and the Pacific, where low premium budgets have repeatedly limited cover.
Limits: The World Bank is reporting on its own project, and the brief covers the years to project closure in 2021; nothing in it documents payouts or cover after that. Operating status after 2021 is unconfirmed by the opened source. The premiums were mostly not paid by Nicaragua: an IDA credit of US$12 million financed participation fees and premiums for seven years; CCRIF and its donors offered 50 percent premium discounts, and the share of the premium paid from the credit fell in the last two years, with the Ministry of Finance budgeting the balance. The record therefore evidences a financing arrangement the state used, not one it funded. US$30.6 million is liquidity, not recovery: the brief gives no damage total for Eta and Iota to set it against, and a parametric payout measures whether a model threshold was crossed, not how well the money was spent. The brief's comparison of fatalities with hurricane Felix in 2007 is not carried here. The record overlaps in time with the existing SINAPRED evacuation record and documents a different delivery, the fiscal side of preparedness.
๐ฎ๐ฑIsraelsince 2020delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Israel started COVID-19 vaccination in December 2020 through its four health funds and had fully vaccinated about 70 percent of adults by April 2021; at the end of April 2021, 55 percent of its population was vaccinated, when coverage in most OECD countries was between 11 percent and less than one percent.
70 % of adults (about), adult population fully vaccinated (two doses), 2021-04. 55 % of population, population vaccinated at the end of april 2021, 2021-04-30. OECD, Economic Surveys: Israel 2023, retrieved 2026-10-01.
The move, and what it needed
The government bought early supply with a data-sharing agreement. It then delivered the campaign through the four health funds, which used their electronic records to call people in by risk group and their employed nurses to vaccinate, and it paid the funds premiums for reaching coverage targets.
Preconditions
Near-universal enrolment in a few health funds with complete electronic records
A primary care nursing workforce the funds could redeploy at once
A government able to sign a fast, unconventional procurement deal
Limits: The 70 percent is an approximate figure that the OECD takes from the Bank of Israel, not an OECD count. The speed was bought in part by an early Pfizer/BioNTech supply deal paid for with weekly anonymised aggregate epidemiological data, and Israel has a young population, so the case says little about what a slower procurement position would have achieved. An OECD working paper says Israel later fell into the lower half of OECD vaccine coverage, and it puts ultra-Orthodox vaccination at about half the rate of the rest of the population. The 2023 survey also records that excess mortality was around the OECD average, so fast vaccination did not by itself produce better mortality outcomes. This is response to one shock, not evidence of preparation before it. Both figures are in PDFs.
๐ณ๐ฌNigeriasince 2017still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Nigeria's National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office built a National Social Register of 15,673,296 households and, during COVID-19, a new Rapid Response Register that captured 2.7 million households, while the project paid targeted cash transfers to 9,666,420 direct beneficiaries in 37 states between 2017 and its close in December 2022.
Nigeria's federal government set up NASSCO and the National Cash Transfer Office to build one national social register and an electronic payment rail, then reused that infrastructure during COVID-19 to stand up a rapid-response register from satellite poverty maps and phone data for urban households outside the original register.
Preconditions
A standing social register and payment system already in place before the shock, so a new caseload could be added rather than built from nothing
External finance and restitution funds ring-fenced for transfers, which kept payments flowing through federal budget stress
An identity layer (NIN or BVN) that later became a hard gate, and whose coverage gaps then slowed payments
Where else it has been used: Shock-responsive registers spread across Africa during COVID-19, Togo's Novissi being the best known. Nigeria's version shows that the register scales faster than the payment and identity-verification rails behind it.
Limits: The gap asks for the speed at which programmes change, and the source gives no elapsed time: it shows that a shock register was built during COVID-19, not how many weeks it took or how quickly payments followed. The figures come from the World Bank's own completion review of a project it financed (IDA credit of about US$491 million, plus about US$335.5 million from the Abacha restitution fund), not from a Nigerian statistical source, and the review prints the original NSR target as 4,000, apparently a unit error that it does not explain. Registration is not payment: only 53 percent of beneficiaries were in the bottom two quintiles against a target of 80, only 6 percent of households received top-up transfers, more than three-quarters of households joined too late for three years of support, and benefit levels were lower than designed. After the review closes, the World Bank's January 2025 status report for the follow-on scale-up (https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099012925120031079/pdf/P17693518b066e0ff1b62c194b8b78c78dd.pdf) records that transfers since March 2024 go only to NIN- or BVN-verified beneficiaries, that oversight passed for a period to an inter-ministerial panel, and that about 1.4 million of 5 million supported households had received second and third tranches, so the delivery system's continuity is not secure.
๐ธ๐ชSwedensince 1989dismantledbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Sweden's civil defence agency รCB began procuring long-term stocks of medical consumables for wartime care in 1989, and the national build-up by รCB and Socialstyrelsen was completed in 1995 to 1996; the stocks were run down from the late 1990s, รCB's stockpiles ended entirely in 2001, and by the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 Socialstyrelsen held no personal protective equipment in its emergency stockpile.
0 items, personal protective equipment held in socialstyrelsen's national emergency stockpile before the pandemic, 2020. 150,000 patients (peak; reduced to 5,000), patients covered by socialstyrelsen's emergency stockpile, peak versus after the 1996/1997 defence decision, 1996/1997. Coronakommissionen, Sverige under pandemin (SOU 2021:89), published by Sveriges riksdag, retrieved 2026-10-01.
The move, and what it needed
The government had รCB and later Socialstyrelsen build national stocks of medical consumables and equipment for wartime casualties, then, after the 1996 total defence decision, the agencies sold off and ran down the stocks and moved supply onto the regions' just-in-time procurement.
Preconditions
A threat assessment that justified paying to store goods that are mostly never used
A national agency with storage sites and a mandate to rotate perishable stock
A political settlement that would keep funding the stock once the war threat receded, which is what failed
Limits: SOU 2021:19 sizes the stockpile at its peak in patients covered, not in volume or value: stocks for 150,000 patients and at most about 200 consumable items in 1996/1997, reduced to 5,000 patients with a trauma-care focus after the 1996/1997 defence decision. The build-up was sized for one to two months of wartime surgical consumption. The 2020 PPE zero measures a category the 1990s wartime stock is not shown to have held. The zero is Socialstyrelsen's own answer to the commission, and the same report says PPE bought during the 2014 Ebola outbreak had been held and lent to the regions, so 'no PPE' describes what was on hand in early 2020, not a stock that never existed. The dismantling was a deliberate decision based on a reassessed wartime threat, with the regions expected to hold their own stocks; the record documents a capability given up by choice, not one that collapsed. The 1950s figure of about 124,000 emergency hospital beds in SOU 2021:19 covers a different, older programme and is not used here. Both inquiries are long HTML transcriptions of PDFs with hyphenation breaks, and Sweden has since begun rebuilding health-sector stockpiling, which this record does not evaluate.
๐ฌ๐งUnited Kingdomsince 2020delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The UK government set up the Vaccine Taskforce in April 2020, became the first country to authorise a COVID-19 vaccine and begin vaccination in December 2020, and by the end of October 2021 the NHS in England had given two doses to 85% of adults.
The government created a Vaccine Taskforce outside normal departmental lines, gave it fast-track approval and broad indemnities to sign advance contracts with several developers before any vaccine was proven, and had the NHS deliver doses mainly through GPs and community pharmacies.
Preconditions
A single national health service with a GP registry that could call people by priority group
Treasury willingness to fund at-risk purchases across several candidate vaccines
A domestic regulator able to authorise quickly and a domestic research base (Oxford) with a vaccine candidate
Limits: The figures cover England only, not the United Kingdom; health is devolved and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ran their own rollouts. The rollout responded to a shock already under way, so it shows capacity to recover, not preparation: the UK's pre-pandemic preparedness and 2020 death toll are outside this number. Uptake was uneven, at 64% among 18 to 24 year olds and 48% to 49% among some ethnic minority groups, and around 3.7 million adults were still unvaccinated at the end of January 2022. About 4.7 million doses were wasted, including 1.9 million AstraZeneca doses written off. The deaths averted figure in the same report is a UKHSA model estimate and is not used here. The data come from NHS England's own administrative reporting, analysed by the NAO.
๐ฒ๐ฝMexicosince 1999dismantledbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Mexico's federal government ran FONDEN from 1999 as a pre-arranged national fund for post-disaster reconstruction, allocating a record US$833 million to it in 2011 and insuring it with catastrophe bonds, and abrogated the FONDEN trust by the decree of 6 November 2020, moving disaster spending onto ordinary budget lines.
The Finance Ministry and the Interior Ministry built a rules-based trust that set aside budget for reconstruction before disasters and reinsured it through catastrophe bonds. A new administration and Congress then folded the trust into ordinary budget lines through a decree converting it into a budgetary scheme, justified by transparency.
Preconditions
A trust structure that could be extinguished by decree
An administration that treated off-budget trusts as a corruption risk rather than as insurance
No statutory floor that protected the reserve once the trust was gone
Where else it has been used: FONDEN's design, an ex-ante disaster fund topped up by parametric catastrophe bonds, was promoted by the World Bank as a template.
Limits: The metric shows the fund at its peak, not its dismantling. The abolition rests on a second World Bank document with no number in it: the Mexico Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Growth DPL (P178224, https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/556411654274244589/pdf/Mexico-Inclusive-and-Sustainable-Economic-Growth-Development-Policy-Loan.pdf) refers to "the abrogation of the Mexico's National Disaster Fund (FONDEN)" (page 31), and the government's own letter in its annex says that after "the Decree published on 6 November 2020, the financial instrument FONDEN is changing from a trust to a budgetary scheme". So disaster spending did not stop. What ended was the trust, its reserve-building and its inter-institutional rules, and the same DPL says the 2022 emergency budget covered only an average year's losses. The record has no post-abolition figure for reconstruction spending or speed, so the claim that capacity fell is the World Bank's reading, not a measurement. The 2011 allocation is one year inside a volatile series. The same review says spending exceeded FONDEN's resources in five of the years from 1999 to 2011 and needed transfers of over US$3.3 billion in 2010, so the fund was never fully self-sufficient. The review was co-authored with the Mexican government it describes.
๐น๐ทTurkeysince 2000still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the 1999 Marmara earthquake, Turkey's government created the Turkish Catastrophe Insurance Pool (DASK) in 2000 to provide compulsory earthquake insurance, and coverage rose from 23 percent of dwellings as reported by the World Bank in January 2011 to 57.7 percent, or 11.6 million insured homes, by October 2025.
The government, with World Bank financial and technical assistance, set up a public catastrophe pool that sells statutory earthquake cover through around 30 private insurers, keeps a retention layer and passes excess risk to international reinsurers.
Preconditions
A catastrophic earthquake that made the fiscal cost of rebuilding private homes politically visible
A property registry able to identify eligible dwellings
Access to international reinsurance at actuarially priced rates
Limits: Insurance penetration measures financial preparation for rebuilding private homes, not the capacity to prepare for or recover from a shock. It says nothing about building safety. The scheme has been compulsory since 2000, yet after 25 years 42 percent of dwellings are still uninsured, falling to 45 percent coverage in the Black Sea region. Only legally built dwellings on registered land are eligible. The two figures come from different publishers and may use different denominators. The 2025 figure is DASK's own data reported through the government's annual programme, not an independent count. The record has no figure for claims paid or payout speed after the February 2023 earthquakes, which is the test that matters. Cover per policy is capped, so insured losses understate household losses. The World Bank, which co-designed the pool and seeded it with a US$100 million contingent loan, is also the source of the earlier figure.
๐ฆ๐บAustraliasince 2018still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The Australian Government paid $3.1 billion to state and territory governments through the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements between 1 June 2018 and 30 June 2022, and the arrangements were activated for 49 disaster events that occurred in 2021โ22.
The Commonwealth pre-commits by ministerial determination to reimburse a set share of state and territory relief and recovery spending in defined categories once an event is activated, so states can spend first and claim afterwards under an agreed assurance process.
Preconditions
A federal fiscal capacity large enough to absorb a bad disaster year
State governments able to design, run and acquit relief programmes
An assurance process both levels of government accept, which the audit found still lacked performance monitoring
Where else it has been used: Canada's DFAA is the older version of the same cost-sharing move. Both reached modernisation reviews that pushed toward funding mitigation, because a reimbursement scheme alone pays to rebuild what the next event can destroy again.
Limits: Dollars paid measure the federal share of state recovery spending, which tracks how much damage the hazards did as much as how well recovery was run: a bad flood year raises the number. The audit is an independent assurance review of administration, not an evaluation of recovery outcomes, and it found the agencies did not monitor or report DRFA performance, so no figure on speed or quality of recovery exists to set beside the spending. The 49 events is the ANAO's own headline count of disasters that occurred in 2021โ22 and activated the arrangements; it counts activations, not their size or how well each was handled. Delivery is by the states; the Commonwealth reimburses. The ANAO site sits behind a Cloudflare check that blocks scripted requests, and its headline counter renders as 0 without JavaScript; the numbers were read in a browser at the same URL, and 49 also appears in paragraph 2.16. DRFA replaced the earlier Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements in 2018, so the start year is that of the current determination, not of federal recovery cost sharing.
๐จ๐ฆCanadasince 1970still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Public Safety Canada's Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements paid $1.84 billion in contributions to provinces and territories between 2011โ12 and 2015โ16, almost 45 percent of everything paid since the programme began in 1970, while 53 disaster events were approved by the Governor in Council between 2011 and 2016.
Ottawa cost-shares provincial and territorial response and recovery spending on a sliding scale above a per-capita threshold, triggered by an order in council, so that a single large disaster does not fall on one province's budget.
Preconditions
Provinces and territories with their own disaster assistance programmes to reimburse
A federal audit and acquittal process that provinces accept, even when it takes years
Fiscal room at the federal level to absorb a spike like the 2013 Alberta floods
Where else it has been used: Australia runs the same move as the DRFA. The Canadian expert panel's 2023 report and the 2025 redesign moved money toward mitigation and earlier support for survivors, which is the usual lesson of a long-running reimbursement scheme.
Limits: This is the department evaluating its own programme. Payments follow disaster losses, so a high figure is partly a record of bad luck: the 2013โ14 year alone (about $1.02 billion) carries more than half the five-year total. The same evaluation shows the money arrives slowly: for the 53 events approved in 2011โ2016 the estimated federal share was $3.8 billion against $1.6 billion actually issued, because provinces have up to five years after approval to request final payment, and before 2008 there was no time limit at all. The figures are nine years old; a 2025 parliamentary briefing note on the Public Safety site puts the cumulative total since 1970 at $8.9 billion, and the programme was redesigned from April 2025, so this record documents the arrangement as it stood in the evaluation period. Provinces and territories design and run the assistance; DFAA reimburses part of it.
๐บ๐ธUnited Statessince 1968operating below its peakbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
OpenFEMA's records of National Flood Insurance Program contracts in force fell from 4,667,875 on 31 December 2009 to 3,589,275 on 31 December 2025, a fall of about 23 percent in the federal flood insurance base over 16 years.
3,589,275 contracts, nfip policy contracts in force (openfema records active on the date), 2025-12-31. 4,667,875 contracts, nfip policy contracts in force at the first complete year-end in the dataset, 2009-12-31. FEMA, OpenFEMA NFIP Redacted Policies dataset (v3), retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
Congress created a federal insurer of last resort for flood, tied to community floodplain management and to a purchase requirement for federally backed mortgages in high-risk zones, so that recovery after floods would be paid for by premiums rather than only by disaster aid.
Preconditions
Flood maps that identify who must buy and that stay current
Enforcement of the mandatory purchase requirement by lenders, which is where take-up leaks
Premiums that households will keep paying once the mortgage requirement no longer binds them
Where else it has been used: Public flood pools elsewhere (Flood Re in the United Kingdom, CCRIF for Caribbean governments, DASK for Turkish earthquakes) face the same tension: pricing risk honestly drives voluntary buyers out, and keeping them in requires subsidy or compulsion.
Limits: Both numbers are computed, not published headlines: they are the record counts the OpenFEMA API returns for policies whose effective date is on or before, and termination date after, each date, which is the method FEMA's own NFIP data FAQ gives. The 2009 figure comes from the same URL with the date changed to 2009-12-31. The count is of contracts, not policies: one condominium contract can cover many units, and FEMA's own 'NFIP by the Numbers' report for 31 August 2026 shows 3,388,273 contracts but 4,460,103 policies. The API count runs about 2 percent above FEMA's contracts-in-force report (3,589,275 against 3,512,555 for December 2025), so the level carries a small method error, though both ends use the same method. The dataset starts with policies effective in 2009, so the true earlier peak cannot be shown from it. The fall is not all lost protection: private flood insurance has grown, some properties left mapped flood zones, and Risk Rating 2.0 (2021) raised premiums by design to price risk. What the record shows is that the public programme's reach shrank, not that total insured flood exposure fell by the same amount.
๐ฐ๐ทSouth Koreasince 2015still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The Korea Meteorological Administration expanded the national seismic network from 195 stations when its earthquake early warning service started in January 2015 to 550 stations, and by May 2026 issued early warnings within 5 to 10 seconds of first detection.
The national weather agency densified the seismic network roughly threefold and tied automatic magnitude estimates to the national cell-broadcast emergency text system, so a warning reaches every phone in the affected area without a human approval step.
Preconditions
A national cell-broadcast channel already carried by all mobile operators
Budget for a decade of station build-out and telemetry
An agency trusted to issue automatic alerts that will sometimes be wrong
Where else it has been used: Japan's JMA system is the model; Taiwan, Mexico (SASMEX) and the United States (ShakeAlert) run variants. The Korean retelling stresses network density, because a small, densely populated peninsula has little lead time between fault and city.
Limits: This is the agency describing its own service in a government press item, in Korean. A station count is an input, and the 5 to 10 second issuance time is a stated operating standard, not a measured average over real events; the page gives no record of how warnings performed in actual earthquakes, how many were false or missed, or what share of people received the cell-broadcast text. The agency itself names the weakness: close to the epicentre, strong shaking arrives before the warning, which is why it added an on-site alert stage from 28 May 2026. Korea has had few damaging earthquakes since 2016, so the system has been tested rarely. Earlier reporting puts the 2015 issuance time at about 50 seconds, but that figure is not on this page and is not used here.
๐ฟ๐ฆSouth Africasince 2001operating below its peakbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The South African Weather Service reported that the availability of its weather radar infrastructure fell from 73.83 percent in 2021/22 to 52.23 percent in 2022/23 and 44.25 percent in 2023/24, against a 75 percent target, as load shedding, missing spares and ageing C-band radars took sites down.
A national weather service built and ran a countrywide radar network that underpins severe-weather warnings, then let it degrade when power supply, spares contracts and maintenance budgets failed together.
Preconditions
Reliable grid power or funded backup at remote radar sites
Maintenance contracts with the original manufacturer and a spares budget
Site security against theft and vandalism
Where else it has been used: The Thai warning-tower and German siren cases in this corpus show the same pattern: warning infrastructure decays quietly between disasters, because nobody measures it until it is needed.
Limits: The figure is in the PDF of SAWS's own annual report (printed page 70, PDF page 72), and the copy that opens is hosted by the Parliamentary Monitoring Group, a civil-society mirror of documents tabled in Parliament; the SAWS website did not serve the report to a script. 2021/22 is not shown to be the historical peak: the 2024/25 plan presented to Parliament gives 73 percent for 2020/21 as well, so the record shows a fall from a plateau, not from an all-time high. Availability is the share of time radars produced data, not forecast or warning quality, and the population covered by a working radar is not reported. The main cause named is national load shedding, an Eskom failure outside SAWS's control (see zaf-eskom-loadshedding), compounded by spares shortages and vandalism. SAWS says the ageing C-band radars will be dropped from the statistic from 2024/25, which will raise the reported figure without repairing them. The start year is SAWS's establishment under the South African Weather Service Act of 2001, which is not stated on the cited page.
๐ฐ๐ชKenyasince 2009still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Kenya's National Drought Management Authority expanded the shock-responsive Hunger Safety Net Programme from four to eight arid counties, enrolling 32,000 new households paid from the government's own budget by December 2024, while 100 percent of regular transfers in the original four counties were financed by the government.
The drought authority pre-registers and banks almost every household in the arid north, pays the poorest a regular transfer, and uses satellite vegetation triggers to extend payments to more registered households when drought hits, so money can move without a new targeting exercise.
Preconditions
A household registry and bank accounts set up before the shock
A trigger rule tied to an objective drought index
Contingent money ready to flow when the trigger fires, which is where Kenya's version fell short in 2021 to 2023
Where else it has been used: Ethiopia's PSNP and the Sahel adaptive safety nets use the same scalable design. The Kenyan retelling shows that the registry and trigger are the easy part: the contingent finance is what fails under fiscal stress.
Limits: The source is the lender's completion report on a project it financed, and the numbers are in the PDF (32,000 households on printed pages 22 and 35; four to eight counties on printed page 17; drought arrears on printed page 16). The headline number is regular coverage, not drought response: the report says that during the 2021 to 2023 drought the scalable emergency component ran a deficit, emergency transfers were underfinanced and delayed, and arrears were paid only later, and that planned scale-up payments in 2024/25 were not triggered. So the record shows the standing system, not a fast drought payout. HSNP covers arid and semi-arid counties, not the whole country, by design. The 2009 start year is the first HSNP phase, which ran as a donor-funded pilot before the government took it over, and is not stated in this report.
๐ง๐ทBrazilsince 2024delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the floods that began in late April 2024 in Rio Grande do Sul, the federal government paid R$ 2.1 billion in Auxรญlio Reconstruรงรฃo to 429,000 families, according to the balance its extraordinary secretary for the reconstruction of Rio Grande do Sul presented to a Chamber of Deputies committee on 12 February 2025.
The federal government created a flat, one-off cash grant by provisional measure within two weeks of the disaster, paid through the existing social-payment rails to families on lists the affected municipalities certified, and accepted self-declaration to trade verification for speed.
Preconditions
A federal emergency-declaration process that names eligible municipalities
Payment rails and household registries that can reach families without a bank visit
Municipal civil-defence offices able to list affected households quickly
Where else it has been used: Flat post-disaster cash grants travel easily; the Brazilian case shows the bottleneck moving from paying to certifying, which is where the audit court found the delays.
Limits: The figure is the executive's own balance, stated by the federal secretary for the reconstruction of Rio Grande do Sul at a Chamber hearing and reported by the Chamber's news agency; it is not an audited count, and the Ministry of Integration pages that carried the running totals were behind a login wall during the 2026 electoral period, so the primary executive source could not be opened. The grant was eligibility-by-municipal-list plus self-declaration, so the count shows money reaching families, not need met: the Tribunal de Contas da Uniรฃo (Acรณrdรฃo 1297/2025, per its news page 'Tribunal analisa benefรญcios a desabrigados das enchentes') found 87,300 requests (11.97%) pending for more than 100 days at 13 September 2024 and one municipality where none of 1,722 requests had been approved, and ordered the ministry to clear the backlog. The budget was sized for an estimated 375,000 families. A cash transfer is response and early recovery, not reconstruction of housing or protective works, and says nothing about whether exposure fell.
๐จ๐ทCosta Ricasince 2017delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
In the 17 months to September 2018, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, under an agreement with the national emergency commission (CNE), completed 64 of the 65 priority reconstruction works after Hurricane Otto of November 2016, rebuilding 20 bridges and 211 km of rural roads for โก18,500 million.
The CNE, which holds the national emergency fund and the declared emergency plan, contracted the state electricity and telecom utility as a single builder for the priority works instead of tendering each bridge, and coordinated it with the public works ministry and five municipalities.
Preconditions
A standing emergency fund and a legal emergency declaration that unlocks direct contracting
A state enterprise with engineering crews and plant spread across the country
A short, costed list of priority works agreed in the emergency plan
Where else it has been used: Using a state utility as the reconstruction contractor recurs in Costa Rica's later emergencies; it travels only where such a utility exists and is trusted, and it concentrates risk if that enterprise is overstretched.
Limits: The source is the government's own completion announcement; the original presidencia.go.cr page now returns 404 and the text survives in ReliefWeb's republication, which names the Government of Costa Rica as source. Completion is measured against the government's own list of 65 priority works, not against total damage: the same government estimated recovery needs at about โก130,000 million, so โก18,500 million is a fraction of the recovery and the record shows the priority tranche only. The started year is computed from the release's '17 months' and is not stated directly. The remaining work, a bridge over the Zapote river, was delayed by expropriation. Nothing here shows whether the rebuilt bridges and roads were built to a higher standard or maintained; the Contralorรญa has reported maintenance gaps on emergency-fund projects, but its document server refused connections today and that finding is not relied on.
๐ฌ๐นGuatemalasince 2009delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
On 21 April 2020, five days after its second World Bank disaster-risk loan with a Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option became effective, Guatemala's government decided to withdraw the entire US$200 million to meet the fiscal shock of COVID-19, and the loan was fully disbursed. A first such credit of US$85 million, approved in 2009, had been drawn in 2010 after the Pacaya eruption and Tropical Storm Agatha.
The finance ministry pre-negotiated a contingent credit line tied to a declared state of calamity, so that a declaration released money within days instead of waiting for a new loan through Congress, and layered parametric insurance and a contingent IDB line on top under a 2018 disaster risk financing strategy.
Preconditions
A legal state-of-calamity declaration that can serve as the drawdown trigger
Congressional approval of the credit before the shock, which is where Guatemala lost a year
A finance ministry with a disaster risk financing strategy and budget tags to track the spending
Where else it has been used: CAT DDOs are used across Latin America (Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica, Guatemala); Guatemala's sequence shows the instrument lapsing between uses unless it is renewed before the next disaster.
Limits: Both numbers are on page 2 of the 18-page IEG review PDF ('The loan was fully disbursed'; 'On 21 April 2020 (just five days after the project became effective), the Government decided to withdraw the entire loan'). The US$85 million first credit, its approval on 14 April 2009 (the started year) and its 2010 drawdown are from the World Bank's 2019 Program Document for the same operation (documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/977151559008837975/pdf/Guatemala-Second-Disaster-Risk-Management-Development-Policy-Loan.pdf, PDF pages 25 and 48), not from the IEG review. The money is a World Bank loan: the Guatemalan delivery is arranging it, legislating it and drawing it, and the same documents show how fragile that was. There was no contingent instrument in place for the June 2018 Fuego eruption, when 'in the absence of any other financial instrument' Congress fast-tracked an unrelated budget-support loan (Program Document page 11); total resources available for disasters were under 0.1 percent of GDP in 2017 (page 25); the second credit took a year to become effective because of conflict between the executive and Congress; and the DRM law it supported was not adopted (IEG review page 17). The withdrawal shows liquidity arrived fast, not that it was spent well; the review notes the bank could no longer supervise once the line was drawn.
๐ต๐ชPerusince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
From its first dose on 9 February 2021 to the end of 2023, Peru's national COVID-19 vaccination campaign administered 91.3 million doses and completed the primary series for 28.7 million people, 87 per 100 population, with 22.2 million boosted.
The Ministry of Health ran a national campaign through its own clinics plus mass sites and age-tiered scheduling, and tied access to indoor public spaces to a vaccination card from December 2021 to push the late adopters.
Preconditions
Advance purchase contracts and a central cold-chain warehouse (CENARES)
A national immunization register that can count doses by person
Regional health directorates able to staff mass sites and outreach
Where else it has been used: The same campaign model ran across the region; Peru's coverage outpaced most neighbours, but the gap between Lima and the Amazon regions is the part that recurs everywhere.
Limits: WHO publishes what Peru's Ministry of Health reports, so the count is the country's administrative record, not a serosurvey; the CSV is machine-readable and the Peru row carries DATE_UPDATED 2023-12-29. Doses and persons are cumulative and do not show timeliness: vaccination came after Peru had already recorded one of the world's highest COVID-19 death rates, so the campaign evidences recovery capacity, not preparedness that prevented the first waves. Coverage was uneven: the ministry's own 11 December 2021 release, when 70 percent of the target population had two doses, named Madre de Dios, Puno and Ucayali below 50 percent. In January 2023 the ministry reported 1,964,490 doses close to expiry in its central warehouse. Per-100 figures use WHO's population denominator, not the national target population.
๐ต๐พParaguaysince 2019delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
By 29 May 2019, Paraguay's Secretarรญa de Emergencia Nacional had assisted 62,521 of the 65,000 families affected by the flash floods of March to May 2019 across 14 departments, delivering 1.5 million kg of food, 150,000 roofing sheets and 110,000 plywood boards.
The national emergency secretariat, holding its own emergency fund, procured food and building materials centrally and distributed them department by department against a household count, with shelters in Asunciรณn run alongside civil-society groups.
Preconditions
A national emergency fund that can be drawn without a new appropriation
Stockpiles or framework contracts for food and roofing material
Municipal and departmental lists of affected households
Where else it has been used: Relief-in-kind against a household count is the common Latin American model; it closes the response gap but leaves recovery and exposure to other agencies.
Limits: Both the numerator and the 65,000 denominator are the government's own counts, published by the agency that did the work, and nobody independent checked them; the text is read on ReliefWeb's republication because sen.gov.py did not answer a scripted request today. Assistance is relief in kind (food, props, sheets and boards for self-repair), not reconstruction, resettlement or risk reduction, and the release gives no timing, so it cannot show how fast families were reached. Some assistance in the Chaco was delivered with the First Lady's office. Repeated flooding of the same Asunciรณn riverside settlements shows the relief cycle does not reduce exposure.
๐ธ๐ปEl Salvadorsince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
From its first dose on 17 February 2021 to the end of 2023, El Salvador's national COVID-19 vaccination campaign administered 11.5 million doses and completed the primary series for 4.4 million people, 68 per 100 population.
The Ministry of Health vaccinated through mass sites and the public clinic network after securing early supply, and published a running national count.
Preconditions
Early vaccine supply contracts or donations
A small territory and dense road network that make mass sites reachable
An immunization register that counts persons as well as doses
Where else it has been used: The mass-site model travelled across Central America; El Salvador's case shows that a fast start does not by itself carry coverage past two thirds.
Limits: WHO republishes the Ministry of Health's administrative count; the El Salvador row carries DATE_UPDATED 2023-12-29 and no independent coverage survey is cited. A third of the population never completed the primary series and only 29 per 100 received a booster, so the delivery is national in reach but partial; Costa Rica (86) and Peru (87) completed more in the same file. The cumulative count does not show the campaign's early speed, which is its usual selling point, and that speed is not evidenced here. The government's covid19.gob.sv dashboard did not answer a scripted request and the PAHO country profile returned 403 in an earlier pass, so no national publication was read. The issue-47 rejection of this lead was on publisher_metric; the WHO file is the new evidence that fixes it.
๐ฌ๐งUnited Kingdomsince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
The UK's Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which started in March 2020, had 8.9 million jobs on furlough at its peak on 8 May 2020 and supported 11.7 million jobs from 1.3 million employers before it closed on 30 September 2021.
The Treasury designed a wage subsidy covering 80 percent of a furloughed employee's pay and HMRC paid it to employers through the PAYE Real Time Information payroll system it already ran, so a new programme reached millions of jobs within weeks.
Preconditions
A tax authority already receiving each employer's payroll in real time
Borrowing capacity to fund an open-ended subsidy
Willingness to accept fraud and deadweight in exchange for speed
Where else it has been used: Germany and France extended short-time work schemes that already existed in law; the UK built one from nothing on top of its payroll data, as Australia did with JobKeeper.
Limits: HMRC is reporting on a scheme it ran, from claims data, and the counts are jobs (employments), not people: one person furloughed from two jobs counts twice. The release dates the scheme's start as March 2020 and its daily series from 23 March 2020; the announcement date (20 March 2020) and the opening of the claims portal in April 2020 are not on this page, so the speed reading rests on the peak falling on 8 May 2020, about seven weeks after the series begins. The release says nothing about cost, deadweight (jobs that would have survived anyway) or fraud and error, which HMRC and the National Audit Office reported separately, and it cannot show whether furlough preserved jobs or delayed their loss: 1.16 million jobs were still on furlough when it closed. A new scheme built in weeks under extreme pressure says little about how fast British rules change in normal times.
๐ซ๐ทFrancesince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
France scaled its short-time work scheme (activitรฉ partielle) from an industrial instrument into an economy-wide one in the spring of 2020, placing 8.4 million employees on it at the April 2020 peak and 11.3 million at some point between March 2020 and December 2021.
The state widened eligibility and raised the compensation rate of an existing short-time work scheme by decree, and the state and Unรฉdic paid employers for hours not worked, so firms could cut hours instead of jobs.
Preconditions
A short-time work scheme already in law with an employer claims channel
A jointly managed unemployment insurance fund able to share the cost
Fiscal room to fund roughly a billion euros a week at the peak
Where else it has been used: The German Kurzarbeit model, which France's scheme resembles, did the same work in 2008-2009 and again in 2020; the existing legal channel is what let both pay within weeks.
Limits: Unรฉdic is a private-law association run jointly by the employer and union confederations that manages unemployment insurance under a statutory mandate; it is not a statistics office, and this is a signed analytical study (Oana Calavrezo) in which it reports on a programme it co-financed at about one third: 14.4 billion euros in 2020 and 2021 (11.5 billion of spending and 2.9 billion of forgone receipts), more than half of its deficit in those years. The counts are Unรฉdic's own calculations on the payment agency's claims data (ASP, Extranet Activitรฉ partielle, data at 17 January 2022, de-duplicated), stated in the full report linked from the page; the December 2021 months were provisional at that date. The labour ministry's statistics service (DARES) publishes the official series but its pages refused automated access on the retrieval date. The scheme existed before the crisis; what changed was its rules and scale, which the page describes as a change of scale 'in a few days' in the spring of 2020 without dating each decree. The count is of employees placed on the scheme, including long-term partial activity (APLD), not of jobs saved, and 45 percent of those placed on it only used it in the first lockdown. Cost per job and deadweight are not shown.
The American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021, expanded the Child Tax Credit and made it payable monthly, and on 15 July 2021 the IRS paid roughly 15 billion dollars to families of nearly 60 million children; Congress did not extend the expansion beyond 2021.
60,000,000 children (nearly), eligible children in families paid in the first monthly payment, 2021-07-15. 15,000,000,000 US dollars (roughly), paid in the first monthly payment, 2021-07-15. US Department of the Treasury, press release of 15 July 2021, retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
Congress turned an annual tax credit into a monthly payment and the IRS paid it automatically from prior-year tax returns, reaching most families within four months without a new application system.
Preconditions
A tax authority holding recent returns and bank details for most families
A legislative majority willing to pass a large temporary expansion
A political settlement to make it permanent, which was missing
Where else it has been used: Child allowances paid monthly are permanent in Canada and much of Europe; the US case shows a temporary expansion can be delivered quickly and lost as quickly when its legal basis is time-limited.
Limits: The source is the Treasury announcing its own first payment, rounded ('nearly', 'roughly'), not an audited count. The four-month interval from the March 2021 law to the July payment is derived from the release's 'passed in March' and its date. The expansion was legislated for 2021 only and lapsed when Congress declined to extend it, so 'dismantled' records a decision not to continue rather than a repeal. The loss is documented by the Census Bureau, not by this source: in Poverty in the United States: 2022 (https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-280.html) the Supplemental Poverty Measure child poverty rate more than doubled, from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022, and other programmes also expired in that year, so not all of the rise is the credit. Families the IRS could not find through prior tax filings were missed by the automatic payments.
๐ฎ๐ณIndiasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
India's Department of Food and Public Distribution, acting on the Garib Kalyan package announced in March 2020, allocated about 121 lakh tonnes of extra free foodgrains to States on 30 March 2020, and States distributed 37.5 lakh tonnes covering about 75 crore beneficiaries in each of April and May 2020.
The central government doubled the grain ration by order and pushed the extra stock from Food Corporation of India depots through the existing ration-shop network, so no new eligibility system had to be built.
Preconditions
Large public grain stocks already held in central depots
A national ration-card register and shop network covering about 80 crore people
States able to lift and distribute stock within weeks
Where else it has been used: In-kind rations through an existing public distribution system are hard to copy where no such stock and register exist; cash transfers did the same job elsewhere.
Limits: The figures are the ministry's own, compiled from what States reported to the Food Corporation of India, and are not an audit of what reached households; distribution counts at ration shops are known to include leakage. The scheme worked by adding 5 kg per person to the existing National Food Security Act ration lists, so people outside those lists, including many migrant workers stranded in the 2020 lockdown, were not covered by this channel. The extra entitlement was extended repeatedly and ended in December 2022, when the Cabinet instead made the regular NFSA ration free from January 2023. Speed is read from the release's dates (allocation on 30 March 2020, distribution from April) rather than a timestamped series.
The Central Bank of the UAE launched the Targeted Economic Support Scheme in March 2020, combining a zero-cost liquidity facility with loan deferrals and capital relief, and by 24 September 2020 more than 300,000 individuals, close to 10,000 SMEs and more than 1,500 private corporates had benefited from the facility.
The central bank lent to banks at zero cost against collateral and relaxed capital and liquidity buffers on condition that they defer repayments for affected borrowers, so relief reached households and firms through existing bank relationships.
Preconditions
A banking sector holding most household and SME credit
A central bank with authority to set conditional liquidity and capital relief
Fiscal and reserve strength under the currency peg
Where else it has been used: Most central banks ran deferral and liquidity schemes in 2020; the conditional zero-cost facility is the UAE's variant.
Limits: The figures are a central bank press release about its own scheme, rounded ('more than', 'close to'), with no breakdown of amounts or of who would have received relief anyway. The March 2020 start, the extension the following month and the run to 30 June 2022 are stated in the central bank's UAE MSMEs Business Survey Report 2020 (page 10, https://centralbank.ae/media/rtdlng34/cbuae-msme-survey-report-2020-en.pdf), not in this release, and the central bank's web pages sit behind a bot check while its PDFs open. Benefiting from a liquidity facility means a bank passed on a deferral or cheaper credit; it does not show firms or jobs saved. Banks surveyed in that report counted 7,751 MSME customers helped by TESS in 2020, a different measure from this one.
๐จ๐ณChinasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
China's human resources ministry, finance ministry and tax administration let provinces exempt or halve employer pension, unemployment and work-injury contributions from February 2020 under a notice dated 20 February, and exemptions, reductions, deferrals and rate cuts together reduced contributions by 1.54 trillion yuan between February and the end of 2020.
Three central agencies used the Social Insurance Law's authority to suspend the employer share of contributions by notice, and the tax administration, which collects them, applied it from the next collection cycle.
Preconditions
Contributions collected centrally by the tax administration
Pension fund balances large enough to absorb a year of lost revenue
Central authority to change contribution rules by notice rather than law
Where else it has been used: Contribution holidays were used widely in 2020; China's was large because contributions are a large share of labour cost, and its cost was a fund deficit rather than a budget line.
Limits: The figure is a government figure republished by the NDRC Employment Department from China News Service (ไธญๅฝๆฐ้ป็ฝ), which the page names as its source; the page does not name the originating ministry or event, and the figure does not appear in the human resources ministry's 2020 statistical bulletin. It adds exemptions, reductions, deferrals and rate cuts together, and the rate cuts include reductions in force before the February 2020 notice, and a deferral is postponed rather than forgiven, so 1.54 trillion yuan overstates the relief. The rule itself is dated by the notice (Ren She Bu Fa 2020 No. 11, 2020-02-20, https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/2020-02/21/content_5481861.htm), which let provinces exempt small firms for up to five months and halve large firms' contributions for up to three. The cost landed on the funds: the same page reports 2020 revenue of 5.02 trillion yuan against spending of 5.75 trillion. This is relief for enterprises that pay contributions, not for informal workers.
๐ซ๐ฎFinlandsince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Finland redirected Business Finland, its innovation funding agency, to pay emergency development grants to firms hit by the epidemic, starting from a 700 million euro allocation in the supplementary budget adopted on 26 March 2020, and by 2 September 2020 it had allocated about 912 million euros to 18,770 projects out of 28,715 that applied.
Rather than build a new aid channel, the government gave its innovation agency new grant instruments and money by supplementary budget, so applications could open within days through an existing online system.
Preconditions
An agency already running an online grant system that reached most SMEs
Parliament able to pass a supplementary budget within days
Tolerance for weaker screening than normal R&D funding
Where else it has been used: Several countries used existing enterprise agencies for 2020 grants; the Finnish case shows the trade between speed and targeting when the agency's purpose is innovation, not relief.
Limits: The ministry is reporting its own agency's grants, and an allocation is a decision, not a payment. The 26 March 2020 supplementary budget and the 700 million euro allocation come from a separate government release (https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-//1410877/valtion-rahoitusta-yrityksille-koronavirustilanteessa-vahvistetaan-yritystukiin-miljardi-euroa), not from the source page, and neither page explains how allocations reached 912 million euros against the initial 700 million. Using an R&D agency for emergency aid was fast but loosely targeted: the grants were for 'development' (79 million euros for preliminary analyses and 832 million for development funding), and later reports of recoveries and suspected misuse are not on either page. Neither page shows whether the firms survived or what share of the grants was later recovered.
๐บ๐พUruguaysince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Uruguay's labour ministry created partial and flexible unemployment-subsidy modalities by resolution after the health emergency of 13 March 2020, and the social security bank (BPS) paid 12,773 beneficiaries under them in April 2020, while total unemployment-subsidy beneficiaries rose from 45,937 in February to a record 185,769 in May.
The labour ministry used its resolution power to open the unemployment subsidy to workers whose hours were cut rather than suspended, and BPS paid it through the claims channel employers already used.
Preconditions
An unemployment insurance law that let the ministry create special regimes by resolution
A single social security agency holding employer and wage records
Employers able to file partial suspensions online
Where else it has been used: Partial unemployment benefits are the short-time work idea under another name; Uruguay's version was built by resolution in weeks because the legal hook for special regimes already existed.
Limits: BPS is analysing a benefit it pays, from its own administrative records, and the numbers are inside a PDF (Cuadro 2 on page 6 and Cuadro 4 on page 13 of the file). Most of the surge went through the ordinary subsidy for total suspension, which already existed; the new modalities, set by labour ministry resolutions 143/20, 163/20, 233/20 and 1024/20 (partial) and 2225/20, 21/21 and 97/21 (flexible), peaked at 30,221 beneficiaries in June 2020 and fell to 10,549 by December 2021. The record evidences rules changed and paid within weeks, not jobs kept: a beneficiary count is a monthly stock, and the report does not estimate how many of those workers returned to their jobs. The end date of the special regime is not in this source.
๐จ๐ฑChilesince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Chile's Congress created the Ingreso Familiar de Emergencia by Ley 21.230, published on 16 May 2020, and the Ministry of Social Development and Family issued payments to 3,419,351 households in 2020 and to 8,374,718 households in 2021, before the programme ended in 2021.
Congress legislated a time-limited cash benefit keyed to an existing social registry, then amended it as the pandemic went on, and the ministry paid through bank accounts and in-person collection to every registered household that met the income test.
Preconditions
A national social registry (Registro Social de Hogares) covering most households before the shock
Fiscal space and a legislature able to pass and amend a benefit law within weeks
Payment rails reaching households with and without bank accounts
Where else it has been used: Registry-keyed emergency transfers were the common Latin American response in 2020, from Guatemala's Bono Familia to Panama's Vale Digital. Chile's version differs in scale relative to its registry, and in being repeatedly widened by law rather than by decree.
Limits: The ministry is reporting on its own programme, and the counts sit in a six-page PDF monitoring sheet (component table on page 4); no Contralorรญa audit was consulted. The unit is households in the Registro Social de Hogares to which a payment was issued in the year, which is a registry unit and not a census household, and a household paid in several months counts once per year as far as the sheet shows. The sheet gives annual totals only, so it does not show how many weeks passed between the law and the first payment; the law's publication date (16 May 2020) comes from the Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional record of Ley 21.230 (https://www.bcn.cl/leychile/navegar?idNorma=1145400), which also shows Ley 21.251 amending it on 3 August 2020. Initial budget execution in 2021 was 2,024 percent of the budget law (page 2), which shows the scale of in-year change but also that the programme ran outside the normal budget process. The monthly ministry reports that would carry the week-by-week roll-out (desarrollosocialyfamilia.gob.cl/storage/docs/ife/) returned HTTP 500 on 2 October 2026. Spending of about 17.0 trillion pesos in 2021 says nothing about targeting errors or the poverty effect, and a transfer that ended in 2021 does not show that Chilean rules change quickly in general.
๐ฐ๐ชKenyasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
The Central Bank of Kenya announced emergency measures on 18 and 24 March 2020 that let banks restructure loans performing on 2 March 2020, and by the end of February 2021, days before the measures expired on 2 March 2021, loans of Ksh 1.7 trillion, 57 percent of the banking sector's gross loans, had been restructured.
The central bank changed loan classification and provisioning rules by circular within a week of the first case, letting banks extend repayment, grant moratoria and waive fees on loans performing before the shock, and set a fixed expiry date after which standard classification resumed.
Preconditions
A central bank with direct supervisory authority over loan classification
Banks capitalised enough to carry restructured loans for a year
A dated cut-off (loans performing on 2 March 2020) that kept pre-existing bad loans out
Where else it has been used: Time-bound restructuring windows were used by many central banks in 2020; the fixed expiry and the published cumulative-versus-outstanding figures are the part that makes Kenya's version auditable.
Limits: The regulator is grading its own measure: the release calls it highly effective and gives no independent evaluation, and the figures are a one-page press release PDF, not a supervisory dataset. Restructuring is a forbearance rule, not new money, and restructured loans can hide losses: the share says nothing about how many restructured loans later defaulted, beyond the release's own statement that over 95 percent of the Ksh 569.3 billion still outstanding was being repaid on restructured terms. The cumulative 57 percent counts amounts, not borrowers, and includes loans restructured more than once if banks reported them so. The speed evidence is a separate CBK release: the Monetary Policy Committee statement of 29 July 2020 (https://www.centralbank.go.ke/uploads/mpc_press_release/603807985_MPC%20Press%20Release%20-%20Meeting%20of%20July%2029%202020.pdf) reports KES 844.4 billion, 29 percent of the loan book, restructured by the end of June 2020, the same release that reports the gross NPL ratio at 13.1 percent. One temporary financial-sector rule does not show how fast Kenyan public programmes change in general.
๐ญ๐ณHondurassince 2020operating below its peakbears on Institutional responsiveness
Honduras widened its national conditional cash transfer during COVID-19 and Hurricanes Eta and Iota, from 1,153,069 beneficiaries in 2019 to 1,528,030 in 2020, and paid emergency top-ups to 24,891 households outside the roster in late 2020, but after the 2022 reorganisation of the social protection sector payments paused, rural payments resumed only in December 2022 and urban payments only in August 2025, after a three-year suspension.
The social protection ministry used an existing conditional cash transfer and its registry to add vulnerable households and pay top-ups after COVID-19 and two hurricanes, financed by an additional World Bank credit; a new administration then moved the programme to a new ministry and new targeting rules, and payments stopped until the new architecture could pay.
Preconditions
A standing transfer programme with a beneficiary registry before the shock
External finance that could be added within a year
Implementing institutions that survive a change of government, which is the precondition that failed here
Where else it has been used: Honduras published a shock-response protocol for the transfer (PROMESA-PSA, Ministerial Agreement 159-SEDESOL-2025, 9 December 2025) built on the 2020 top-up. The lesson the ICR draws is that institutional reform can disrupt delivery more than the external shocks did.
Limits: The publisher financed the project (US$30 million, then a US$70 million additional financing in June 2021) and rates it Substantial on efficacy; the figures are in a PDF (beneficiary counts and the top-up figure on page 19, paragraphs 31 and 33; the payment pause on page 14, paragraph 14; the three-year urban suspension in paragraph 39). The ICR states explicitly that the 1,528,030 peak (cumulative enrollment) and the 922,832 final-year caseload are distinct measures that should not be compared directly, and attributes the lower figure to a compressed implementation window, not a reversal of reach; the Borrower's completion report summarised in the annex gives 961,339 beneficiaries at closing (page 58), 62 percent of target. The record therefore does not use the final-year caseload as its metric: the erosion it documents is the payment pause, which the ICR does state (metric, the three-year urban suspension, paragraph 39, PDF page 21): payments stopped during the 2022 transition to SEDESOL and the Red Solidaria, with rural payments resuming in December 2022 and urban payments after a three-year suspension. The emergency top-up was small (24,891 households) and the source gives no elapsed time for it beyond late 2020. The 2019 to 2020 rise mixes horizontal expansion with routine enrolment. A change of government that redesigns a programme is a political choice, not only a loss of capacity.
๐ท๐ผRwandasince 2021delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
After the cabinet ordered a lockdown on 14 July 2021, Rwanda's government released part of the national food reserves on 15 July, and between 18 and 30 July local governments delivered about 7,000 tonnes of food door to door to more than 327,000 families in Kigali and eight districts, including 103,000 families not on the initial list.
The cabinet's lockdown decision was paired the next day with a release from the national food reserve; sector and cell officials drew up household lists, opened a channel for unlisted families to claim by toll-free line, SMS and social media, and delivered door to door with youth volunteers.
Preconditions
A physical national strategic food reserve
Local administration down to the cell and village level able to list households within days
A claims channel so the initial list could be corrected during delivery
Where else it has been used: Lockdown food distribution was widespread in 2020 and 2021 and often failed on targeting; the claim-in channel that added roughly a third to the list is the transferable element.
Limits: The source is the implementing ministry's own news item, written as a success story with quotes from a beneficiary and the minister, and the figures are rounded ('more than 327 thousand', 'around seven thousand tones'); there is no audit, no list of families, and the page shows no publication date. It covers one 15-day lockdown in Kigali and eight of Rwanda's 30 districts, in kind rather than cash, and says nothing about who was missed, the quality of targeting or the cost. The four-day lag from the cabinet decision (14 July) to the start of deliveries (18 July) is the speed evidence, and it rests on the ministry's own dating. Earlier lockdown relief in 2020 is not covered here. One well-run emergency distribution, in a state with unusually dense local administration and mandatory community structures, does not show that Rwandan rules change quickly in general.
๐ฎ๐ฑIsraelsince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
After the Monetary Committee decided on 6 April 2020 to lend banks three-year fixed-rate money for credit to small and micro businesses, the Bank of Israel had NIS 1.2 billion outstanding under the programme by 30 April 2020 and NIS 28.1 billion by 31 March 2021.
The Monetary Committee created a dedicated funding line for banks, conditioned on lending to small and micro businesses, within weeks of the first lockdown, and reopened and extended it with cheaper terms as the crisis continued.
Preconditions
A central bank with legal room to lend to banks against a lending purpose
A concentrated banking system that can pass a funding line to small firms quickly
Policy rates near zero, so the subsidy had to come through term and price of funding
Where else it has been used: Funding-for-lending schemes of this shape ran in the United Kingdom from 2012 and at the European Central Bank as targeted longer-term refinancing operations; Israel's version was set up and drawn within one month.
Limits: The site answers scripted requests with a Radware bot-verification page; the table was read in a normal browser at the same URL, so a reviewer needs a browser to check it. The figures are the Bank reporting on its own programme. They are balances of central-bank loans to banks, not credit that reached firms and not a count of businesses: how much of the money became new small-business lending, rather than refinancing, is not shown. The programme was not continuous: the footnote says it ran first until the end of May 2020 and was renewed in August, and the balance sits at NIS 4.6 billion from May to July. Part of the March 2021 balance comes from a second pillar of four-year loans at minus 0.1 percent decided on 22 October 2020. The cited page's last row is 31 March 2021; the status rests on a later report in the same series (7 July 2021, boi.org.il/en/communication-and-publications/press-releases/monthly-report-on-programs-the-bank-of-israel-is-operating-in-the-financial-markets-in-view-of-the-coronavirus-crisis-12/), which records a Monetary Committee decision of 5 July 2021 to end the programme on 1 October 2021 or once NIS 40 billion had been extended, and a balance of NIS 37.2 billion on 30 June 2021. The same table shows the Bank's other rapid moves (repo from 15 March, dollar-shekel swaps from 18 March, government bond purchases from 23 March 2020, NIS 8.5 billion outstanding by 31 March), which are monetary operations rather than programme changes and are not the claim. The State Comptroller's 2021 COVID-19 special report found that financial regulators prepared rapidly but that timeframes for handling loan requests were not set, which concerns the separate state-guaranteed loan funds.
๐บ๐พUruguaysince 2015still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Uruguay's national housing directorate relocated 2,618 households from flood-prone or contaminated land between 2015 and 2020 under the Plan Nacional de Relocalizaciones and related agreements with departmental governments, against a target of 3,500 to 6,000 households by 2025.
The national housing directorate co-finances departmental relocation projects that move households from land that floods repeatedly into new or purchased homes, with multidisciplinary teams handling each move and the department responsible for keeping the vacated land unoccupied.
Preconditions
Flood-risk maps and settlement censuses precise enough to identify which households to move
Departmental governments that co-execute and police the vacated land
A national housing budget able to buy or build replacement homes year after year
Where else it has been used: Relocation out of flood plains is the slow, preventive counterpart to evacuation; it is listed in Uruguay's climate-adaptation pledge, which is how it came to be measured.
Limits: The number is in a six-page PDF: page 1 gives 'รltimo valor disponible 2.618 (2020)' and page 4 the version history (2,245 for 2019, 2,618 for 2020); pages 5 and 6 give the yearly totals 294, 442, 660, 438, 411 and 373 for 2015 to 2020, which sum to 2,618. The headline on page 1 ('A 2025 se han relocalizado al menos entre 3.500 y 6.000 hogares') is the 2025 target written as if achieved, and the sheet's own data show 2,618 by 2020, below the low end of that target; no later official value was found, so whether the target was met is not shown. The count mixes flood-prone and contaminated land and does not split them, and it includes relocations after specific floods ('Inundados 2015', 'Inundados 2017'), which are recovery rather than preparation. It counts households, not people, and says nothing about whether vacated land stayed empty, which the sheet itself names as a condition that depends on departmental enforcement. The plan predates 2015, but the sheet's series starts with the 2015 to 2019 housing plan, so 'started' is the first year counted, not the plan's creation. The sheet states the plan's objective as reversing social segregation and territorial fragmentation, so it is a settlement and housing policy as much as a risk-reduction one; it is filed here because the same sheet classes it as a climate-adaptation measure. Status 'operating' rests on the sheet naming the 2020 to 2024 five-year housing plan as the plan's current frame; no count after 2020 was found. The sheet is a government monitoring document for Uruguay's climate pledge, self-reported by the ministry that runs the programme.
๐ช๐นEthiopiasince 2024still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
The National Bank of Ethiopia floated the birr on 29 July 2024, and by 20 September the former official rate had moved from 57.8 to an indicative 119.2 birr per US dollar while the parallel-market spread over it fell from 96 percent to around 5 percent.
The central bank replaced an administered exchange rate with a market-determined one in a single directive, moved FX surrender from itself to commercial banks and lifted import bans and controls at the same time, while tight monetary policy held the new rate near the old parallel rate.
Preconditions
External financing (here the IMF arrangement) large enough to absorb the transition
A central bank able to tighten liquidity enough to stop the float turning into a spiral
Commercial banks able to quote and report FX rates daily
Where else it has been used: Egypt (2016) and Nigeria (2023 to 2024) unified rates under similar pressure; Cuba's 2021 unification (cub-ordenamiento) fragmented again, which is what the widening to 16 percent in October 2024 warned of here.
Limits: The numbers are in paragraph 6 of the staff report ('moving from 57.8 birr per US dollar on July 26 to an indicative rate of 119.2 on September 20 ... The parallel market spread to the indicative rate collapsed from 96 percent to around 5 percent over the same period'); the eLibrary HTML has no page numbers. The 5 is approximate as published. What responded fast was the rule change once decided, not the decision: the report estimates the overvaluation at 52 percent in 2022/23, so the distortion was years old, and the float was a prior action for the IMF arrangement approved on 29 July 2024, while Ethiopia was seeking a debt restructuring, with calls to Eurobond holders held from December 2023. Responsiveness here is a government acting under financing pressure and external conditionality, not on its own timetable. The same paragraph says FX liquidity stayed limited and the interbank market inactive, and the second review (Country Report 25/027) records the premium widening to a peak of 16 percent on 22 October 2024 before falling back to single digits. The IMF is a party to the programme and its staff assessment is not an independent evaluation; the costs of the depreciation (inflation pass-through, the burden on importers and households) are not shown by this number.
๐ง๐ดBoliviasince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Bolivia's health authorities reported to WHO that 7,505,389 people, 64 per 100 population, had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose by 29 December 2023, from a first dose given on 30 January 2021, with 6,307,628 (54 per 100) completing the primary series.
Bolivia's health ministry ran a national COVID-19 campaign through its routine immunisation network and mass vaccination points, and reached a majority of the population with a first dose within three years.
Preconditions
A routine immunisation programme with a cold chain reaching rural municipalities
A supply of doses large enough for a national campaign, however obtained
Registers good enough to count who received a second dose
Where else it has been used: Cuba (cub-covid-vaccination) reached far higher completion on domestic vaccines and Venezuela (ven-covid-vaccination) a similar partial reach; the Bolivian case sits between them, with a smaller gap between first dose and completion than Venezuela's.
Limits: The figures are Bolivia's own reports to WHO (DATA_SOURCE 'REPORTING'), with no independent coverage survey behind them. Nearly half the population never completed the primary series (54 per 100), first-dose reach was 64 per 100, and boosters reached 2,521,192 people, 22 per 100, so the record shows a partial delivery, well below the near-universal reach of the strongest campaigns; it is filed because the campaign did reach a majority nationally, on the same terms as ven-covid-vaccination (50 per 100 completed). The VACCINES_USED field is empty, so the record cannot show which products were used or where the doses came from, and evidences distribution only. The per-100 rates divide by WHO's population estimate. Vaccination is a response to one shock, not proof of general preparedness, and the file was last updated in December 2023. The source is a CSV with no prose; the numbers are read from one row. The WHO dashboard address covid19.who.int/who-data/vaccination-data.csv now returns an HTML page, so the cited URL is the blob the dashboard serves, the same one ven-covid-vaccination cites.
๐ต๐ฐPakistansince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Pakistan's government launched Ehsaas Emergency Cash in early April 2020 on BISP's existing payment and registry systems and had paid US$464 million to 6.4 million beneficiaries by 30 April 2020, reaching 15 million beneficiaries in all.
6.4 million beneficiaries, beneficiaries paid emergency cash by 30 april 2020, within about four weeks of launch, 2020-04-30. 15 million beneficiaries, beneficiaries given temporary income support through ehsaas in 2020, 2020. World Bank, COVID-19 G2Px country brief: Pakistan, retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
The federal government raised the eligibility cutoff on an existing proxy-means-test registry, added an SMS application channel, and pushed one-off payments through BISP's contracted payment providers, so a new caseload was paid without building a new delivery system.
Preconditions
A national socio-economic registry covering most households, with a proxy means score that could be re-cut
A biometric-verified payment network already contracted for a standing cash transfer
National ID and mobile coverage high enough for SMS self-registration
Limits: Both figures are government-reported disbursement counts passed through World Bank documents, not independent verification that the money reached eligible families; the brief does not report inclusion or exclusion errors. The two World Bank documents disagree on the launch month (early April in the brief, March in the PAD) and do not reconcile the 15 million with the 12 million originally targeted. The transfer was one-off and small, about US$71 per family, so it shows speed of reconfiguration, not depth of protection. The speed rested on assets built over a decade (the BISP payment network and the national socio-economic registry), so the record evidences a programme being changed fast, which is the construct, but credits the 2020 government with infrastructure its predecessors built. The 'four weeks' is our reading of the brief's dates, not a published duration.
๐ง๐ฉBangladeshsince 1973still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Before Cyclone Remal made landfall on 26 May 2024, Bangladesh's government-run cyclone early warning and evacuation system moved about 0.8 million people into 9,424 evacuation shelters across 19 districts. The UN-coordinated response plan records 16 deaths among 4.6 million people affected.
The government took over the cost of a Red Crescent volunteer warning network in 1973 and ran it jointly with the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society. Village volunteers relay meteorological department signals door to door and move people into shelters before landfall.
Preconditions
A meteorological service able to issue track forecasts days ahead of landfall
A shelter stock within walking distance of exposed coastal villages
A volunteer corps, trained and equipped, kept active in years without a major storm
Where else it has been used: The volunteer-relay model shaped community early warning in Odisha and Myanmar. Copies tend to keep the sirens and drop the standing volunteer corps, which is the part that turns a warning into an evacuation.
Limits: The evacuation and death figures are the government's own preliminary counts, repeated in a UN appeal document whose job is to raise funds. They are not an independent audit. The figures cover one cyclone, and Remal's death toll depended on its track, timing and surge as well as on preparedness. The plan credits the Cyclone Preparedness Programme with helping develop the warnings, but it does not attribute the evacuation to it alone: district administrations, shelters built under other programmes and anticipatory-action partners all took part. The plan states no baseline, so the record shows one storm's outcome and not a trend. The same document records 4.6 million people affected and 173,866 houses damaged or destroyed, so the system protected lives far more than it protected housing and livelihoods. The construct also covers recovery, which this number does not show. The figure sits inside a PDF.
๐บ๐ฆUkrainesince 2023still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Ukraine's government, through the Ministry for Development and the Diia digital platform, paid war-damage housing compensation to 231,681 families totalling UAH 119.1 billion by 10 July 2026. Of these, more than 153,000 families received repair payments, and more than 74,000 received certificates to buy replacement housing for homes that were destroyed.
The Rada created a statutory right to compensation for war-damaged housing. The ministry and the Ministry of Digital Transformation then ran claims, damage inspection and payment through the Diia app and the state register of damaged property, paying repair grants to bank accounts and issuing purchase certificates for destroyed homes.
Preconditions
A national digital identity and services app that most households already used
Property and damage registers that could be linked to verify claims
External concessional finance willing to fund payouts through government systems during a war
Limits: These are the ministry's own running totals, published as press releases and not as a statistical series, and nothing independent audits them. The page shows recovery for households whose claims were accepted, not the share of all damaged housing compensated. For destroyed homes, more than 161,000 applications produced certificates for about 74,000 families, and only about 33,000 had bought a home, so most of the destroyed-housing caseload is unresolved. The page ties the repair payments to the World Bank HOPE project and the own-plot rebuilding payments to the Council of Europe Development Bank HOME project, and does not say who funds the certificates for destroyed homes, so how much of the delivery rests on external money is not shown here. The record evidences recovery after a war shock and says nothing about preparedness before one. Amounts are nominal hryvnias. The figure is the ministry's results update of 10 July 2026.
๐ฒ๐ฆMoroccosince 2020still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Morocco's dual catastrophe insurance regime under Law 110-14 took effect in January 2020. It offered private cover to close to 9 million insured people and set up the FSEC, financed by a parafiscal levy, for the uninsured. After the September 2023 Al Haouz earthquake, the government deployed the FSEC for the first time, and it mobilised US$300 million to compensate uninsured victims.
The Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Economy and Finance legislated a two-tier regime. Private insurers carry catastrophe cover for people who already hold policies. A public fund, paid for by a parafiscal levy and backed by sovereign reinsurance, gives basic compensation to the uninsured once the government declares an event a catastrophe.
Preconditions
An insurance market with a policy base wide enough to carry catastrophe cover, and a levy base to fund the public tier
An Interior ministry able to declare a catastrophe and register uninsured victims through local agents and an online portal
International reinsurance capacity and World Bank technical and financial backing for the design
Limits: Both sources are the World Bank reporting on reforms it financed: an FSEC programme-for-results loan and a Cat DDO whose prior actions were these reforms. The US$300 million is money mobilised, not money paid to households. The ICR says the compensation process was still under way in June 2024 and gives no count of victims compensated. Nothing here shows what share of the earthquake's losses the regime covered. The 9 million and 6 million figures are coverage estimates from a 2022 results brief, not counts of policies or payouts. The regime's one real test is a single earthquake. One of the Cat DDO's own result indicators was missed by a wide margin: Interior ministry officials trained on victim registration stood at 7.4 percent against a 90 percent target. The audit of the FSEC's internal controls had not been completed. The two World Bank documents disagree on the law's date: the ICR says Law 110-14 was promulgated in 2016, while the brief says it was adopted in 2018. Started is therefore the year the regime took effect. The headline figures are read from a 45-page PDF and a web page.
๐ช๐ฌEgyptsince 2015still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Egypt's Ministry of Social Solidarity launched the Takaful and Karama cash transfers in early 2015 and expanded coverage from an initial 1.5 million to 4.675 million households (about 17 million people) by project close in 2024, revising the eligibility threshold and adding top-ups in response to COVID-19 and later inflation, while the cash transfer budget rose from EGP 3.5 billion in 2015 to EGP 41 billion in 2024.
The Ministry of Social Solidarity built a proxy-means-tested registry and a cash transfer programme with World Bank financing, then used the registry's threshold and benefit levels as the levers it moved when COVID-19, inflation and devaluation hit.
Preconditions
A national social registry, which reached 11.3 million registered households, to retarget against
A payment rail through post offices and later Meeza cards that could absorb more beneficiaries without a new system
Fiscal room created by the 2014 energy subsidy reform, which the programme was launched to offset
Limits: The construct is the speed of rule and programme change, and the headline number is coverage, which is scale rather than speed. The ICR describes the COVID-19 response (a revised proxy-means-test threshold, wider coverage, Meeza cards, top-ups) in prose without dates or a count of households added by the revision, so how fast the rules moved is not measured here. The 4.675 million includes legacy Daman social pension beneficiaries absorbed into the programme by consolidation, so part of the growth is relabelling rather than new reach. The budget figure is nominal Egyptian pounds across years of high inflation and two large devaluations, so the 12-fold rise overstates the real increase. Coverage still reaches only about 28 percent of the poorest quintile. The source is the World Bank's own completion report on a project it financed with US$900 million, read from a PDF, and the counts are administrative figures reported by the ministry.
๐ฎ๐ถIraqsince 2015still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
From September 2015 Iraqi ministries, governorates and the Reconstruction Fund for Areas Affected by Terroristic Operations used two World Bank loans totalling US$750 million (IBRD-85200, US$350 million, and IBRD-87930, US$400 million), of which US$610 million was disbursed by 30 November 2024, to rebuild water, power, roads, bridges and railway in five governorates, reaching 5 million direct beneficiaries by March 2024, with the first loan's closing date pushed six years past the original June 2020.
The federal government channelled World Bank loans through line ministries, governorates and a dedicated reconstruction fund, rebuilding basic services in retaken cities sub-project by sub-project rather than through one master plan.
Preconditions
Military recovery of the territory before any rebuilding could start
Sovereign borrowing capacity and an international lender willing to extend the closing date repeatedly
A reconstruction fund and planning ministry able to register and approve hundreds of sub-projects
Limits: The figures come from a World Bank supervision report on its own loan, compiled from implementing agencies' reporting; procurement and M&E are rated Moderately Unsatisfactory in the same report, and the beneficiary count is a 'direct beneficiaries' definition that counts everyone in a served area, so it can overlap across water, power and road indicators. The project is still open, so nothing here is a completion figure, and the 72-month extension is our computation from the table, not a published delay figure. The shock is war, not a natural hazard, and the record evidences recovery, not preparation. The money is World Bank lending the government must repay, implemented by Iraqi agencies under Bank supervision, and the US$68 million repurposed to railway works in 2024 shows the scope moved with time. It covers five governorates, not the country, and the report gives no measure of whether rebuilt services were kept running after handover.
๐ฎ๐ทIransince 2010operating below its peakbears on Institutional responsiveness
Iran's government replaced universal fuel and bread subsidies with a universal cash transfer of 455,000 rials (about US$40) per person per month from late 2010, then left the transfer unindexed, so that by 2019 its purchasing power had fallen to less than US$6 per person before a top-up was added in late 2019.
The Iranian government raised domestic energy and bread prices in one move and paid the savings back as a flat universal cash transfer. It then left the transfer nominal, so inflation dissolved the benefit while energy prices drifted back toward subsidy.
Preconditions
A national population and household register able to pay nearly every resident within months
Large implicit energy subsidies whose removal freed fiscal room for a transfer
A fiscal position, later hit by sanctions and inflation, that made indexing the transfer unaffordable
Where else it has been used: Cited by the World Bank as a model for Angola's 2023 fuel subsidy reform (Policy Research Working Paper 10939). The retellings stress the 2010 compensation and rarely the later erosion.
Limits: The World Bank restates every figure here from secondary sources (Salehi-Isfahani et al. 2015, Enami and Lustig 2018, UNICEF 2019). It does not compute them, and no Iranian official series is cited. The two dollar figures are not comparable: US$40 converts at the 2010 rate, the 2019 figure is undated within the year and published only as 'less than US$6', and the rial's collapse after 2018 inflates the fall in dollar terms. The 'nearly in half' real decline from 2012 to 2016 is the cleaner measure, but it is published as prose and not as a number. The reversal is partial. The transfer still reached about 90 percent of households, and the government added a top-up in late 2019 and COVID-19 payments in 2020. The construct asks how fast rules change. This record shows a fast rule change in 2010 followed by about nine years in which the transfer was not changed as inflation rose. It is evidence of the second half, not a measure of speed. The figures are read from a PDF.
๐ฎ๐ทIransince 2002delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the April 2002 earthquake in Kermanshah and the June 2002 earthquake in Qazvin, Zanjan and Hamedan, Iran's Ministry of Interior project unit and the Housing Foundation repaired or rebuilt about 24,000 damaged houses to seismic standards by June 2009, using government funds and a US$180 million World Bank loan, of which US$174.9 million was disbursed.
Iran's Ministry of Interior set up a project unit and handed housing reconstruction to the Housing Foundation, which tied reconstruction materials to compliance with seismic codes and trained local engineers and masons to enforce them.
Preconditions
A standing national housing body (the Housing Foundation) with rural reach and a reconstruction mandate
Government funds already committed before external finance arrived
Access to multilateral lending, which later sanctions closed off
Where else it has been used: The Housing Foundation reused the model of owner-driven rebuilding to code after Bam in 2003, with a World Bank loan approved in 2004.
Limits: The figure is self-reported by the Bank and the borrower's project unit in a completion report, and no independent audit of the houses is cited. The report contradicts itself: the results table gives 24,000 actual against a 24,200 target, the narrative says around 24,200, and a footnote gives an appraisal estimate of 29,232. The project financed materials (steel, cement and equipment) for reconstruction rather than building every house, so the count is of houses it supplied. About 59 percent of the 40,727 damaged houses are covered. The response was regional, in four provinces. It was not national, and it is not the Bam 2003 reconstruction that Iranians would name first. Schedule slipped: the loan closing moved from June 2007 to June 2009, and the indicator was achieved six months after its target date. The disaster insurance component was dropped from Bank financing at the government's request. The evidence of preparedness is limited to seismic-code training for 350 staff against a target of 200 and a public awareness campaign, with no later test against a subsequent earthquake. The figures are read from a PDF.
๐ฆ๐ดAngolasince 2015operating below its peakbears on Institutional responsiveness
Angola's government removed gasoline and diesel subsidies by raising retail prices at the end of 2015, but subsidies returned as costs rose, reaching 3.7 percent of GDP in 2023 from 1.5 percent in 2019. A second reform raised gasoline prices 87.5 percent in June 2023, but the kwanza's depreciation took the gasoline subsidy from 39 percent of the market price in June back to 65 percent by October 2023.
Angola's government raised administered fuel prices in discrete steps, in 2015 and again from June 2023, while leaving them fixed in kwanza between steps. Each devaluation or oil price rise then rebuilt the subsidy the step had removed.
Preconditions
Administered retail fuel prices set by decree with no automatic adjustment
A currency exposed to oil price shocks and sharp devaluation
Fuel subsidies acting as the de facto social spending before a cash transfer (Kwenda) could reach the poor
Where else it has been used: The 2023 reform drew on the 2010 Iranian and Indonesian lessons cited in the same paper: compensate before raising prices. Kwenda was meant to be that compensation, but the same paper says it has failed to reach enough people.
Limits: This is a World Bank working paper, which disclaims representing the Bank's view. Every subsidy share is the authors' own estimate from IGAPE and INE data, not a published government series. No figure is given for the 2015 removal itself: the source only says subsidies were removed and then reemerged. The 2019 to 2023 rise is in part an oil price and exchange rate effect, so it measures exposure as much as inaction. The October 2023 figure reflects a 40 percent depreciation in May and June 2023, which no price rule could have tracked. The government did act again: the gasoline rise in June 2023, a 1 June 2023 decree setting out a multiphase reform, and a diesel rise from 135 to 200 kwanzas in April 2024. Between the two steps retail prices remained constant until May 2023, and the June 2023 decree was the first since 2016. The figures are read from a PDF.
๐ฒ๐ฟMozambiquesince 1999still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Mozambique's National Disaster Management Institute, created in 1999 after a new national disaster policy, evacuated around 150,000 people with two days of warning in the 2007 floods, and by 2011 had ten days of warning for an event of similar scale and spent under US$1 million on evacuation, against about US$5 million in 2007.
The government replaced a relief department with a standing disaster agency, INGC, gave it a national emergency operations centre and a civil protection unit, and paired forecasting with district and community risk committees that carry warnings to people who then move.
Preconditions
A flood catastrophe in 2000 that made preparedness a political priority
Hydrological and meteorological forecasting with enough lead time to act on
Donor funding and an annual contingency budget line for evacuation
Limits: Every figure here is a round number in a GFDRR case study, a conference version that says it aims to learn from country experience rather than evaluate it and carries a disclaimer on accuracy; the evacuation counts and costs are INGC's own, with no underlying series published. 'Similar in scale' is the case study's judgement, not a measured comparison of hazards. The same document's comparison of the 2000 and 2013 floods (700 and 117 deaths) does not show a falling death rate once divided by the population affected (4.5 million and 478,892, our computation), and its own text gives 30 direct deaths for 2013, so mortality is not used as the metric. The record says nothing about the cyclone seasons after 2014. Much of the system was built with donor money.
๐ฒ๐ฌMadagascarsince 2016delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Madagascar's Fonds d'Intervention pour le Developpement turned its safety net project into a shock-response channel from December 2016, delivering crisis-response unconditional cash transfers to 622,961 people and crisis cash-for-work to 155,649 people after droughts in the South and the 2022 cyclones, by the project's close in October 2024.
FID, a government agency with field staff and a beneficiary registry from the regular safety net, repeatedly restructured the project to redirect funds to drought and cyclone victims, paying unconditional transfers and cash-for-work through the channels it already ran.
Preconditions
An implementing agency with a targeting method and payment channels already operating before the shock
A financier willing to restructure a project within weeks rather than design a new one
Enough security in affected districts to move cash, here secured by an agreement with the police
Limits: The figures are cumulative over 2016 to 2024 and come from the World Bank's own evaluation of a project it financed, which draws on the implementing agency's reporting; they count people reached, not whether households recovered, and say nothing about speed of delivery after each shock. Almost all the money was IDA credit and grants (US$305.9 million actual), so the record shows the state's agency delivering donor-financed transfers, not domestic fiscal capacity to respond. Targets were set and raised repeatedly in emergency conditions, and IEG notes that some reach targets were not scaled up as financing grew (its remark about targets set quickly and with limited clarity concerns the emergency nutrition targets), so exceeding them is weak evidence. The response was reactive, reallocating funds after each shock rather than drawing on a pre-arranged trigger, which is recovery more than preparedness. Security problems in the South forced FID to sign an agreement with the police to deliver cash. The project closed in October 2024, so the status is concluded.
๐ณ๐ตNepalsince 2016delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the April 2015 Gorkha earthquake, Nepal's National Reconstruction Authority ran an owner-driven housing grant programme that, by 23 September 2021, had paid the third and final tranche of the reconstruction grant to 704,341 of 866,207 eligible households across 32 districts, with the World Bank-financed share revised to 309,335 houses.
Parliament created a time-limited National Reconstruction Authority that enrolled every damaged household, paid a flat grant in three tranches, and released each tranche only after engineers verified that the house met a seismic building code, so the payment schedule enforced the standard.
Preconditions
A damage census that enumerated eligible households district by district before money flowed
Concessional and pooled donor finance large enough to fund a uniform grant for most of the caseload
Enough trained masons and inspecting engineers in remote districts to verify construction stage by stage
Where else it has been used: The tranche-on-verification model is the owner-driven reconstruction approach also used after the 2005 Pakistan earthquake; Nepal's version is distinguished by its scale and by tying each tranche to a code-compliance inspection.
Limits: A grant tranche is a payment, not a finished house: in the programme's rules the third tranche is released on completion of construction up to the roof band, so 704,341 counts households verified to that stage, not occupied, completed homes. The figures are reported by the government agencies to the lender and published by the lender, which financed about $700 million of the programme and rates its own operation; the 309,335 count was itself revised in 2023 after the project clarified that its reported total had included 3,766 houses financed by a trust fund grant (TF0A4783). About 162,000 eligible households had not received the final tranche at the reporting date, and the World Bank's ICR for the MDTF Funding for Earthquake Housing Reconstruction project (P162067, TF0A4783) notes the average rebuilding cost was about three times the NPR 300,000 grant, and one third of households used loans to close the gap. The number shows recovery after one shock; it says nothing about preparedness before the next one, and the NRA was a temporary body dissolved in December 2021, with its residual work passed to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority. The record documents the national programme's scale through a single donor's monitoring report; there is no independent national statistical series behind it.
๐ฟ๐ฒZambiasince 2024delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the President declared the 2024 El Niรฑo drought a national disaster, Zambia's Ministry of Community Development and Social Services enumerated households in all 116 districts within four to eight weeks. From May 2024 to April 2025 it paid a drought emergency cash transfer to 1,631,007 households in 84 districts through the Social Cash Transfer, and paid a nationally funded price-shock transfer to 632,664 households in the other 32 districts.
Once the drought was declared, the Cabinet chose the existing Social Cash Transfer instead of a parallel humanitarian pipeline to deliver emergency aid. The Ministry of Community Development and Social Services then used enumerators already on retainer in every district and a simplified proxy-means test to enrol drought-hit households in weeks and pay them through the same digital rails.
Preconditions
A national cash transfer already running in all 116 districts, with a beneficiary information system and digital payments
Enumerators kept on retainer and a targeting questionnaire that could be adapted in weeks
Donor crisis financing available at short notice to fund the expansion while the treasury was in debt restructuring
Limits: The source is the World Bank's own completion report on a project it financed, written with the implementing ministry, and the household counts are programme administrative data, not an independent survey. The 1.63 million drought transfers were financed by IDA grants and a donor trust fund. Only the 632,664 price-shock transfers were paid from national funds, so the record shows government delivery capacity more than government financing. Payment timeliness fell to 17 percent in the first half of 2025, at the height of the drought, and averaged 29 percent over the project against a 90 percent target. Households counted as supported were not necessarily paid on time. The consumption and coping effects the report cites come from evaluations it says should be interpreted cautiously. The report's own footnote 51 puts enumeration at about eight weeks, against four weeks in the main text. The report dates the disaster declaration to 28 February 2024 in one place and 29 February in another. The record shows a response after a shock was declared. It does not show forecasting or contingent financing in place before the drought, and the report says the government began strengthening disaster risk financing, with contingent financing instruments, only from 2024, after the drought. The transfer ended in April 2025 and the caseload returned to its pre-drought level, so nothing here shows recovery outcomes.
๐ฌ๐ณGuineasince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Guinea's Ministry of Health announced an Ebola outbreak in N'Zรฉrรฉkorรฉ Prefecture on 14 February 2021 and declared it over on 19 June 2021. It activated national and district emergency committees, vaccinated 10,873 people and followed 1,031 of 1,110 contacts daily, and held the outbreak to 23 confirmed and probable cases and 12 deaths, five years after the 2014 to 2016 West African epidemic.
Guinea's Ministry of Health activated national and district emergency management committees within days of the announcement. It deployed case-search, contact-tracing, burial and community-engagement teams, set up PCR testing in N'Zรฉrรฉkorรฉ, and ran ring vaccination of contacts and frontline workers with WHO and partner support. It declared the outbreak over after the 42-day count.
Preconditions
Response structures, trained staff and community networks left in place from the 2014 to 2016 epidemic
A licensed Ebola vaccine and therapeutics that partners could ship within days
A laboratory able to confirm cases near the outbreak, here a PCR capacity stood up in N'Zรฉrรฉkorรฉ
Where else it has been used: The ring-vaccination and emergency-committee model from the 2018 to 2020 eastern DRC response, applied in a country that had lived through the 2014 to 2016 epidemic.
Limits: This is one outbreak in one prefecture, so it shows a response to one shock and not a standing national capacity, and a single outcome cannot separate preparedness from luck. Detection was slow: WHO reports the index case, a health worker, fell ill on 15 January and died on 28 January after visiting two health facilities and a traditional practitioner. She was buried without safe burial practices, and the outbreak was announced only on 14 February. Five cases were health workers, which points to infection-control failures. A second cluster of community deaths surfaced in late March after more than three weeks with no cases. One confirmed case was lost to follow-up from 1 April until 18 June, and 79 of the 1,110 contacts were not followed daily. WHO notes that only nine (39%) of the 23 cases were known contacts at detection, and that the alert system reported a suboptimal number of alerts. The response was not purely national: WHO reports the MoH acted together with WHO and other partners, and their contribution cannot be separated from that of the national institutions. The figures are WHO restating Ministry of Health reports, so the government is reporting on its own response. The page gives no figures for the 2014 to 2016 epidemic, so the record makes no quantitative comparison with it.
๐ฒ๐ผMalawisince 2019still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
From 2019 the Government of Malawi identified every household it registered for shock-responsive cash transfers through its Unified Beneficiary Registry. It expanded the Social Cash Transfer Programme to give drought and COVID-19 aid to more than 300,000 rural households, and it drew US$30 million of pre-arranged contingent financing on 10 April 2020, three weeks after declaring a state of disaster.
Malawi's Ministry of Finance and its social protection agencies built one registry of rural households and set protocols that every shock-response transfer must use it. They paired the registry with financing pre-arranged before a disaster (a contingent credit line, a project contingency window and sovereign drought insurance), so cash could reach households without a new appeal each time.
Preconditions
A census-style household registry covering most of the rural population and kept current
Contingent financing agreed before the shock, which here depended on concessional lenders and an insurance pool
A legal trigger, a declared state of disaster under the 1991 Disaster Preparedness and Relief Act, that releases the funds
Limits: The source is the lender's self-evaluation of its own policy operation, and the 300,000 is a floor ('more than') summed over about four years and two kinds of shock. It is not a per-event count and has no denominator of affected households. The money behind the transfers was largely external: a World Bank project's contingency window, ARC sovereign drought insurance whose premiums donors financed in full (ICR Annex), and IDA's Cat DDO. The evidence is that the national system routed aid, not that Malawi financed it. The Cat DDO was triggered by a pandemic, not a natural hazard, and its US$30 million was budget support with no traceable link to households. The ICR says fewer than 10 percent of the households receiving transfers were registered before the protocols. It rates the operation moderately satisfactory and reports that resilient transport standards were never developed. The source is dated June 2023; the operation itself closed in 2022. Cyclone Freddy (February and March 2023) and the 2024 El Nino drought fell after the operation closed and are not assessed. 'Operating' assumes the registry and the scale-up mechanism are still in use, which this source does not confirm beyond 2023.
๐ฒ๐ฌMadagascarsince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Madagascar's social protection agency FID designed the Tosika Fameno emergency cash transfer after the March 2020 urban lockdown, registered almost 200,000 households in about 12 days, made the first payment four weeks after the lockdown began, and reached more than 368,000 urban households in ten cities with 100,000 ariary payments.
The President asked the national social protection fund FID to extend its rural cash transfer machinery to the locked-down cities; FID and WFP built a rapid registration process, paid by mobile money and post, and partners aligned their transfers on the same amount and targeting.
Preconditions
A national social fund already running cash transfers and a payment chain
Donor finance that could be redirected within weeks
Mobile money and postal networks able to pay urban households
Where else it has been used: Madagascar later turned the urban response into a longer urban safety net under the World Bank project; similar lockdown transfers in Malawi (mwi-cuci) took ten months to pay, which shows how much the existing agency mattered.
Limits: The figures are in an eight-page UNICEF case study PDF (PDF page 4: first payment four weeks after the start of the urban lockdown, registration of almost 200,000 households in about 12 days, more than 368,000 households; PDF page 6: registration completed two weeks after the declaration of the state of health emergency, first payments within one month; the 368,000 by the end of 2020 also on PDF page 2). UNICEF co-led the cash working group and directly supported 8,500 of the households, so it is grading a response it helped build, and the case study gives no exact dates for the lockdown or the first payment. The 368,000 mixes government payments financed by the World Bank with humanitarian top-ups by UNICEF, WFP, the EU and NGOs using the same parameters; the World Bank's Social Safety Net Project ICR (2025, P149323, paragraph 43 and annex note 2) counts 215,093 households paid under its own financing, a smaller number on a different scope. The benefit was 100,000 ariary (about US$26), small against lost urban income, and coverage was limited to ten cities. The speed came from an agency that already ran rural safety nets, not from a standing urban programme.
๐ฒ๐บMauritiussince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Mauritius made its revenue authority, the MRA, a payer of COVID-19 income support in March 2020, and by end June 2020 the MRA had disbursed Rs 9,985 million under the Wage Assistance Scheme (Rs 7,603 million) and the Self-Employed Assistance Scheme (Rs 2,382 million) to some 500,000 workers and self-employed people, after receiving 176,000 online SEAS applications within 10 days of the lockdown.
9,985 Rs million, wage assistance scheme and self-employed assistance scheme disbursements, march to june 2020, 2020-06. 176,000 applications, online seas applications received within 10 days during the lockdown, 2020. Mauritius Revenue Authority, Annual Report 2019/20, retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
The government handed income support to the tax authority, which built online application forms, verified wage claims against employers' PAYE and pension returns, and paid employers and self-employed people directly into bank accounts.
Preconditions
A tax authority with near-universal electronic filing and employer payroll returns
Bank accounts for most workers, including informal ones
A fiscal buffer large enough to pay a month's wages for most of the private sector
Where else it has been used: The same tax-authority route was used by Australia's JobKeeper and Ireland's wage subsidy; in Mauritius it was extended to the informal self-employed, who had no prior payroll record.
Limits: The MRA reports on its own delivery. The 9,985 is the sum we computed from Table 3 of the annual report (Rs 7,603 million WAS plus Rs 2,382 million SEAS, March to June 2020; the text rounds it to Rs 10 billion); the 500,000 recipients is the Director General's 'some 500,000 workers and self-employed individuals', paid 'directly or indirectly', so wage subsidies reached employees through their employers and the count is approximate. The 176,000 applications in 10 days is a pull quote, not a table, and the report gives no time to first payment. The scheme rules date the speed: the MRA communique announcing the Wage Assistance Scheme is dated 23 March 2020 (mra.mu communique list, WageAssistanceScheme230320.pdf), and the first SEAS payment covered the period from 16 March 2020, but the annual report itself gives no date for the first payment. Mauritius had a complete PAYE and pension contribution register to verify claims against, which most countries in this group did not. The report does not show fraud, errors or employees laid off despite the scheme, and the WAS was extended for tourism-linked firms into 2021, so this record covers only the first four months.
๐ฑ๐ธLesothosince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
After Lesotho declared a drought emergency in October 2019, the government and the World Bank restructured the Social Assistance Project in January 2020 to reallocate US$7.4 million, and between February and September 2020 the Ministry of Social Development paid more than 40,000 Child Grants Programme households a LSL 500 monthly top-up for six months and added about 10,000 new households, which it kept on the programme at its own cost.
The social development ministry used its national household registry (NISSA) and the Child Grants Programme to add a temporary top-up for existing recipients and enrol new poor households in drought districts, financed by restructuring an existing World Bank credit instead of waiting for new money.
Preconditions
A household registry covering every rural council before the shock
A standing cash transfer with pay points in the affected districts
A lender willing to reallocate an existing loan within three months
Where else it has been used: Lesotho used the same route after the 2016 drought (27,000 recipients topped up in 2017, per the same ICR); NGOs also used NISSA to target their own responses.
Limits: The figures are in a PDF (the restructuring in paragraph 39 on PDF page 22; the top-up figures in paragraph 62 on PDF page 31). The World Bank financed the top-ups and rates its own project. The elapsed time is about four months from the October 2019 declaration to the first top-ups in February 2020, which we computed from dates in the report; the report gives no date for the first payment, only the February to September window. The results framework counts 67,000 beneficiaries of emergency top-ups against a target raised to 50,000, a different unit from the 40,000 households in the text, and the extra reach is partly attributed to exchange rate movements during COVID-19. Fewer than 10 percent of payments were digital, so most top-ups went out at cash pay points. The government paid the base benefit and absorbed the 10,000 new households; the top-ups themselves were donor money.
๐ฒ๐ผMalawisince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Malawi declared a State of Disaster over COVID-19 on 20 March 2020 and enrolled 194,762 eligible urban households in a three-month cash transfer in four cities, but first payments came only after January 2021, and by 30 June 2021 just 32,000 households, 16 percent, had received all three payments while 29 percent had received none.
The social welfare ministry designed a new urban transfer from scratch, registering households door to door in hotspots and paying by mobile money, with no prior urban registry to draw on.
Preconditions
An urban beneficiary registry, which Malawi did not have, so registration took most of 2020
Mobile money accounts already verified in the recipients' names
Agent networks with enough cash for a sudden mass withdrawal
Where else it has been used: Madagascar's Tosika Fameno (mdg-tosika-fameno) paid in four weeks through an agency that already ran transfers; the contrast is the evaluation's own lesson about building delivery systems before the shock.
Limits: The figures are in a PDF (State of Disaster date on PDF page 19, printed page 18; Table 8 and the January 2021 payment plan on PDF page 41). The World Bank co-financed the intervention with KfW, the EU and others, and commissioned the evaluation, but its own report documents the delay rather than hiding it. The record is evidence of slow responsiveness: about ten months from the State of Disaster to the first planned payment, a span we computed from the report's dates, and 15 months later only one in six households was fully paid. The report attributes the lag to know-your-customer failures between registration data and mobile network operator records and to agent liquidity, not to political choice. The 199,000 households cited elsewhere in the report is the enrolment target; the 194,762 is the eligible count in Table 8. Payments continued after June 2021 and the final completion figure is not in this report.
๐บ๐ฌUgandasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
The Bank of Uganda gave supervised financial institutions exceptional permission to restructure the loans of borrowers hit by COVID-19 from 1 April 2020, and banks restructured UGX 2.3 trillion of loans in April 2020 alone and UGX 5.9 trillion by July 2020, approving 893,018 of 895,241 applications.
The central bank suspended the usual classification and provisioning rules for restructured loans for 12 months, so banks could reschedule borrowers' repayments without eating their capital, and paired it with a liquidity facility for distressed lenders.
Preconditions
A banking system well capitalised enough to carry deferred repayments
A supervisor with power to waive its own prudential rules by circular
Credit reference and reporting systems to track restructured loans
Where else it has been used: The same forbearance was used across East Africa in 2020: the report itself notes that Rwanda had the highest restructured-loan ratio in the region at 39.0 percent at end June 2020.
Limits: The live Bank of Uganda site is now a JavaScript application and the original PDF path returns a web page, so the source is the Internet Archive copy of the central bank's own report, fetched today. The figures are in Box A on PDF pages 27 to 29 (printed pages 19 to 20) and in the policy summary. The central bank is the rule-maker and the reporter. Restructuring is forbearance, not new money: it postponed repayments and recognition of bad loans, and the same report warns that NPLs could materialise when the relief matured; the 5.9 trillion is a flow of restructurings, while the stock under relief at end June was UGX 4.9 trillion, 31.2 percent of loans. Granting relief was at each bank's discretion, so the approval rate reflects applications banks chose to process. The report dates the relief window from 1 April 2020 but not the decision itself, so the time from shock to rule is not shown here.
๐บ๐ฌUgandasince 2022delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Uganda's Ministry of Health contained the Sudan ebolavirus outbreak declared on 20 September 2022, for which no licensed vaccine existed, through national and district emergency committees, listing 4,793 contacts, and declared it over on 11 January 2023 after 142 confirmed and 22 probable cases and 77 deaths.
The health ministry activated standing national and district emergency committees, traced and followed contacts, and isolated and treated cases in dedicated treatment centres.
Preconditions
Standing outbreak response structures from earlier Ebola and Marburg outbreaks
A national reference laboratory able to confirm cases fast
District health teams able to trace thousands of contacts
Limits: The 113 days are computed here from the two dates in the WHO notice; the case, death and contact counts are WHO's summary of Ministry of Health data. Containment within four months with no vaccine is the claim, but the outbreak reached nine districts including Kampala, the case fatality was 47 percent, and the record cannot separate the government's response from luck in transmission chains or from the over US$27 million of international support WHO mentions. An epidemic is a different shock from the climate hazards the construct names first, filed on the same terms as the COVID-19 vaccination precedents, and a single 2022 outbreak says little about cyclone or flood preparedness. Uganda's earlier Ebola and Marburg experience is part of why the system existed.
๐ง๐ผBotswanasince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Botswana's health authorities reported to WHO that 1,951,054 people, 83 per 100 population, had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose by 31 December 2023, from a first dose given on 26 March 2021, with 1,663,490 (71 per 100) completing the primary series.
Botswana's health ministry ran a national COVID-19 campaign through its clinics and mass vaccination sites and reached over four in five residents with a first dose.
Preconditions
A routine immunisation programme with a cold chain beyond the capital
A supply of doses large enough for a national campaign, however obtained
Registers good enough to count who received a second dose
Where else it has been used: Bolivia (bol-covid-vaccination) and Venezuela (ven-covid-vaccination) are filed on the same terms.
Limits: The figures are Botswana's own reports to WHO (DATA_SOURCE 'REPORTING'), with no independent coverage survey behind them, read from one row of a CSV with no prose. First-dose reach was 83 per 100 and completion 71 per 100, among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa, which partly reflects a small population and a strong primary health system rather than a crisis-specific capability. Booster or additional doses reached 510,809 people, 22 per 100. The VACCINES_USED field is empty, so the record cannot show which products were used or where the doses came from, and it evidences distribution only. The per-100 rates divide by WHO's population estimate. Vaccination is a response to one shock, not proof of preparedness for cyclones, floods or droughts, and the brief for this column prefers a hazard-specific delivery; this is filed because none with an official figure was found in the time available. The cited URL is the blob the WHO dashboard serves, as in bol-covid-vaccination.
๐ฒ๐บMauritiussince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Mauritius's health authorities reported to WHO that 1,123,773 people, 88 per 100 population, had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose by 31 December 2023, from a first dose given on 26 January 2021, with 1,088,142 (86 per 100) completing the primary series.
Mauritius's health ministry vaccinated almost the whole adult population through its public hospital and health centre network, aided by a small island population and early dose supply.
Preconditions
A routine immunisation programme with a cold chain beyond the capital
A supply of doses large enough for a national campaign, however obtained
Registers good enough to count who received a second dose
Where else it has been used: Bolivia (bol-covid-vaccination) and Venezuela (ven-covid-vaccination) are filed on the same terms.
Limits: The figures are Mauritius's own reports to WHO (DATA_SOURCE 'REPORTING'), with no independent coverage survey behind them, read from one row of a CSV with no prose. Completion of 86 per 100 is near-universal, but Mauritius is a small island of about 1.3 million people with a dense public health network, so the scale says little about logistics capacity. Booster or additional doses reached 654,507 people, 51 per 100. The VACCINES_USED field is empty, so the record cannot show which products were used or where the doses came from, and it evidences distribution only. The per-100 rates divide by WHO's population estimate. Vaccination is a response to one shock, not proof of preparedness for cyclones, floods or droughts, and the brief for this column prefers a hazard-specific delivery; this is filed because none with an official figure was found in the time available. The cited URL is the blob the WHO dashboard serves, as in bol-covid-vaccination.
๐ง๐ซBurkina Fasosince 2020still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Burkina Faso's national safety net programme (Burkin-Naong-Sa Ya) paid three rounds of FCFA 20,000 adaptive cash transfers to over 42,800 people between May and September 2020 in response to COVID-19, including 21,160 vendors from temporarily closed markets, and later raised the lean-season transfer from FCFA 20,000 to FCFA 45,000 in 2022 to align it with the food security response, paying three extra monthly payments to over 763,700 people in IPC3+ areas over the 2021 to 2023 lean seasons.
The safety net unit kept an 'adaptive' transfer window inside its regular programme and pointed it at whichever shock arrived: market closures and urban poverty in 2020, then IPC3+ lean-season food crises from 2021, raising the transfer amount when food prices rose.
Preconditions
A regular cash transfer programme with payment agencies and beneficiary lists already in place
A food security classification (Cadre Harmonise) to decide where adaptive payments go
Donor financing that allowed components to be reoriented without new approvals for each shock
Where else it has been used: The same adaptive safety net design runs through the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Programme countries (Mali, Niger, Senegal, Chad, Mauritania); compare mli-pgtmu, where the government funded the response itself.
Limits: The World Bank financed the programme and reports on its own project; paragraphs 34 and 35 are on page 10 of the plain-text ICR. The COVID-19 response was small: over 42,800 people, against a regular programme the ICR targeted at 948,100 people and says reached close to 1.05 million, and the ICR mixes units (21,000 of the beneficiaries are described as households in Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso). The ICR gives the payment window, May to September 2020, not the date of the first payment, so the most that can be read is that cash started within about two months of the first COVID-19 measures. The 2020 audit was qualified, finding FCFA 27 million of overpayments to COVID-19 beneficiaries by payment agencies and discrepancies in payment lists (page 24). The ICR says the 2022 increase was made to align with the food security response under the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program, not as an indexation rule, and it converts both the 2022 and 2023 amounts to about US$85, so the change kept pace with prices rather than raising real support. All the money is IDA and trust fund money, not the national budget, and the ICR records that the two military coups of 2022 (January and September) led to pauses in disbursements, so the responsiveness shown in 2020 did not hold steady through the period.
In response to COVID-19, the government of Cote d'Ivoire used its own budget to enrol a fourth cohort of 100,000 households (80,000 urban, 20,000 rural) in December 2020 into the World Bank supported productive cash transfer programme, through the programme's existing targeting, enrolment and digital payment systems, taking it to 227,000 households and over 1.3 million people.
Faced with the pandemic, the government put its own money into an existing donor-built cash transfer instead of creating a new scheme, so the new cohort used the programme's community targeting, enrolment and mobile payment machinery and was enrolled within the year.
Preconditions
A cash transfer programme already running with digital payments before the shock
Budget room to fund a cohort from domestic resources
A delivery unit able to extend targeting from rural to urban households, which the 2019 urban pilot had prepared
Where else it has been used: The same piggybacking on a standing programme as Honduras's 2020 top-ups (hnd-cct-shock-response) and Togo's Novissi, though slower than Novissi, which built a new digital transfer within weeks.
Limits: The World Bank financed the programme, rates its own project Highly Satisfactory, and reports results jointly for its project and the government-funded cohort, so the 100,000 is the financier's account of a government action it supported technically. Table 2 and paragraphs 32 to 34 are on page 13 of 48 in the plain-text version; paragraph 85 (page 21) says the pandemic triggered the expansion with government funding. The speed is modest: the first COVID-19 measures were in March 2020 and the cohort enrolled in December 2020, about nine months later, and the ICR gives no date of first payment to the new cohort. The separate emergency transfer the government announced in April 2020 through the Fonds special de solidarite (reported in the press at about 177,000 households) is not covered by this source and is not counted here. The ICR also says the project was never formally restructured to take in the government money and that the social registry (RSU) was underdeveloped, so the expansion rode on one programme's lists rather than a national registry. Households are counted at enrolment; the source reports payment receipt only through sample surveys.
The Republic of Congo's Ministry of Social Affairs and the Lisungi programme unit paid one-off emergency cash transfers of about US$82 to more than 206,800 mostly urban households hit by COVID-19 by April 2022, above a target of 200,000, while the social registry used to target them grew to more than 830,000 households and 95 percent of the transfers were paid digitally.
The social affairs ministry used the existing Lisungi conditional cash transfer unit and its social registry to register urban households hit by COVID-19 and pay each a one-off digital transfer, growing the registry in the process so that later programmes could target from it.
Preconditions
A standing cash transfer programme unit (Lisungi) with a registry to build on
Emergency IDA financing approved within three months of the shock
Digital payment providers able to reach urban households
Where else it has been used: The same piggybacking on a standing programme as civ-ptmp-covid and cod-step-kin, but with a single small payment per household rather than a recurring transfer.
Limits: The World Bank financed the transfers (an IDA credit of US$50 million, US$20 million for the ECTs) and reports on its own project; the figures are in paragraphs 23 to 25 of the plain-text project paper, pages 12 to 13 of 59. The project's later Implementation Status Report (June 2026, P174178) gives 231,562 households benefiting from emergency cash transfers, so the count moved after this paper; the record uses the earlier dated figure. The response was slow for an emergency: the project was approved on 24 June 2020 and became effective on 9 October 2020, and the paper gives no date for the first or last ECT payment, so the time from shock to cash cannot be stated, only that 206,800 households had been paid by April 2022. Each household got one payment of about US$82, small against lost income. The same paper says the focus on the crisis delayed the government's plan to scale Lisungi to national coverage, and that procurement delays and a change of ministry leadership in May 2021 held up the registry and digital payment work. The government asked for the emergency money; the money and the design were the World Bank's.
๐ฌ๐ญGhanasince 2022delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
After losing market access and requesting IMF support in July 2022, Ghana's government launched a domestic debt exchange on 5 December 2022 covering all medium- and long-term local-currency government, Daakye and ESLA bonds, and settled it on 21 February 2023 with 85 percent of the face value of bonds held by investors other than pension funds exchanged, giving almost GHS 50 billion of cash debt relief in 2023.
The Ministry of Finance offered domestic bondholders a menu of new longer, lower-coupon bonds at fixed ratios with a deadline, renegotiated the perimeter (exempting pension funds and adjusting terms for individuals) during the offer, and closed within eleven weeks so the IMF programme could be approved.
Preconditions
A domestic bond market concentrated in a few banks and institutions that could be negotiated with directly
A central depository able to swap instruments on a fixed settlement date
An external anchor (the IMF arrangement) that made the exchange a precondition for financing
Where else it has been used: Jamaica's 2010 and 2013 domestic exchanges are the template Ghana's design follows; Sri Lanka's 2023 domestic optimisation used a similar perimeter carve-out for pension funds.
Limits: The figures are in Box 2 of the staff report (PDF page 22, printed page 18) and the July 2022 request for IMF support is in the debt sustainability annex (PDF page 95); the URL is the Ministry of Finance's copy of the IMF report, because imf.org returned an HTML bot page to a script. The 78 days is computed by us from the two dates in Box 2. The IMF is a party to the programme the exchange was a prior condition for, so this is not an independent evaluation. The speed is of the rule change once decided: the fiscal and debt pressures that forced it built up over years and Ghana lost market access in 2022, so a responsive state would arguably have acted earlier and with less damage. The 85 percent covers only the eligible perimeter: pension funds, about 20 percent of eligible debt, were excluded after bondholder protests, and 85 percent equals only 28 percent of all domestic debt; dollar bonds and Cocobills needed later exchanges. The exchange imposed an average NPV loss of about 30 percent on bondholders, weakened bank balance sheets and was contested in court and on the street; the number shows the operation closed fast, not that its costs were well distributed.
๐ฌ๐ฒGambiasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
The Gambia's government had its new social safety net project restructured within three months of the pandemic (restructuring dated 9 June 2020) to create Nafa Quick, which between July and October 2020 paid two transfers of GMD 3,000 to 78,359 rural households in 30 districts, against a target of 60,000, with all payments made before the end of the lean season.
The government asked the World Bank to repurpose its freshly started safety net project, and the project unit ran a separate, simple rural cash transfer, two payments timed to the lean season, through community targeting in 30 districts while the social registry and the regular programme were still being built.
Preconditions
An externally financed safety net project already effective, with money that could be reallocated
A project unit and community structures able to list households without a registry
Willingness to sacrifice the duration of the long-term programme to pay for the emergency one
Where else it has been used: Like hnd-cct-shock-response and cog-lisungi-covid, a donor project became the shock-response channel; The Gambia's case shows the cost explicitly, because the regular programme was cut to fund it.
Limits: The World Bank financed the project and rates its own efficacy High; the figures are in the plain-text ICR: the June 2020 restructuring on page 9 (paragraph 17), the 78,359 households and the 100 percent lean-season indicator in Table 2 on page 14 (paragraph 34), and 'restructured in three months' with the July to October 2020 payment window on page 24 (paragraph 70). The ICR says Nafa Quick ran before the delivery system existed, so no socio-economic data were collected on its beneficiaries and its targeting of the poor cannot be assessed. The speed was bought by cutting the longer-term programme: the extreme-poor Nafa transfer was halved from 36 to 18 months to pay for Nafa Quick, and the additional financing meant to restore it was not approved because a COVID-19 waiver expired first, so the remaining 18 months were deferred until a new project, The Gambia RISE (approved February 2024), began paying them from July 2024 (page 24, paragraph 69). Two payments of GMD 3,000 is a small, temporary transfer. The money came from an existing IDA project, not from the national budget.
๐ฒ๐ฑMalisince 2021delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Mali's government launched its own emergency COVID-19 cash transfer programme in 2021, paying one-off transfers to 400,000 poor households across the country through the targeting and payment systems built by the Jigisemejiri safety net project, and kept it running in 2022, but only FCFA 42 billion of the FCFA 100 billion budgeted was disbursed because of the political crisis.
The government funded an emergency transfer from its own budget and ran it through the social registry, targeting procedures and payment contracts that a donor project had built over a decade, so it could reach 400,000 households without building new machinery.
Preconditions
A social registry (RSU, over 1.1 million household records) and a government safety net unit (UTGFS) already in place
Budget room for a FCFA 100 billion programme, which in the event only partly materialised
Political stability to sustain disbursement, which the 2020 to 2022 crisis undercut
Where else it has been used: The same reuse of donor-built delivery systems as civ-ptmp-covid; Mali's case shows a government paying with its own money, and the budget gap shows the limit of that.
Limits: The numbers are reported by the World Bank about a programme it did not finance, in paragraph 42 of the ICR of its own project (page 18 of 67 in the plain-text version), with no government source cited and no date of first payment; the 400,000 is a round figure and the ICR does not say whether it counts households paid or households planned. Elsewhere the ICR says 'approximately 400,000 households'. The response was slow: the programme was launched in 2021, a year or more after the first COVID-19 measures, and only 42 percent of its budget was disbursed (computed by us from FCFA 42 billion of 100 billion) because of the political crisis that followed the coups of August 2020 and May 2021. The same paragraph records that the government's regular safety net budget line (PGFS) disbursed FCFA 6.2 billion of 12.5 billion over 2017 to 2022. The ICR also records World Bank disbursement suspensions to Mali in August 2020, May 2021 and January 2022 for a cumulative 18 months (page 27), which slowed the systems the transfer relied on. A one-off transfer does not show a lasting change in the rules.
๐ธ๐ฉSudansince 2021dismantledbears on Institutional responsiveness
After Sudan cut fuel subsidies and unified its exchange rate in February 2021, the transitional government's Sudan Family Support Programme began paying cash in March 2021 and by 25 October 2021 had registered about 2.7 million families and paid about 30.6 billion Sudanese pounds to 1.4 million families, about 4.7 million people, before all activities, including cash delivery, were halted after the military takeover of that day.
The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Labour and Social Development built a near-universal cash transfer to offset fuel subsidy removal and exchange-rate unification, registering families through 352 centres linked to the national civil registry and paying through banks, mobile money and cash cards, with donor money held in a designated account; the coup stopped the money and the programme with it.
Preconditions
Donor financing large enough to compensate most households for a subsidy cut
A national ID registry to validate enrolment against duplicates
A government that the financiers continue to recognise, which is the precondition that failed in October 2021
Where else it has been used: The same compensation logic as Iran's 2010 subsidy reform cash transfer and Egypt's Takaful and Karama, but financed almost entirely from outside, which made it end the day the financiers paused.
Limits: The World Bank and the STARS donors financed the programme, decided its pause and wrote this report, so the publisher is grading its own operation and also chose to end it. The numbers are in a PDF: the subsidy and exchange-rate reforms of February 2021 on PDF page 10, the halt of all activities 'including delivery of cash to beneficiaries' on PDF page 16, the 2.7 million families registered and 1.4 million families (about 4.7 million people) paid on PDF page 23, and the per-state table (Table E4, 2,637,632 enrolled and 1,395,295 paid) on PDF page 85, which notes that the first 80,000 families were paid in March 2021 (PDF page 77). The 1.39 million families paid include families in two states where the World Food Programme, not the ministry, implemented payments (PDF page 75), so not every paid family was reached by the government's own delivery. Table E4 has visible inconsistencies (East Darfur shows 391,900 families paid against 4,291 enrolled), so the state rows should not be quoted. The speed claim is about seven months from first payment to 1.4 million families, against a target of 6.5 million; the report says the programme started late because of exchange-rate problems, and paid families reached only 22 percent of the target population. What responded was a transitional government acting inside an IMF and World Bank reform package that conditioned arrears clearance, not on its own timetable. The halt was a decision by the financier after a coup, so the dismantling reflects a political break and donor policy (OP 7.30) as much as institutional capacity; later safety-net payments in Sudan were routed through the World Food Programme rather than the ministry.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo's Ministry of Health, supported by WHO and partners, ran the response to the North Kivu and Ituri Ebola outbreak from August 2018 until it was declared over on 25 June 2020, vaccinating more than 303,000 people, registering 250,000 contacts and testing 220,000 samples, in an outbreak that counted 3,481 cases and 2,299 deaths.
The health ministry ran an incident management structure with WHO, traced contacts across three provinces and used ring vaccination with a new vaccine to cut chains of transmission, while working through community leaders in a conflict zone.
Preconditions
A health ministry with prior Ebola outbreak experience and field teams
A licensed or investigational vaccine and the cold chain to deliver it at minus 60 degrees or colder
International surge capacity and money for a response lasting years, not weeks
Where else it has been used: The same ring vaccination approach was used in Guinea in 2021 (gin-ebola-2021), where the outbreak was far smaller and ended in four months.
Limits: This is the second largest Ebola outbreak on record, and the vaccination count measures the size of the response, not its success: it ran for almost two years and killed 2,299 people, about two thirds of the cases, so the record evidences a delivery under extreme conditions rather than early containment. WHO and many partners carried much of the operation, the vaccine was used under a ring vaccination protocol, investigational for most of the outbreak until its licensure in late 2019, which the page does not discuss, and the page does not split national from international effort. The figures are WHO's summary of Ministry of Health reports, and the vaccination count is a rounded 'over 303 000'. The outbreak ran in an active conflict zone, which the page names but does not describe or quantify. A resurgence in North Kivu followed in February 2021, listed on the same page, so the declared end did not mean the virus was gone from the region.
๐ธ๐ฉSudansince 2017operating below its peakbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
WHO and UNICEF estimated that Sudan's national DTP3 coverage among one-year-olds fell from 95 percent in 2017 and 84 percent in 2022 to 51 percent in 2023 and 39 percent in 2024, after war broke out in April 2023, before recovering to 71 percent in 2025.
Sudan's Expanded Programme on Immunization kept national DTP3 coverage above 90 percent for most of the 2010s through fixed clinics and outreach, then lost more than half of it when war closed facilities, displaced millions and broke the supply chain from Khartoum, and partly rebuilt it with catch-up campaigns.
Preconditions
A cold chain and clinic network that depends on the capital for supply and pay
Population registers and reporting that survive displacement
External partners able to fund and run catch-up campaigns in contested areas
Where else it has been used: Haiti (hti-immunization-erosion) shows a slower erosion under insecurity; Sudan's fall was faster and deeper, and its partial recovery came within two years.
Limits: Routine immunization is a standing health service, not a hazard-specific preparedness delivery, and this record is filed on the precedent of hti-immunization-erosion: it reads the war as the shock and coverage as the capacity to keep a basic service running through it and restore it. The figures are WHO and UNICEF estimates built from administrative reports and surveys, not a census, and estimates for a country at war with displaced populations and collapsed reporting are especially uncertain. The API rows mix revisions: 2000 to 2024 carry a July 2025 timestamp and 2025 a July 2026 one, so the latest revision may have restated earlier years that the API does not show. 95 percent in 2017 is the highest value in the published series, which starts in 2000. The fall is caused mainly by war and displacement, outside the health system's control, and the 2025 recovery may owe much to UNICEF, WHO and Gavi supported catch-up campaigns rather than the national programme alone; the data cannot separate them. The started year is the start of the comparison, following hti-immunization-erosion, not the founding of the national programme.
๐ฆ๐ดAngolasince 2025delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Angola's Ministry of Health, with WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank and the ICRC, vaccinated over 900,000 people with oral cholera vaccine in a five-day reactive campaign in January 2025, with 99.5 percent administrative coverage, in an outbreak that had reached 8,543 cases and 329 deaths, a case fatality rate of 3.9 percent, in 16 of 21 provinces by 23 March 2025.
The health ministry used the international oral cholera vaccine stockpile to mount a five-day mass campaign in the first affected areas, while case management and water and sanitation lagged behind the spread to 16 provinces.
Preconditions
Access to the global oral cholera vaccine stockpile and partners to fund delivery
Vaccination teams able to reach crowded urban districts within days
Treatment centres and oral rehydration close enough to patients to keep deaths low, which here was missing
Limits: The record shows a fast vaccination campaign inside a response that failed on its main outcome: WHO says a case fatality rate can be kept below 1 percent with timely care, and Angola's was 3.9 percent, with a third of deaths in the community, which WHO attributes to late presentation, gaps in surveillance and early response, and weak access to treatment. The 99.5 percent is administrative coverage of a target population the DON does not define, not a survey, and the 900,000 is rounded. The campaign was run with WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank and the ICRC, so the national share cannot be separated, and the DON does not say where the doses came from. The DON is a snapshot at 23 March 2025 while the outbreak was still spreading; this record does not show when or how it ended. The status 'concluded' refers to the January campaign, not the outbreak. The underlying cause, poor water and sanitation in crowded areas, is a standing gap the vaccination does not address; WHO notes cholera re-emerged in 2006 after a decade-long absence and recurs periodically.
๐ฌ๐ญGhanasince 2022delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Ghana's Ministry of Health declared the country's first Marburg virus disease outbreak on 7 July 2022, identified and monitored 198 contacts through 42 days, and declared the outbreak over on 16 September 2022 after three confirmed cases, all from one household, and two deaths.
The Ghana Health Service ran its integrated disease surveillance and response system: a suspected viral haemorrhagic fever was tested at the national reference laboratory, the ministry declared the outbreak, traced and followed every contact for 42 days and isolated the remaining case in a designated centre.
Preconditions
An integrated disease surveillance and response system reporting from district level
A national laboratory able to test for filoviruses
Designated isolation facilities and contact tracing teams ready before the event
Where else it has been used: Rwanda's 2024 Marburg response (rwa-marburg-2024) ran the same playbook at twenty times the case count.
Limits: Three cases in one household is a very small event, and containing it shows that surveillance and contact tracing worked once, not a standing national capacity; a small outbreak can end quickly by luck of the transmission chain. Detection was late for the first case: the index patient was admitted on 26 June and died the next day, and a second household member, a child, was infected and died before isolation, so two of three cases were fatal. The figures are WHO's restatement of Ministry of Health reports, so the government is reporting on its own response, with WHO and partners in support. The national laboratory (Noguchi Memorial Institute) confirmed the virus, but Institut Pasteur Dakar's confirmation was part of the timeline, as the DON describes. The record says nothing about Ghana's response to other shocks such as the 2023 Akosombo dam spillage floods.
๐จ๐ฎCรดte d'Ivoiresince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Cรดte d'Ivoire's health authorities reported to WHO that 13,568,372 people, 51 per 100 population, had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose by 31 December 2023, from a first dose given on 1 March 2021, with 12,164,304 (46 per 100) completing the primary series.
The health ministry ran a national COVID-19 campaign through its immunisation programme and vaccination sites, and reached about half the population with a first dose within three years.
Preconditions
A routine immunisation programme with a cold chain reaching districts
Donated or COVAX doses arriving in large enough volume for a national campaign
Registers able to count completion of the primary series
Where else it has been used: Bolivia (bol-covid-vaccination) and Venezuela (ven-covid-vaccination) reached similar partial coverage; among this batch's West African countries only Guinea (66 per 100 first dose) reported more.
Limits: COVID-19 vaccination is a response to one shock and a judgement call for this column, which prefers a hazard-specific delivery; no hazard-specific Ivorian case with an official figure was found. The figures are Cรดte d'Ivoire's own reports to WHO (DATA_SOURCE 'REPORTING') with no independent coverage survey. First-dose reach was barely a majority (51 per 100) and fewer than half completed the primary series (46 per 100), with boosters at 12 per 100, so this is a partial delivery on the same terms as ven-covid-vaccination; it is filed because it reached about half the population nationally, which most of its West African neighbours did not. The VACCINES_USED field is empty, so the record cannot show which products were used or where the doses came from, and evidences distribution only. The per-100 rates divide by WHO's population estimate. The file was last updated for this country on 31 December 2023. The WHO dashboard address covid19.who.int/who-data/vaccination-data.csv now returns an HTML page, so the cited URL is the blob the dashboard serves, the same one bol-covid-vaccination cites.
๐ฒ๐ฑMalisince 2014delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After Mali confirmed an imported Ebola case on 23 October 2014 and a second, unrecognised imported case started a chain of seven further cases in a Bamako clinic, the government with WHO and partners identified and followed 433 contacts for 21 days, set up a hotline receiving about 6,000 calls a day, built isolation and treatment facilities, and ended monitoring of the last contacts on 15 December 2014.
Mali's government, on alert since a false alarm in April 2014, traced every contact of two imported cases with medical students trained in epidemiology as extra tracers, isolated them, and used a hotline to find rumours and suspected cases.
Preconditions
A biosafety laboratory in the capital able to confirm the virus within days
Months of preparedness work and a rehearsal before the first case
A pool of trainable people, here medical students, to scale contact tracing quickly
Where else it has been used: Nigeria (nga-ebola-response) ran the same playbook three months earlier, and the WHO page groups the two as models.
Limits: The page is a WHO narrative written to present the response as a success, not a dataset, and it was written before Mali was declared free of transmission (WHO says that would happen on 18 January 2015 if no further cases arose). The second chain shows a detection failure: a patient from Guinea was admitted to a private clinic in Bamako with a diagnosis of kidney failure and died, and seven further cases followed, five of them fatal, including a doctor and a nurse who treated him; the page does not give a single total for cases and deaths. WHO and partner staff already in the country for preparedness shifted to the response, and the Bamako laboratory used was built with US National Institutes of Health support, so the national share cannot be separated. This is one small event seeded by two imported cases, and it says nothing about Mali's capacity for other hazards, including the conflict that has displaced people in the north and centre since 2012.
๐ฌ๐ฒGambiasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The Gambia's government bought 264,500 bags of rice, 279,500 bags of sugar and 185,200 drums of oil for vulnerable households with about GMD909.9 million redirected in 2020, and the National Disaster Management Agency distributed them between May and 28 September 2020, with 228,367 bags of rice recorded as delivered to households, 36,133 fewer than procured.
The government redirected debt-relief money to buy staple food in bulk and used the disaster management agency and local authorities to hand it out through distribution points with coupons to households identified as vulnerable.
Preconditions
A disaster agency with a field network able to run distribution points nationwide
Household lists from local authorities, here incomplete and drawn up without criteria
Stock records and storage that let food be tracked from purchase to household, which here were missing
Limits: The audit office judged the distribution untimely, unequal and poorly recorded, so this is a record of a national relief delivery with large leaks, not a model. Procurement deliveries ran from 1 to 12 May 2020 but the last household distribution was on 28 September 2020, nearly five months later. The delivered counts come from the Kobo-Collect tool, which the audit says recorded what a household should receive rather than what it received, some households recorded as served could not be reached, and coordinators' reports disagree with it, so 228,367 is an upper bound on what reached people. The same delivered figure appears for rice and sugar in the audit table. Households were selected without a needs assessment, some vulnerable households in two Kanifing wards were never registered, and food stored in the open was damaged without records. The audit examined Banjul, Kanifing and West Coast Region in detail and left the other regions to a later audit. The number of households reached is not reported. The figures are in a 156-page PDF (executive summary, pages 18 to 24).
๐ฆ๐นAustriasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Austria's social partners drafted a COVID-19 short-time work model on 13 and 14 March 2020, the AMS adopted its directive on 18 March and the ministers approved it on 19 March, three days after the first lockdown began, and in 2020 113,771 firms with 1.25 million employees used the scheme, against 508 firms in 2009.
The government let the social partners (the chambers of commerce and labour and the trade unions) write the crisis model over a weekend, the employment service turned their outline into a directive within three days, and parliament adapted the existing short-time work law by initiative motion on 15 and 20 March.
Preconditions
A standing short-time work instrument and an employment service that already processed it
Social partners with the authority to agree terms for the whole economy in days
Fiscal room to pay out EUR 6.4 billion in a year
Where else it has been used: The same corporatist route as Germany's Kurzarbeit (deu-kurzarbeit), made faster and more generous; the audit office's verdict is the price of that speed: overpayment and repeated retroactive change.
Limits: The figures are in a PDF: the 113,771 firms and 1.25 million employees, the EUR 7.849 billion paid from March 2020 to March 2021 and the EUR 500 million overpayment are in the summary (PDF page 10, repeated in TZ 18); the timeline (social partner talks on 13 and 14 March, the punctation handed to the AMS on 15 March, the AMS board decision on 18 March, ministerial approval on 19 March, retroactive to 1 March) is in TZ 2 (PDF page 21). The three days are our arithmetic from those dates. The audit office is critical, not celebratory: it found that speed came at a cost, with an unsuitable flat-rate method and over-compensation of municipal tax causing overpayments of about EUR 500 million in phase 1, a directive amended twelve times by March 2021, often retroactively, the AMS and the ministry's labour market experts left out of the design, and no concept for targeted detection of abuse. The 1.25 million counts employees in participating firms over the year, not workers on short time at one moment. Austria already had a short-time work instrument, so the move was a redesign of an existing rule, not a new one, and the number of jobs it saved is an estimate the office treats cautiously.
๐ฉ๐ฐDenmarksince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Denmark's government, employers and unions agreed a wage compensation scheme on 14 March 2020, the Danish Business Authority opened applications 11 days later on 25 March and decided about 90 percent of applications within 30 days, paying DKK 12.7 billion in the first phase (March to August 2020) on 66,631 applications from 34,042 firms.
The government agreed the scheme with the employers' and workers' organisations in one tripartite deal, and the Danish Business Authority built the application system on existing case systems and public register data, with automatic checks deciding low-risk cases at once and a later control for the rest.
Preconditions
Tripartite bargaining that can reach a national deal in a weekend
Register data on firms and employees that can check applications automatically
Parliamentary approval of spending by account (aktstykke) instead of a new law
Where else it has been used: The Netherlands' NOW scheme and Austria's Kurzarbeit (aut-corona-kurzarbeit) took similar weeks; what Denmark adds is an audit of the trade-off, which shows the after-control lagging the payments by more than a year.
Limits: The figures are in a PDF: the 14 March agreement and the 25 March opening on printed page 7 (PDF page 14), Table 1 with applications, firms and payments on PDF page 11, and the 90 percent decided within 30 days on page 4 (PDF page 10). The audit office states that the ministry normally needs several months to set up such a scheme; the comparison is the ministry's own claim. Speed was bought with deferred control: the office found that control relied mainly on an after-control that had not yet been carried out, had been postponed by about 11 months to as much as a year and a half after payment, and had no earlier check of the riskiest cases, so some firms may have received compensation they were not entitled to and that cannot be recovered (Statsrevisorernes bemaerkning, PDF pages 3 to 4). The scheme was later extended into four phases, with DKK 19.4 billion paid by October 2021; the claim covers the first phase only. The record counts firms and applications, not employees: the office's report gives no count of workers covered.
๐ง๐ชBelgiumsince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Belgium's National Employment Office treated every COVID-19 work stoppage as temporary unemployment for force majeure and paid allowances to 939,532 workers for March 2020 and 1,117,133 for April, when 1,221,412 workers, 35.3 percent of private and contractual employees, were declared temporarily unemployed; almost 1.4 million received at least one payment during 2020.
The employment office widened an existing rule, temporary unemployment for force majeure, to cover every corona stoppage and simplified the employer procedure, so firms could suspend contracts without proving economic grounds and existing payment bodies paid workers within the month.
Preconditions
A standing temporary unemployment regime with electronic social risk declarations from employers
Payment bodies, including trade union funds, already paying unemployment benefits
A legal concept (force majeure) broad enough to be reinterpreted by the administration
Where else it has been used: France's activitรฉ partielle (fra-activite-partielle) followed the same route of stretching an industrial instrument to the whole economy; Belgium's version paid workers directly rather than reimbursing employers.
Limits: The monthly counts and the 35.3 percent share are on the ONEM press page; the 1.4 million for 2020 and the monthly average of 504,657 are on the annual report page (https://www.onem.be/espace-presse/rapport-annuel-onem-2020). The press page gives no date for the rule change itself, so the record shows speed only as payment for the first month of the crisis, not as days from shock to rule. ONEM does not pay most allowances itself: the payment bodies (the trade union funds CSC, FGTB and CGSLB, and the public fund CAPAC) do, and the press page splits the amounts between them. The 35.3 percent is computed on 3,458,136 salaried employees excluding civil servants. A worker counted in April was unemployed for 14 days on average, and only 20 percent for the whole month, so the head count overstates lost hours. The cost was large: ONEM's annual report records EUR 4.042 billion of extra temporary unemployment spending in 2020. ONEM later ran controls on corona temporary unemployment; their results are not reflected here.
๐ฎ๐นItalysince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Italy's Cura Italia decree of 17 March 2020 created wage supplementation with a Covid-19 cause across ordinary CIG, the solidarity funds and CIG in deroga, and INPS recorded 5.27 million beneficiaries in April 2020 and 2.8 billion authorised hours from March to August, but about 83 percent of firms asked INPS to pay workers directly and the institute's own report records the resulting delay in payments for the first period.
5,274,000 beneficiaries, beneficiaries of wage supplementation with covid-19 cause in the month, 2020-04. 2.8 billion hours, hours authorised with covid-19 cause, march to august 2020, 2020-08. INPS, XIX Rapporto annuale (October 2020), retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
The government extended the existing wage supplementation funds to a Covid-19 cause by decree, covered firms outside the ordinary funds through the solidarity funds and the regional CIG in deroga, and let firms shift payment to INPS, which then had to authorise and pay an unprecedented volume at once.
Preconditions
Standing wage supplementation funds with an authorising and paying institute
Decree-law powers that take effect on publication
Payment capacity at the paying institute, which is the precondition that strained here
Where else it has been used: Belgium (bel-chomage-temporaire-corona) also paid workers directly through existing bodies and paid within the month; Italy's direct-payment option moved the cash-flow burden from firms to INPS and slowed the first payments.
Limits: The figures are in a 482-page PDF: the monthly beneficiary counts are Tavola 1.7 (PDF pages 43 to 44, in thousands: 4,240 in March, 5,274 in April across ordinary CIG, solidarity funds and CIG in deroga), the 2.8 billion hours on PDF page 16 and again on page 33, and the direct-payment share and the delay in footnote 12 (PDF page 40). The institute reports on its own delivery. Speed is mixed: the rule changed within days of the lockdown, but the decree let any firm request direct payment by INPS without proof of financial difficulty, about 83 percent did, and the report says this produced a delay in payments, especially for the first period requested; it gives no figure for the delay. Authorised hours are not hours used: the report estimates take-up at 63 percent for March and 60 percent for April. The report itself judges the solidarity funds that covered smaller firms evidently inadequate, and the CIG in deroga ran through the regions, which added a step before payment.
๐จ๐ฟCzechiasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
The Czech government approved the Antivirus employment support programme on 31 March 2020, with costs eligible from 12 March, and the Labour Office paid CZK 51.2 billion through it from 2020 to 2022 to almost 71,000 employers for 1.2 million employees.
The government used an existing power in the Employment Act to declare a targeted programme by resolution, so the Labour Office could reimburse employers for wage compensation paid to workers in quarantine or kept idle, backdated to the start of the emergency.
Preconditions
A statutory power to create targeted employment programmes by government resolution
A Labour Office able to sign agreements with tens of thousands of employers
Labour law that already obliged employers to pay wage compensation during obstacles to work
Where else it has been used: Slovakia's First Aid (svk-prva-pomoc) was approved the same day; the Czech audit shows the cost of a rule written for speed with no sharing of the burden and no impact monitoring.
Limits: The figures are in the audit office's PDF (CZK 51.2 billion and 70,971 employers in the summary table on PDF page 2; the government resolution No. 353 of 31 March 2020 and the eligibility period from 12 March 2020 in Table 1 on PDF page 7) and in its press release of 4 December 2023 (https://www.nku.cz/cz/pro-media/tiskove-zpravy/miliardy-na-udrzeni-pracovnich-mist-v-dobe-covidu-19-dostaly-od-statu-i-firmy--kterym-rostl-zisk-a-pocet-zamestnancu-id13610/), which gives almost 71,000 firms and 1.2 million employees. The audit office's verdict is negative: part of the money was spent ineffectively, CZK 9.8 billion went to industries where output did not fall, the A Plus regime paid 100 percent of wage compensation against the principle of cost sharing used elsewhere in the EU (CZK 4.4 billion could have been saved), ten of 31 audited firms drew CZK 1.9 billion while paying dividends, and the ministry and Labour Office did not monitor or evaluate the programme's effects. The 19 days from the eligibility date to the government decision are our arithmetic and are the second metric; the 1.2 million employees covered are in the press release only; the record does not show when the first payments arrived. The rule change was speedy; whether it was well targeted is what the audit disputes.
๐ธ๐ฐSlovakiasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Slovakia's government approved the labour ministry's job retention scheme on 31 March 2020, labour offices began accepting applications on 6 April with support backdated to 13 March, and over two years the scheme paid almost EUR 2.5 billion to 176,000 employers and self-employed people, 5.7 million monthly payments covering more than 770,000 employees.
The labour ministry designed a state aid scheme paid through the network of labour offices, with separate measures for closed businesses, firms with falling revenue and the self-employed, and the government approved it so offices could take applications within a week.
Preconditions
Labour offices that already contracted with employers for active labour market measures
European Social Fund money that could be reallocated to the scheme
EU state aid temporary framework rules allowing wage subsidies
Where else it has been used: The Czech Antivirus (cze-antivirus) was approved the same day with a similar design; both were later criticised for poor targeting.
Limits: The page is the labour ministry's own scheme site and its closing summary is promotional: it quotes the minister calling the ministry the most successful state body at delivering aid, and cites a supportive analysis by the ministry's own Institute of Social Policy. The figures are rounded ('almost 2.5 billion', 'more than 770 thousand') and the page has no publication date; the eligible period it states runs from 13 March 2020 to 28 February 2022. The six days are our arithmetic from the two dates on the page; the record does not show how long the first payments took after applications opened, and this record has not read any audit of the scheme. Employees counted are those in supported firms, not jobs shown to have been saved, and nearly half of the money went to micro-enterprises, per the institute's director quoted on the page.
๐ญ๐ทCroatiasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
The governing board of the Croatian Employment Service decided on 20 March 2020 to introduce job preservation grants for employers hit by COVID-19, the service began implementing them on 23 March, taking applications online, and in 2020 it paid HRK 7.70 billion to 109,431 employers covering 697,126 workers on 225,390 applications.
697,126 workers, workers covered by job preservation grants in the year, 2020. 3 days, days from the board decision (20 march 2020) to the start of implementation (23 march 2020), 2020-03-23. Hrvatski zavod za zapoลกljavanje (HZZ), Godiลกnjak 2020, retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
The employment service's governing board created a flat per-worker grant by decision, took applications online through a dedicated site, and paid employers monthly for March to May, then extended and adjusted the grant through the year as restrictions continued.
Preconditions
An employment service whose board can create a measure without new legislation
An online application channel built in days
European Social Fund and state budget money that could be redirected
Where else it has been used: Croatia reused the same instrument for later shocks: in 2026 the service ran a job preservation grant for employers hit by wildfires in Omiลก and Braฤ (mjere.hr).
Limits: The employment service reports on its own measure. The figures are in a PDF: the 20 March decision on PDF page 9 and again on page 41, the 109,431 employers, 697,126 workers and HRK 7,703,685,673 on PDF page 10 and page 41, the 23 March start and the 225,390 applications on page 41. The three days are our arithmetic. The yearbook counts workers covered at any point in 2020, and the same employer could apply repeatedly, so workers are not a monthly peak. To run the grants the service suspended part of its regular active labour market programmes from March to May 2020, which the yearbook states; the record does not show how many jobs the grants preserved or whether any money went to firms that would have kept their staff anyway.
๐ฎ๐นItalysince 2016still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Italy's Extraordinary Commissioner for reconstruction after the 2016 Central Italy earthquakes reported that by 31 May 2026 private reconstruction had received 36,149 grant applications for 17.82 billion euros, approved 24,650, granted 12.59 billion and paid 7.99 billion, and that 14,968 of 23,361 authorised building sites had been completed across the 138 municipalities of the crater.
Parliament created a dedicated extraordinary commissioner with ordinance powers, regional special reconstruction offices and a single digital platform for grant files, and the commissioner pays reconstruction grants for private homes and runs a programme of public works across four regions.
Preconditions
A national grant scheme that pays the full cost of rebuilding damaged primary homes
Regional reconstruction offices able to process tens of thousands of technical files
A legislative decree (D.L. 189/2016) that keeps the commissioner in place across changes of government
Where else it has been used: The same model was applied in 2025 to the Ancona and Umbertide earthquakes, according to the commissioner's own site; the Emilia 2012 and L'Aquila 2009 reconstructions used regional and municipal structures instead.
Limits: The commissioner reports on its own programme, and the executive summary is written as advocacy ('La cura funziona'). The figures are in a PDF, on PDF pages 3 to 5. The host sisma2016data.it rate-limited scripted requests (HTTP 429), so the PDF was read through a fetch tool, not curl. Ten years after the August 2016 shock, about 64 percent of authorised private sites were complete and less than half of the 17.82 billion requested had been paid; the report itself says 69 percent of the payments were made from 2023 onwards, so most of the recovery happened six to ten years after the earthquake, which is evidence of slow recovery as much as of capacity. Applications and sites are counts of files and works, not households rehoused; the report gives one household figure, over 1,300 families (about 2,800 people) returning home in the last year, without a cumulative total. Public reconstruction, 3,667 programmed works for over 4.85 billion euros, is reported as reaching 40 percent of sites under way or finished. The record shows recovery after a shock, not preparation before one: Italy's seismic prevention and the emergency response in 2016 are outside it.
๐ญ๐ทCroatiasince 2020still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Croatia's Ministry of Construction, Physical Planning and State Assets and Ministry of Health had disbursed 16 percent of the 200 million US dollar World Bank earthquake recovery loan approved in June 2020 by November 2024, when the closing date was extended for the second time to 30 June 2027, and by May 2026 had restored 40 percent of the targeted health and education buildings.
After the March 2020 Zagreb earthquake the government borrowed from the World Bank to rebuild damaged hospitals and schools and to fund public health preparedness, while spending EU Solidarity Fund grants first; the loan's complex hospital works then took years to tender and its closing date was extended twice.
Preconditions
A rapid damage and needs assessment that sized the loan within three months
Implementing units inside the construction and health ministries that survive changes of minister
A construction market with capacity to absorb recovery works, which was lacking after the second earthquake
Limits: The World Bank finances the project and rates it (moderately satisfactory on both counts in June 2026), so this is a lender reporting on its own loan. The 40 percent is an intermediate indicator in the ISR's results table; the 16.32 percent disbursed and the extension from 31 December 2024 to 30 June 2027 (after an earlier extension from 30 June 2024) are in the Second Restructuring Paper of November 2024 (https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099110624203564259/text/P173998-7d9a1555-e106-4a16-b043-2253208f955b.txt, paragraphs 1, 4 and 5). The loan is a small part of Croatia's recovery: the restructuring paper itself says about 1 billion euros of EU Solidarity Fund grants had to be spent within 18 months and became the government's priority, which is one reason the loan lagged, so this record shows the slow track, not the whole national response, and Croatia's own reconstruction fund figures for private homes were not read at an official source. The paper also cites a government change, four changes of ministry leadership in four years, the December 2020 Petrinja earthquake and construction labour shortages. The project builds hospital and school buildings that are not finished, so the record documents recovery in progress, not completed. Status is operating, not eroded, because no part of a delivered peak has been lost; the delay is the finding.
๐ณ๐ดNorwaysince 1950still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The Norwegian Civil Defence tested 1,130 public warning sirens in its national warning test on 14 January 2026 and reported an uptime of 89 percent, which it called a clear improvement on the January 2025 test and a slight fall from the June 2025 test.
The national civil defence keeps a network of public warning sirens in populated areas and sounds every one of them in a national test twice a year, publishing the share that worked and following up each failure.
Preconditions
A state civil defence organisation that owns and maintains the sirens rather than leaving them to municipalities
A central control system able to trigger and log every installation at once
Regular public tests, which double as a reminder of the signals
Where else it has been used: Germany dismantled its federal siren network after the Cold War (deu-siren-network) and is rebuilding it; Norway kept its network under the civil defence and tests it on a fixed calendar.
Limits: The civil defence reports on its own system, in a short news item that does not print the publication date; the test date is given as Wednesday 14 January and the comparison with 'January 2025' places it in 2026. A test is not a shock: the record shows that the warning hardware works on a set day, not that people were warned, sheltered or evacuated in a real event. Uptime of 89 percent means roughly one installation in nine failed, mostly from frost and cold according to the item, and installations disconnected for maintenance or relocation were not tested and are not in the denominator, which flatters the figure. The item does not give the earlier test percentages it compares with, nor the share of the population within siren range. Norway has had a cell broadcast system (nรธdvarsel) since 2024, which this figure does not cover. The started year is an approximation for the post-war civil defence siren network and was not read at the cited page.
๐ธ๐ฎSloveniasince 2023still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Slovenia's Ministry of Natural Resources and Spatial Planning reported in July 2025 that after the floods of 4 August 2023 it had completed all intervention and emergency works on 850 km of watercourses by June 2024, paid 35.7 million euros in advance payments for home repairs to more than 7,350 individuals, transferred 218 million euros in advances to municipalities and completed more than 430 watercourse repair sites, within a five-year recovery programme funded at 2.3 billion euros.
The government passed an intervention law, paid flood-hit households and municipalities in advance instead of after damage assessment, mobilised more than a thousand machines on rivers at once, and then adopted a five-year recovery programme with dedicated funding through a new reconstruction office.
Preconditions
A water directorate and concession contractors able to scale works more than tenfold in a year
Fiscal room and a law allowing advance payments before final damage assessment
EU Solidarity Fund support to cover part of the eligible public costs
Limits: The ministry reports on its own response at a press conference marking two years since the floods, and calls its results 'an excellent result', so the framing is the government's. The figures are stated as 'more than' and are not broken down by date, apart from the June 2024 completion of emergency works. Advance payments to 7,350 people are not completed repairs: the same page says more than 5,000 applications from individuals and firms for building repair were still being processed and that 'more than half' of beneficiaries had received all the funds they needed, so the household recovery was incomplete two years on. The 2.3 billion euro programme is money allocated, not spent; the ministry says watercourse works rose more than tenfold after the floods, with 240 million realised in 2024 and 332 million forecast for 2025. A separate release of the cohesion ministry (12 June 2025) says Slovenia had used 88 percent (376.6 million euros) of the 428 million euro EU Solidarity Fund grant, so part of the recovery was EU money. The record shows recovery after the shock, not the warning or evacuation before it; the August 2023 floods killed several people and damaged a large share of municipalities, which this record does not measure.
๐ฌ๐ทGreecesince 2023still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Greece's Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection paid almost 65 million euros of first state aid (proti arogi) to about 14,000 people affected by the September 2023 Thessaly floods within the first month after the storm, and by 15 February 2024 had paid 154.94 million euros to 45,292 households, firms, farms and livestock units in the first round.
A general secretariat for disaster recovery runs a single online platform where victims apply, cross-checks applications against tax and property data held by the revenue authority, and pays first aid in weekly batches within weeks of the event, before full damage assessment.
Preconditions
A tax administration with property and bank account data that can be matched to applicants
A standing legal framework for state aid after disasters, so no new law is needed per event
A ministry unit dedicated to recovery that survives between disasters
Where else it has been used: The same platform paid the Evros fire, Samos earthquake and Chios fire victims; the release pattern is identical across events.
Limits: The ministry reports on its own payments in press releases, and the one-month figure comes from the deputy minister's statement in a separate release of 13 October 2023 (https://arogi.gov.gr/deltia-typou/hr-triantopoylos-8i-katavoli-protis-arogis-65-ekat-eyro-se-14000-polites-mesa-se-peripoy-ena-mina/), worded as 'almost 65 million' to 'about 14,000'. Recipients mix households, businesses, farms and livestock units, so the count is not people or homes; first aid is an advance against later compensation and covers basic needs and household contents, not rebuilding. The release gives no figure for the number of eligible victims, so coverage cannot be computed. Speed of payment is a recovery measure, not preparedness: the record says nothing about warning, evacuation or the flood defences of Thessaly, where Storm Daniel caused deaths and flooded large areas. The 15 February 2024 cumulative covers households and firms hit by the flood 'in Thessaly, but also other areas', so it is not strictly limited to Thessaly.
๐ฉ๐ฐDenmarksince 1950operating below its peakbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Denmark's Emergency Management Agency counted about 4,693,000 places in public shelters, protective concrete trenches and building shelters at the end of 2001, and the municipal count it collected in 2022, the first since then, recorded about 3.54 million, with places in concrete trenches down from 152,335 to 107,658 and in building shelters (sikringsrum) from 3,743,822 to 3,307,400, after municipalities had stopped requiring shelters in new buildings.
The state built public shelters and protective trenches and required shelters in new buildings during the Cold War, then devolved shelters to municipalities in 1993, which stopped requiring new ones and let some be closed, until the 2022 security shock prompted the first national count in twenty years.
Preconditions
A building rule requiring shelters in new construction, which is what kept the stock growing and what lapsed
A national register of shelter places kept up to date, which Denmark did not keep after 2002
Municipal budgets for maintaining rooms that have no peacetime function
Where else it has been used: Germany (deu-public-shelters) and Norway (nor-tilfluktsrom) ran their shelter stock down after the Cold War in the same way; Finland (fin-civil-defence-shelters) kept the building requirement and its stock.
Limits: The 2022 total is computed here by adding the four national totals printed at the foot of the two-page table (107,658 trench places, 60,432 other public shelter places, 3,307,400 building shelter places and 63,105 supplementary places); the agency itself prints no grand total. Its release (https://www.brs.dk/da/nyheder-og-publikationer/publikationer2/alle-publikationer/2022/beskyttelsesrum-2022/) says the data were not yet validated, that building shelters are under-registered in the building register, and that it expects the consolidated count of building shelter places to be 'somewhat higher' than the table but lower than in 2002, so the size of the fall is uncertain. The 2001 figure is from the agency's August 2002 report on shelter preparedness (https://www.brs.dk/globalassets/brs---beredskabsstyrelsen/dokumenter/ovrige-emner/2020/-rapport_om_beskyttelsesrumsberedskabet-.pdf, PDF page 23), which also gives the categories; the supplementary category fell most (720,000 to 63,105) and may not be defined the same way in both counts. The same 2002 report says the need under the old target of one place per resident was estimated at 6.5 million places in 1991, so the stock never met the target. The erosion follows a policy choice: shelters have been a municipal responsibility since 1993 and municipalities stopped imposing shelters in new buildings. The record measures places on paper, not whether the rooms could be readied in time. The started year is approximate for the post-war shelter programme and was not read at either source.
๐ฑ๐ปLatviasince 2022still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Latvia's State Fire and Rescue Service tested the national early warning siren network on 23 May 2025 and reported that 160 of the 162 sirens tested worked without faults, out of 164 installed, against 119 of 155 in the test of 20 May 2024.
The fire and rescue service sounds every national warning siren twice a year, publishes how many worked by region, and repairs or relocates the failures before the next test.
Preconditions
A remotely triggered siren network owned by a national service
A published test result after every test, which makes failures visible
Maintenance funding, which rose after 2022 with the security situation
Where else it has been used: Norway's civil defence publishes the same kind of test result for a network seven times larger (nor-tyfonvarsling).
Limits: The fire service reports on its own system. A test is not a shock: the record shows that sirens sounded on a set day, not that people were warned or acted in a real event, and the item does not say what share of the population lives within hearing range of 164 sirens. Sirens not tested because they were being moved, repaired or renewed (two in May 2025, nine in May 2024) are outside the denominator. The 2024 figure is from the service's item of 20 May 2024 (https://www.vugd.gov.lv/lv/jaunums/parbaudot-155-trauksmes-sirenas-bez-traucejumiem-nostradaja-119-sirenas); other items in the series give 152 of 158 (May 2023), 138 of 159 (November 2023) and 151 of 158 (November 2024), and in June 2022 the remote activation software failed and the sirens had to be started by hand, so performance has swung between tests rather than improved steadily. No test result after May 2025 was found in the service's sitemap. The started year is the first test in the series read (June 2022), not the founding of the network; Latvia also sends cell broadcast and app alerts, which this figure does not cover.
๐บ๐ฆUkrainesince 2022delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
After Russia's full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, Ukraine's Cabinet allocated UAH 21,450 million for a one-off eSupport payment by Resolution 199 of 4 March 2022, opened applications in the Diia app on 8 March to insured employees and sole proprietors in regions with active fighting, paid the first 6,500 hryvnia transfers on 21 March, and by 27 March had paid 2.7 million people UAH 17.9 billion against 4 million applications.
The Cabinet reused the existing eSupport payment rail, let insured workers in combat regions apply in the Diia app, checked them against social insurance records and paid a flat sum to their bank cards within four weeks of the invasion.
Preconditions
A national digital identity app with millions of users and verified bank cards
A social insurance register that could confirm employment and location quickly
A reserve fund the Cabinet could reallocate by resolution
Where else it has been used: The same rail paid later wartime transfers, and it is the Ukrainian version of what Togo (Novissi) and Brazil (Auxilio Emergencial) did in 2020: pay by phone first and check later.
Limits: The 2.7 million and the UAH 17.9 billion are the Ministry of Digital Transformation's own running count on the Government portal, not an audited outturn; the final number of recipients is not on this page. The live page at kmu.gov.ua answered a captcha to a script on the day of retrieval, so the record cites the Internet Archive copy of 31 March 2022, which carries the same text. The release says the service opened on 8 March and was open to employees for whom the single social contribution was paid and to sole proprietors of all groups in 14 listed regions and Kyiv, so eligibility was by region, not by a test that the person's work had stopped. The 25 days is our count: the start date of payments comes from a second Government portal release of 22 March 2022 ('Pochalysia pershi vyplaty 6500 hrn yePidtrymky', kmu.gov.ua), which says payments began the day before and had reached almost 500,000 people, and the allocation and its date come from Cabinet Resolution 199 of 4 March 2022 on kmu.gov.ua. Speed was bought with eligibility checks that were later found loose: press reports from August 2022 cite tens of thousands of payments to ineligible people, a figure this record does not carry because no official page with it was opened. A one-off flat transfer to workers in listed regions is a fast payment, not a durable programme change, and it relied on a payment rail (the Diia app and the existing eSupport scheme) that already existed before the shock.
๐ท๐ดRomaniasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Two days after the state of emergency was declared on 16 March 2020, Romania's Government made the unemployment insurance budget pay 75 percent of base salary to employees whose contracts were suspended (Emergency Ordinance 30 of 18 March 2020), and by mid-June 2020 the employment agency ANOFM had approved the indemnity for 2,067,970 employees and paid RON 2,937 million, with 241,453 employer requests approved within the legal deadline and 61 late.
The Government took the Labour Code's existing technical unemployment, which employers paid themselves, and by emergency ordinance moved its cost to the unemployment insurance budget for the emergency, with electronic filing and a statutory payment deadline for the county employment agencies.
Preconditions
An existing statutory form of temporary contract suspension that employers already used
County employment agencies able to process employer lists against the employment register
An unemployment insurance budget with a surplus the Government could redirect by ordinance
Where else it has been used: Most EU members ran a short-time work or suspension scheme in 2020, financed in part by EU SURE loans; Romania's was a suspension scheme rather than Kurzarbeit and reached about two million employees in three months.
Limits: The live PDF at curteadeconturi.ro returned a Cloudflare challenge to a script on the day of retrieval, so the record cites the Internet Archive copy of the same file. The figures are in a 162-page PDF: Table 9 (payments at 15 June 2020) and Table 10 (requests, beneficiaries and on-time approvals by region) on printed page 59, the 2,067,970 and the 2,483,890 employees requested on printed page 60, and the ordinance date (OUG nr. 30/18.03.2020) in the annex on PDF page 132. The audit is independent but the counts are 'date furnizate de ANOFM'. The legal deadline was the agency's own procedural one, and Table 10 counts requests, not days, so the record shows that the agency kept its deadline, not the median time to payment. 409,876 employees' requests were still pending at the cut-off. The indemnity was paid to employers, who passed it to staff; the report finds overpayments and payments to ineligible people among its RON 38.3 million of damages across all emergency spending. The scheme suspended contracts rather than shortening hours, so it is a wage replacement for idle workers, and its speed owes much to an existing Labour Code mechanism that the ordinance financed from the state budget.
๐ญ๐บHungarysince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
On 18 March 2020 Hungary's Government introduced a repayment moratorium until the end of 2020 that applied automatically to household and corporate loans disbursed before that date, and by June 2020 about 1.6 million of the roughly 2.7 million household borrowers used it on at least one loan, while 44 percent of corporate loans outstanding were in moratorium at the end of the second quarter.
1.6 million household customers, household customers using the moratorium on at least one loan (around 60 percent of about 2.7 million), 2020-06. 44 %, share of corporate loans outstanding in moratorium, 2020-Q2. Magyar Nemzeti Bank, Financial Stability Report, November 2020, retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
The Government, on the central bank's proposal, suspended principal and interest repayments by decree for every existing loan unless the borrower opted out, which needed no application and no new administrative channel.
Preconditions
Emergency decree powers that let the Government change private loan contracts overnight
A banking supervisor that could tell banks how to book the suspended instalments
Banks capitalised enough to absorb nine months of deferred cash flow
Where else it has been used: Most EU members ran payment moratoria in 2020, usually opt-in and bank-led under EBA guidelines; Hungary's blanket opt-out design reached more borrowers faster and was harder to unwind.
Limits: The numbers are in a PDF: the 1.6 million household customers on PDF page 38 (Box 3), the 44 percent of corporate loans on page 39, and the 18 March 2020 start and its automatic application on page 48 (Box 5). The 1.6 million is the MNB's own calculation from bank-reported data. Because the moratorium was opt-out, participation measures inertia as well as need, and the report says the moratorium does not prevent credit risk rising. The speed figure is the date of a rule, not of a payment: a moratorium costs the budget nothing up front and shifts the cost to banks and to borrowers who keep accruing interest. The report records that the Government would extend it from January 2021 for vulnerable debtors; the record does not cover the later extensions or the losses when it ended. The MNB proposed the measure, so it is reporting on its own advice.
๐ท๐ธSerbiasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
After the state of emergency of 15 March 2020, Serbia's Government presented a EUR 5.1 billion economic package on 31 March that included paying micro, small and medium firms one minimum wage per employee for three months if they cut staff by no more than 10 percent, and on 7 May 2020 the Ministry of Finance paid about RSD 32 billion as the first minimum wage for 1.055 million employees of 232,000 businesses.
The Ministry of Finance paid a flat minimum wage per employee straight into the accounts of every small private employer that opted in through the tax administration's portal, using payroll tax filings as the register, with a staff-retention condition.
Preconditions
Monthly individual payroll tax returns that already listed every employee by employer
A tax administration portal through which firms could opt in without a separate application
Fiscal space from a prior surplus, which the minister cited as what made the payment possible
Where else it has been used: A cruder, faster cousin of short-time work schemes; North Macedonia's 14,500 denar per employee measure of 2020 used the same flat design.
Limits: The page reports the Finance Minister announcing on 6 May that the payment would be made 'tomorrow', so the record rests on a ministerial statement of a payment due the next day, not on a Treasury outturn, and the figures are approximate ('priblizno 32 milijarde dinara'). The package date and the eligibility condition come from a second Government portal release of 31 March 2020 ('Za ublazavanje posledica epidemije na privredu 5,1 milijarda evra', srbija.gov.rs/vest/456168), which also names 15 March as the cut-off for firms that stopped trading; the 37 days are our count between the two releases. The subsidy was nearly universal for private small firms that applied, so it paid many employers who would have kept staff anyway, and the same release says firms also deferred RSD 29.5 billion of taxes and contributions. The page does not give the second and third payments or a final total. The 'condition' that firms not cut staff by more than 10 percent is a rule, and this record does not show whether it was enforced.
๐ง๐ฌBulgariasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Bulgaria's National Social Security Institute paid employers 60 percent of the wages and contributions of staff kept on during the COVID-19 emergency under Council of Ministers Decree No. 55 of 2020, starting with 68 employers and 1,065 employees on 15 April 2020, and by 4 March 2021 the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy reported BGN 884 million paid under the measure and 300,000 jobs kept.
The Council of Ministers decreed that the social security fund would pay 60 percent of wages and contributions for workers whose employers kept them on, with the employer paying the other 40 percent, and the Employment Agency approved applications that the social security institute then paid and published employer by employer.
Preconditions
Monthly employer declarations to the social security institute that identified each insured worker
An Employment Agency able to process employer applications in county offices
A social security fund with the liquidity to pay employers before the budget was revised
Where else it has been used: A short-time work design of the German type with a fixed state share; Bulgaria's distinctive move was publishing every paid employer by name, which made the scheme auditable by the public.
Limits: The BGN 884 million and the 300,000 jobs are a minister's statement on the ministry's own site, with no breakdown; 'jobs kept' is the number of supported positions, not a counterfactual estimate of jobs saved. The start figures are our sums from the National Social Security Institute's first payment list (nssi.bg, 'Izplateni kompensatsii po PMS No. 55 ot 2020 g.', file pms55_15042020.xls: 68 employers, 1,065 persons, BGN 274,274), one of 45 lists the Institute published to December 2021; one of them (14 May 2020) is truncated at the source and cannot be read, so we do not give a total from the lists. Speed was modest: the ministry reported only 643 employer applications covering 7,231 employees in late April 2020 (mlsp.government.bg, '643 zayavleniya ot rabotodateli sa postapili po skhemata 60/40'), and uptake grew through May and June. The decree date and the date of the emergency declaration are not on the pages opened, so the record times the response from the first payment, not from the shock.
๐ท๐ธSerbiasince 2014delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the May 2014 floods evacuated about 32,000 people and flooded the Kolubara open-pit mines that fuel 40 percent of Serbia's generating capacity, the state utility EPS dewatered the Tamnava West mine by the first quarter of 2015 and kept supply at pre-flood levels with no recorded shortages, and the Directorate of Water Management rebuilt or upgraded 71 km of flood protection that by October 2019 covered 24,944 households against a target of 9,000.
The government used an emergency loan to buy power while the state utility pumped out its flooded lignite mines, then redirected the savings into rebuilding river defences to a higher standard.
Preconditions
A vertically integrated state utility able to import power at short notice
An emergency lending window that disburses within months
A water directorate with designs ready for embankment works
Limits: The figures are the World Bank's, in a completion report on an emergency loan it financed and rated; the event figures are in para. 1 (printed page 6), the power and mine results in para. 45 (pages 16 to 17), and the flood protection figures in para. 51 (page 19). Most of the loan bought electricity imports for the 2014 to 2015 winter, so 'no shortages' partly measures money, not preparedness, and the original power target was cut when demand proved lower. The 24,944 households exceeds its target mainly because funds were moved into flood works at restructuring, with a 22-month extension; the target itself was set low. Five substations were procured but never installed for lack of permits, and two meteorological radars were lost to mis-procurement, both before closing. The record is recovery from one event and does not show that warnings or evacuation worked in 2014, when 51 people died.
After the May 2014 floods displaced about 90,000 people and directly affected about a million in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the two entities' agriculture and water ministries and Brcko District distributed US$27 million of emergency goods and restored 446 public service facilities to pre-flood condition against a target of 200, including more than 260 km of rural roads and 53,460 m of flood defences, by the project's June 2019 closing.
The state treasury on-lent an emergency loan to the two entities and Brcko District, whose ministries bought relief goods through strategic reserves and then rebuilt municipal and regional infrastructure from a list drawn from the joint needs assessment.
Preconditions
A joint recovery needs assessment agreed by all levels of government within weeks
Entity-level strategic reserves able to procure and distribute goods
Municipalities with project lists ready for rebuilding
Limits: The figures are the World Bank's, from a completion report on its own US$100 million emergency loan; the event figures are in the context section (printed page 5), the outcome table on page 13, and the road and flood defence figures on page 18. The 446 facilities exceeds its target partly because unused emergency-goods funds were moved into infrastructure in January 2016, so the target was not a fixed plan. 'Facilities' counts very different things, from a culvert to a bridge, and the report does not say how many were fully rebuilt. Emergency goods reached beneficiaries according to third-party audits in 2017, but some agricultural goods arrived late. The project closed six months after its December 2018 original date, five years after the floods, so this is slow recovery, not rapid response, and it covers one loan, not the whole post-flood programme financed by the EU and others.
๐ท๐ดRomaniasince 2004delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Romania's Ministry of Administration and Interior and Ministry of Regional Development completed seismic retrofitting of 44 high-risk public buildings, where about 23,350 people worked, and rolled out a modernised emergency communication system to 48 sites under a project approved in May 2004, after cutting the retrofit target from 84 buildings to 40 in 2010 and closing in June 2012 instead of December 2009.
The government used a development loan to strengthen the most dangerous public buildings in the Vrancea seismic zone and to give the emergency inspectorate a shared voice and data network, then trimmed the list as costs rose.
Preconditions
A seismic risk inventory that ranks public buildings
Counterpart budget that survives a fiscal crisis
Building codes aligned with the EU norms the designs must meet
Limits: The figures are the World Bank's, from a completion report on its own loan, in the PDO indicator table near the front of the document and the restructuring section. The report itself says there was no opportunity to test the retrofitted buildings in the absence of a major earthquake, so the record shows preparation, not demonstrated performance in a shock. The 44 exceeds a target already cut from 84 to 40 because of construction cost increases and currency depreciation, and three buildings were left unfinished when the 2010 to 2011 budgets did not cover ongoing works. The 2007 EU accession forced redesigns, and the government changed seven times in eight years. More than 350 public facilities were assessed at risk at baseline, so 44 is a small share, and the separate Bucharest programme for residential buildings at seismic risk is not covered.
๐ฒ๐ฉMoldovasince 2010delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Moldova's State Hydrometeorological Service, with the emergency situations department, installed a Doppler radar by June 2014 and extended the lead time of severe weather warnings from 10 minutes to 1 hour at baseline to 3 to 6 hours by 2016, against an original target of 12 hours, under a project approved in August 2010 that closed in September 2016, two years late.
The environment ministry's weather service bought a Doppler radar and forecasting systems and wired its warnings into the emergency department's command centre, so warnings reach responders hours rather than minutes ahead.
Preconditions
A national weather service with staff to run a radar and models
A link from the forecaster to the civil protection command centre
Budget to maintain the radar once the loan ends
Limits: The figures are the World Bank's, from a completion report on its own credit, in the PDO indicator table near the front of the document; the achieved lead time is a range (3 to 6 hours) and the record's metric takes its upper bound. The 12-hour target was formally revised down, so 'achieved' is against the lowered target. No named severe weather event is shown in which the warnings were issued and acted on, so the record documents capacity built, not capacity used; it is filed on the same terms as other warning-infrastructure records in this corpus. The report notes repeated management changes at the hydromet service, which threaten sustainability, and gives no later figure for radar uptime.
๐ฆ๐ฑAlbaniasince 2020still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Albania's government reported in November 2021, two years after the 26 November 2019 earthquake, that more than 33,400 families had received reconstruction and repair grants worth ALL12.7 billion, that 13,325 people were receiving rent bonuses while new homes were built, and that 27 schools had been completed, while promising 4,500 individual houses and 12,000 apartments by spring 2022.
The government created a reconstruction ministry and programme within months of the earthquake, paid rent bonuses to displaced families and repair grants to owners through municipalities, and built new housing blocks and schools on cleared sites with state and donor funds.
Preconditions
A damage assessment that classifies each building, so grants match damage
A state budget line and donor pledges large enough to fund rebuilding at once
Municipalities able to administer grants and clear sites
Limits: The source is the government's own promotional page on its flagship programme, in Albanian; the live kryeministria.al page sits behind a bot wall, so the cited copy is the Internet Archive capture of July 2026. The figures are counts of grants, with no report of how many repaired homes were verified, and 'more than 33,400' is a floor. The completion promises for spring 2022 (4,500 houses, 12,000 apartments, no trace of the earthquake) are on the same page, and no official figure was found showing whether they were met, so status is left as operating. The page says EUR300 million of grants pledged at the donors' conference were active in more than 30 projects; the delivery is the government's, but the money is not all domestic. Nothing here measures preparedness before the earthquake.
๐ฆ๐ฟAzerbaijansince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
After Azerbaijan's first COVID-19 case on 28 February 2020 and the first lockdown in March, the government paid a monthly allowance of AZN 190 to 600,000 unemployed citizens, formal and informal, from April to June 2020, and in 2020 also granted targeted social assistance to 9,000 newly poor families without the usual household assessment and extended expired assistance for 9,408 households.
The government created a temporary flat allowance for anyone who registered as having lost work, including informal workers, through an online registration with the State Employment Service, and relaxed the targeted social assistance rules so newly poor families could be added without a home assessment.
Preconditions
An online registration route with a telephone fallback through district employment centres
Budget resources to pay first and refinance part of the cost later from a donor loan
A targeted social assistance programme whose eligibility checks could be relaxed by decision
Limits: The figures are in paragraph 14 and footnote 4 on page 6 of 9 of a World Bank project information document, written a year later to prepare a loan that would retroactively finance the payment for 170,000 of the 600,000 recipients; it relays the government's figures and is not an evaluation. The document says 'from April to June 2020' but not whether all 600,000 were paid in April or how many months each received, so the speed shown is the month, not days; registration was online, with a phone route through district employment centres. 600,000 is a round number. The first case date and 'three lockdowns between March 2020 and January 2021' are in paragraph 4 (page 4). The document calls AZN 190 commensurate to the cost of living, and the payment stopped after three months; the 9,000 families added to targeted social assistance were few next to 600,000 allowance recipients, which suggests the standing safety net expanded little.
๐ฌ๐ชGeorgiasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Georgia, which had no unemployment benefit, announced a temporary GEL 200 monthly benefit for laid-off formal workers and a one-off payment for self-employed and informal workers on 24 April 2020, a month after declaring a state of emergency, and by September 2021 had paid 231,487 unemployed people and 307,236 self-employed people.
The government used the Revenue Service's payroll tax records to identify laid-off formal workers and pay them a flat monthly benefit through the State Employment Support Agency, and opened an online portal for a one-off payment to self-employed and informal workers with no declared income.
Preconditions
Monthly payroll tax declarations linking workers to employers and bank accounts
An employment agency able to verify eligibility against social assistance lists
External emergency finance (World Bank and AIIB) committed within weeks
Limits: Both counts are in one sentence on page 1 of the status report, with no table behind them and no date of first payment; the timing comes from the project appraisal document (http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/949581588712278110/pdf/Georgia-Emergency-COVID-19-Response-Project.pdf: state of emergency on 21 March 2020 in paragraph 9, printed page 12; the Prime Minister's 24 April announcement in paragraph 26, printed page 18; the GEL 200 benefit for up to six months and the GEL 300 one-off benefit in paragraphs 45 and 46). The speed shown is therefore 34 days from emergency to announced rule, not to money paid. The World Bank and AIIB co-financed the programme, the report notes that its indicator values cover only the IBRD share of some outputs, and the counts are cumulative people paid at least once, not people covered for six months. The benefit was temporary by design and Georgia still has no permanent unemployment insurance, so the rule change did not outlast the shock. The self-employed figure is described as people 'whose activity was affected', a looser category than the one-off benefit's eligibility rule.
๐ฏ๐ดJordansince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Jordan's National Aid Fund reused the Takaful cash-transfer platform after the March 2020 curfew, opened online registration for ten days in mid-April and had paid about 150,000 newly identified households by 10 May 2020, and 237,000 households had received three months of temporary cash support by March 2021.
The National Aid Fund opened the Takaful online registration platform to informal workers who had lost income, selected households with the Takaful targeting formula against linked administrative data, and paid them into e-wallets and bank accounts authorised by the central bank.
Preconditions
A cash-transfer registry and online enrolment platform built the year before
Central bank rules allowing the Fund to open e-wallets for beneficiaries remotely
Domestic charity accounts able to fund the first months before external finance arrived
Where else it has been used: The same reuse of a Takaful-style platform appears in Morocco (mar-tadamon-covid), where a health-assistance register played the role of the cash-transfer registry.
Limits: The 150,000 figure is in paragraph 60 of the appraisal document (printed page 28 of 60), and the curfew dates are in paragraphs 2 and 3 (printed page 9). The 237,000 figure is in a second World Bank document, the Implementation Status and Results Report of 26 April 2021, sequence 2 (http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/429691619464662394/pdf/Disclosable-Version-of-the-ISR-Jordan-Emergency-Cash-Transfer-COVID-19-Response-Project-P173974-Sequence-No-02.pdf, page 1), which also says the transfers cost about US$114 million, of which the government paid about US$103 million through national charity accounts and the project financed US$11 million retroactively. Both documents come from the lender to the programme, and the PAD figure is an 'about'. The speed is the delivery system's, not a new law's: the Takaful platform, its registry of almost one million households and digital payments were built from 2019 with World Bank, UNICEF, WFP and other donor support, so the response mostly reused prior investment. The emergency transfer lasted three months per household and the project's own PDO indicator for cash support through the project still read zero in that report because the loan became effective only on 11 November 2020: the fast part was financed domestically. Refugees, about 655,000 registered, were outside this programme and were served by UN agencies.
๐ฐ๐ฟKazakhstansince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
During the March to May 2020 state of emergency, Kazakhstan's government paid people who lost income because of business closures and lockdown KZT 42,500 per person per month, and about 4 million people received the payment.
The government declared a state of emergency and attached to it a flat monthly payment for people who had lost income because of closures and lockdown, paid through the state benefit system for the duration of the emergency.
Preconditions
Fiscal room for an anti-crisis package the World Bank put at 5.7 percent of GDP
Population and tax registers to check applicants against
A state benefit payment system already reaching most households
Limits: The figure is a rounded 'about 4 million people' in Box 1 on printed page 7 (PDF page 8) of a World Bank economic update; the Bank did not finance or evaluate the payment and relays the government's own figure. The government release with the exact count (gov.kz, Ministry of Labour and Social Protection) renders only through JavaScript and could not be opened for verification. The update gives the state of emergency's dates (quarantines from 19 March, lifted on 11 May 2020) but no date of first payment and no count of people paid in each month, so the speed claim rests on the payment having been made during an emergency that lasted under two months. The update publishes no targeting, error or rejection figures, so it cannot show how well the payment reached the people it was meant for. The update puts the whole anti-crisis package at 5.7 percent of GDP, of which this payment was one part. The payment was temporary and ended with the emergency.
๐ฑ๐งLebanonsince 2021still operatingbears on Institutional responsiveness
Lebanon's emergency cash transfer for the economic collapse that began in 2019 was approved by the World Bank in January 2021, rewritten by Parliament in March 2021 and declared effective only in July 2021, so that in October 2021 the number of households receiving basic cash transfers still stood at its 15,153 baseline against a target of 147,000; the programme later reached 158,770 households by March 2025.
The government borrowed for a new cash transfer rather than extending an existing one, and the loan had to pass Parliament, which amended it, so the programme waited for a revised law, a new government and fiduciary conditions before it could pay.
Preconditions
A cash-transfer instrument that requires parliamentary ratification of each external loan
No functioning domestic financing for safety nets during a banking and currency collapse
A donor-funded legacy programme whose end, in June 2024, showed how little was domestically owned
Where else it has been used: The contrast with Jordan (jor-naf-covid-cash), which paid 150,000 new households within two months by reusing a standing platform and domestic funds, is the point of the record.
Limits: The 15,153 is the PDO indicator table on pages 2 and 3 of the status report, identical at baseline (30 June 2020), March 2021 and October 2021; the approval, ratification and effectiveness dates are on page 1, which says Parliament's changes cut budget allocations for fiduciary activities and that the Bank judged some of them would impede implementation, and that the government still had to meet disbursement conditions so that payments could begin before the end of 2021. The 158,770 is in paragraph 4 of the World Bank restructuring paper of 13 May 2025 (https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099051325103513216/pdf/P173367-bed938d8-7d2a-4120-80a5-3da01c595ba8.pdf), which says about 94,000 households were enrolled in 2022 and 2023 and 65,000 were migrated in October 2024 from the National Poverty Targeting Program after it closed in June 2024 for lack of donor funding. The baseline households were beneficiaries of that older programme, not of this one. The record documents slowness, not failure: once paying, the programme reached roughly its target. The publisher is the lender, and part of the delay was the World Bank's own conditions and the process of agreeing them with Parliament across a change of government in September 2021; the record does not apportion blame. The start year is the year of approval, not the start of the crisis in late 2019.
๐ฒ๐ฆMoroccosince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Morocco created a Special Pandemic Fund in March 2020 and, through its Tadamon budget line, paid emergency cash transfers of MAD 800 to 1,200 to households of informal workers, reaching 4.2 million households in the first wave in April 2020 and 5.45 million across the first and second waves, for a total of MAD 16.15 billion by October 2020.
The Ministry of Economy and Finance opened a dedicated budget line in a pandemic fund, used the RAMED health-assistance register to pay listed informal-worker households by mobile phone without a new application, and opened a one-week web platform for informal households outside the register.
Preconditions
A large existing register (RAMED, about 30 percent of the population) with household composition and phone contacts
A payment channel that could reach unbanked households through mobile cash withdrawal
A fund able to pool budget and private contributions within days
Where else it has been used: The emergency transfers fed directly into the 2020 royal social protection reform and the unified social register; RAMED was replaced by AMO-Tadamon in December 2022.
Limits: The figures are in paragraphs 13 and 14 of a PDF (printed pages 12 and 13 of 103, PDF page 18): 4.2 million households in the April 2020 first wave, 1.25 million added later through the grievance mechanism, 5.45 million across the first two waves (2.8 million RAMED and 2.65 million non-RAMED), a third wave in July 2020, and MAD 16.150 billion paid by October 2020. The World Bank wrote this appraisal to finance the programme retroactively (US$160 million for the Tadamon transfers), so it is a lender describing a programme it was about to fund, not an independent evaluation, and the document gives no exact payment dates beyond the month. Speed is shown only in months: the fund was set up in March 2020, enrolment for non-RAMED households was open on 10 to 16 April, and the first wave was paid in April. The 5.45 million counts households paid at least once, not households kept whole: transfers were flat amounts by household size and stopped after three waves. The 1.25 million added through grievances means the first list missed about a fifth of the households it finally paid, so targeting was fast but rough. The fund was financed in large part by contributions from public enterprises, banks, firms and individuals, not only the budget.
๐ท๐บRussiasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Russia's government adopted rules on 11 May 2020, the day the President announced it, for a one-off payment of 10,000 rubles per child aged 3 to 16, applied for through the state services portal, and on the first day of payment, 1 June 2020, the Pension Fund paid it for 15.3 million children, more than 150 billion rubles.
The government made the payment universal by age, took applications only through the state services portal and the Pension Fund, and checked them automatically against the digitised civil registry and tax data, with a legal limit of five days to decide and three to pay.
Preconditions
A national e-government portal already used by tens of millions of people
A digitised civil registry of births linked to parents
Accumulated reserves, which the President cited when announcing the payment
Limits: The 15.3 million children are the Minister of Labour Anton Kotyakov's spoken figure at a briefing on 2 June 2020, the day after payment began, given as the count 'as of this moment' and described as paid in one day; the 'more than 150 billion' rubles he added is that count times 10,000 rubles, not a separate payment total. It is not a statistical release. He said about 22 million citizens were expected to use the payment. The decree date (No. 652 of 11 May 2020), the President's announcement on the same day, the 5-day review and 3-day payment limits and the 1 June start are in the government's notice of 11 May 2020 (http://government.ru/news/39668/), and the 21 days is our count from 11 May to 1 June. The government and its ministers are reporting on their own measure. The payment was universal for the age group, not targeted at income loss, so speed was bought by not checking need: eligibility needed only the child's age and the parent's application, which the portal could match to civil registry records that, the head of the Federal Tax Service said at the same briefing, had been back-filled with more than 25 million records. A universal per-child cash payment is a broad response; it says nothing about how fast the state adjusted targeted programmes such as unemployment benefits.
๐น๐ณTunisiasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
After the March 2020 lockdown, Tunisia's government announced in April 2020 a vertical and horizontal expansion of the AMEN Social programme: a TND 50 top-up for two months to all 260,000 poor households, two TND 200 transfers to 450,000 vulnerable households on the subsidised health card, and a one-off TND 200 transfer to 300,000 further vulnerable households enrolled through a new simplified platform.
The Ministry of Social Affairs topped up existing cash-transfer beneficiaries, paid households already listed for subsidised health care, and opened a simplified enrolment platform to reach vulnerable households outside the registry.
Preconditions
A social registry with accurate identification for most poor and vulnerable households
A legal framework for the AMEN Social programme adopted before the shock
Data cross-checks against other administrative registries to vet new applicants quickly
Limits: All three figures are in paragraph 23 of a PDF (printed page 15 of 86, PDF page 21), written a year after the event by the World Bank as it prepared a loan to finance the programme's next phase; it is a lender's description, not an audit, and the counts are round numbers. The document dates the announcement to April 2020 and says the households received the transfers, but it gives no payment dates, so the speed claim rests on the month of the announcement, not on the month money arrived. The 300,000 are households the Ministry of Social Affairs enrolled through a platform it built for the crisis, a horizontal expansion; the other two groups were already known to the state. The amounts were small (TND 200 is about US$73 at the document's rate), and the transfers were one-off or two-month measures. The responsiveness rested on the AMEN Social programme and registry built since 2019 with earlier World Bank support, which the same paragraph credits.
๐บ๐ฟUzbekistansince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Uzbekistan's government expanded its COVID-19 unemployment support from a one-off to multiple benefits, which the World Bank followed by restructuring its emergency project on 12 August 2020, and with that financing had paid US$50.77 million in low-income family allowances to more than 1,000,000 families and US$0.65 million in unemployment benefits to 19,700 people by 1 January 2021.
The Ministry of Finance channelled an emergency donor credit into the existing low-income family allowance and a temporary unemployment benefit, changing the benefit from one payment to several when the shock outlasted the first plan.
Preconditions
An existing means-tested family allowance with a beneficiary list
Emergency external finance, here an IDA credit approved within weeks
A presidential resolution to authorise spending, which was the slow step
Limits: The figures are in paragraphs 2 and 6 of a World Bank restructuring paper, the lender's account of its own project. The record shows slowness as much as speed: the project was approved on 24 April 2020 but became effective only on 14 July 2020, the paper says it took the government three months to issue the Presidential Resolution enabling implementation, and payments under the component began only in November 2020, more than six months after the project was approved. The 1,000,000 families is 'more than', the families were recipients of an existing allowance financed partly from the project rather than new beneficiaries, and the paper does not say how many were added because of the pandemic. Unemployment benefit reached only 19,700 people, which says how narrow formal unemployment support was. Support the government paid from its own budget outside this project is not covered by this source.
๐ฐ๐ฟKazakhstansince 2024delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Kazakhstan's government reported that during the spring 2024 floods, which it called the largest in 80 years, more than 120,000 people were rescued and placed in temporary accommodation centres, and that by December 2024 it had bought 5,767 homes, fully repaired 9,156 and built 2,680 new houses for owners of the 19,359 flooded homes inspected, while 36,455 families received one-off assistance.
The Ministry of Emergency Situations coordinated a national and regional headquarters that evacuated whole settlements by land and air, and the government then used its reserve to buy housing on the market, repair, and build new houses within the same year.
Preconditions
A civil protection system able to mobilise army, police and National Guard under one command
A government reserve fund large enough to pay for housing within months
A functioning housing market from which homes could be bought quickly in the affected regions
Limits: The government reports on its own response in a press review, with no independent verification, and the page exists only in Kazakh (the English and Russian addresses redirect to the home page); figures were translated by me. 'Rescued and placed in temporary accommodation' counts evacuations, not people saved from death, and the page gives no count of deaths or of people who stayed. The housing figures answer only for homes that were the owner's sole dwelling (19,359 inspected), so second homes and renters are outside them, and the three remedies (purchase, repair, new build) add to 17,603 against 19,359 inspected by my sum, so about 1,750 cases are not accounted for on the page. The page itself says the scale could not have been forecast, which bears on preparation: the response was large but the warning system did not anticipate the event, and the President afterwards created a Committee for the Prevention of Emergencies inside the ministry. Spending figures are nominal tenge. Status 'concluded' rests on a December 2024 account; later complaints about the quality of new houses, if any, were not checked.
๐ฆ๐ฒArmeniasince 1994delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Armenia's Ministry of Economy, through a project implementation unit, restarted reconstruction in the zone of the December 1988 Spitak earthquake that had stopped when Soviet work crews withdrew in 1991, and by April 1997 had provided 2,857 housing units against 2,069 planned, completed 10 factories against 7 and laid 41 km of water pipes against about 27 km, under an IDA credit closed in June 1997.
A small, politically insulated implementation unit under the economy ministry took over half-finished Soviet reconstruction sites and completed them through competitive local contracts, choosing nearly finished buildings to maximise habitable units per dollar.
Preconditions
Sunk investment in partly built blocks that could be finished cheaply
Competitive local contractors willing to bid in dollar-equivalent contracts
An external credit when the state budget could not fund reconstruction
Limits: The World Bank wrote the report on a credit of about US$28 million. The unit counts are in Table 5 (Key Indicators for Project Implementation, printed page 17), which is OCR text with errors (the bathhouse row repeats the housing figure). The earthquake left about 530,000 people homeless (Part I, para. 1), so 2,857 units is a small fraction of the need, delivered five to eight years after the shock; the record shows recovery capacity in a newly independent state restarting a stalled Soviet programme, not a timely national recovery. The ICR says beneficiaries were slow to move out of temporary 'domiks', and that many families were still in temporary shelter in 1997. Units count apartments of different kinds (completion of unfinished blocks, repair and strengthening) and the project's single-family starter houses were scaled back. The ICR rates implementation satisfactory and credits an independent implementation unit, not a ministry line department.
๐ฐ๐ฌKyrgyzstansince 1999delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After record floods in southern Kyrgyzstan in 1998 damaged about 1,000 houses, the Department of Water Resources rebuilt or built 27.4 km of river protection embankments against 8.8 km planned, directly protecting about 40,000 people, and in 2003 a flood greater than that of 1998 passed the new embankments without significant damage or overtopping.
After a record flood the water department rebuilt the failed river defences to a 1-in-200-year standard with more durable rock and gabion-mattress linings instead of patching them, and created a dedicated agency to maintain embankments.
Preconditions
Emergency credit available within months of the flood
Hydrological records long enough (from 1927) to set a design flood
A maintenance budget for the new agency, which the report flags as limited
Limits: The World Bank wrote the report on an IDA credit of about US$10 million and rated the outcome Satisfactory. The figures are in the outputs section and the summary of achievements; the 2003 test is described with a reference to Table 11.3 of the report, which is OCR text of a 2004 PDF. The 40,000 people protected is the report's estimate, not a count, and 'no significant damage' is the report's judgement; it also says sections downstream of the rebuilt embankments were weakened by the same 2003 floods and needed emergency repairs. The works took until March 2004 against a planned closing of September 2001, in part because floods in 2002 and 2003 swept away half-finished works and Uzbekistan closed its border to rock supplies. The record evidences preparation for the next flood at a few sites in three raions, not national flood preparedness, though the project set up a Flood and Mudflow Protection Agency responsible for some 460 km of embankments nationwide; whether that agency is still funded was not checked.
๐น๐ณTunisiasince 1984delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the October 1982 flood in Sfax killed at least 70 people and destroyed about 700 houses, Tunisia's Urban Hydraulics Directorate built an eight-km belt canal and rehabilitated the city's wadi channels and dikes, completing the works in June 1988 as scheduled, and the January 1990 floods that damaged much of central and southern Tunisia did not damage the protected area.
After a flood with an estimated 130-year return period, the urban hydraulics directorate built an intercepting canal around the city to divert runoff from the catchment above it, plus storm drains inside it, and set up a regional maintenance section.
Preconditions
A 1978 master plan and long hydrological series that let a feasibility study finish within three months
Land expropriation for a canal corridor on the urban edge
A maintenance unit with a recurring budget, which the report doubted
Limits: The World Bank, which lent US$25 million (US$22.3 million disbursed), wrote the report. The belt canal length is in the project description and the completion date in the timetable table (Table 2, planned and actual June 1988); 'completed according to the original schedule' is para. 5.01. The evidence that the works protected the city is one sentence noting that the January 1990 floods did not damage the project area, which the report says was acknowledged by the press and local residents; no rainfall or discharge comparison is given, so the 1990 event may have been smaller in Sfax than 1982. The report warns that protection depends on maintenance funding without cost recovery, and recommends an impact evaluation within five years; none was read. This is a 1984 to 1988 build and says nothing about current Tunisian flood preparedness. The text is OCR of a scanned 1991 report.
๐ฆ๐ฟAzerbaijansince 2019delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Azerbaijan's Minister of Emergency Situations reported on 5 December 2019, ten months after the February 2019 Shamakhi earthquake, that 580 houses had been built and 1,175 houses restored in Shamakhi district with state funds, while three apartment buildings with 174 flats were, by the President's account on the same page, still under construction.
The Ministry of Emergency Situations acts as the builder after an earthquake, demolishing damaged houses and building replacements with state money within the year, under direct presidential instruction instead of through insurance.
Preconditions
A ministry with its own construction capacity and direct budget access
Oil-revenue fiscal room to fund reconstruction without insurance
Political priority set from the top, which also makes the reporting promotional
Limits: The figures are spoken by the emergency minister during a presidential visit and published on the President's website, in a text that is largely praise of the President; there is no independent verification, no count of houses damaged to set them against, and no cost. The President says on the same page that the three high-rise buildings with 174 flats were still under construction and that work was also done in Aghsu and Ismayilli districts, which the figures do not cover. The page says there were no fatalities, which reflects the earthquake's size as much as preparedness. The earlier May 2012 Zagatala and Gakh earthquake, where the ministry's commission found 3,336 private houses unusable in Gakh alone and construction had started on 266 by September 2012 (president.az articles 4823 and 5940), shows the same model at larger scale but with no completion figure read. The record shows rapid state-financed reconstruction, not risk reduction: nothing on the page concerns seismic codes or warning.
๐บ๐ฟUzbekistansince 2020delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the Sardoba reservoir dam broke on 1 May 2020 in Syrdarya region, Uzbekistan's government evacuated about 90,000 people from 24 mahallas of three districts, and by October 2020 had built 37 five-storey blocks with 1,480 flats in Sardoba district's Dustlik mahalla, given free to flood victims, and 86 five-storey buildings in Sardoba and Mirzaabad districts.
The president set up a government commission, assigned each region of the country a mahalla to rebuild with its own construction teams, and the state built free apartment blocks for flood victims within five months.
Preconditions
Central control over regional governments and state construction firms
Budget and donor money (including a private US$10 million donation) available within weeks
Land under destroyed houses left with owners, which eased acceptance of flats
Limits: The shock was itself a failure of preparedness: the president's own site calls it a 'man-made accident on the reservoir', a dam that failed within a few years of filling, so the record shows recovery after a failure the state caused, not readiness. The figures come from presidential news items (the 5 May address for the evacuation, the 13 October item for the flats, and 'Construction projects reported', 26 October 2020, https://president.uz/en/lists/view/3916, for the 86 buildings) with no independent check, and they mix counts of flats and of buildings. The plans of 15 May 2020 (lists/view/3572 to 3574) name about 4,500 affected homeowners and further blocks of 360 flats in Mirzaabad and 800 in Akaltyn plus repairs to hundreds of cottages; whether those were finished was not read, so the 1,480 flats show part of the programme. The evacuation figure is a round number in a presidential address, with no breakdown or timing beyond 'immediately', and the same address reports a separate storm in Bukhara region days earlier. Builders were mobilised from every region, so the speed reflects command mobilisation rather than a standing recovery system.
๐น๐ฏTajikistansince 1998delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After floods in 1998 caused damage estimated at US$40 million, about 2 percent of GDP, Tajikistan's Republican Project Coordination Unit for Liquidation of Consequences of Natural Disasters had repaired about 210 km of roads and fully completed seven bridges and structures by the credit's closing on 31 December 2001, with about 80 km of road repairs and three bridges unfinished, and the World Bank rated the outcome unsatisfactory.
A government emergency coordination unit repaired flood-damaged bridges, roads and embankments with an emergency IDA credit through local contractors, without the supervision capacity to hold them to quality.
Preconditions
An emergency lending window that disburses within months
Local contractors with experience of the work, which were scarce after the civil war
A coordination unit with financial controls the lender trusts, which it lacked
Limits: The World Bank wrote the report and rated the outcome Unsatisfactory and sustainability Unlikely, mainly over poor works quality and financial management; it refused a further extension and closed the credit as planned. The record is filed as evidence of weak recovery capacity, not of success. The report says the roads actually damaged totalled about 105 km of the 210 km repaired, that works quality was poor because local firms lacked experience and supervision, and that only three of eight planned power substations were completed. The project came a year after the end of a five-year civil war, with a supplemental credit after further floods in 1999, so capacity was at a low point. The text is OCR of a scanned 2002 report, and the data sheet and narrative disagree on the original closing date (January 2000 against June 2001).
๐ท๐บRussiasince 2014still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Russia's federal hydrometeorological service Roshydromet raised the accuracy of its warnings on hazardous hydrometeorological events delivered to regional emergency agencies from 81 to 83 percent to 91 percent, and of its warnings on natural hazards from 88 to 95.8 percent, between 2014 and the end of 2022 under its second national modernization project.
The national weather service modernised its observation network, computing and forecasting models over two successive World Bank projects, and measured itself on the verified accuracy of hazard warnings passed to emergency agencies.
Preconditions
A national hydromet service with a single federal budget and network
Successive projects over a decade, the first (RHM-1) building the baseline
A verification method agreed with WMO so accuracy is measured the same way each year
Limits: The World Bank wrote the report without site visits or formal interviews, because it suspended disbursements on 19 March 2022 (para. 1), so the indicator values are Roshydromet's own figures as reported to the Bank. The figures are in para. 49 and the results annex (ICR pages 18 and 37). Warning accuracy is a forecast-verification statistic, not a measure of whether warnings reached people or prompted action, and the record ties it to no single disaster; it is a preparedness capacity figure of the same kind as the South African radar availability record. The report says the improved reliability let Roshydromet sign, for the first time, binding agreements with the Ministry of Emergencies on hazard warnings. The final cost was US$174.89 million, 25 percent above appraisal, with the government financing what the Bank suspension left. Status 'operating' assumes the system still runs; nothing after 2022 was read.
๐ช๐ฌEgyptsince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Egypt's health authorities reported to WHO that 56,907,319 people, 56 per 100 population, had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose by 31 December 2023, from a first dose given on 24 January 2021, with 42,337,175 (41 per 100) completing the primary series.
Egypt's health ministry ran a national COVID-19 campaign through its primary care network and mass vaccination sites and reported progress to WHO.
Preconditions
A routine immunisation programme and cold chain
A supply of doses large enough for a national campaign, however obtained
Registers good enough to count who received a second dose
Limits: The figures are Egypt's own reports to WHO (DATA_SOURCE 'REPORTING'), with no independent coverage survey behind them. Completion of the primary series reached 41 per 100 and boosters 15,217,352 people (15 per 100), so the record shows a partial delivery. The row reports 102,191,677 doses in total, 100 per 100 population. The VACCINES_USED field is empty, so the record cannot show which products were used or where the doses came from, and it evidences distribution only. The per-100 rates divide by WHO's population estimate. Vaccination is a response to one shock, not proof of general preparedness, and it is filed under the precedent of bol-covid-vaccination and ven-covid-vaccination as a judgement call because no hazard-specific delivery with an official figure was found for this country in this batch. The source is a CSV with no prose; the numbers are read from one row. The cited URL is the blob the WHO dashboard serves, the same one bol-covid-vaccination cites.
๐ฏ๐ดJordansince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Jordan's health authorities reported to WHO that 4,821,579 people, 47 per 100 population, had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose by 21 August 2022, from a first dose given on 13 January 2021, with 4,558,313 (45 per 100) completing the primary series.
Jordan's health ministry ran a national COVID-19 campaign through its primary care network and mass vaccination sites and reported progress to WHO.
Preconditions
A routine immunisation programme and cold chain
A supply of doses large enough for a national campaign, however obtained
Registers good enough to count who received a second dose
Limits: The figures are Jordan's own reports to WHO (DATA_SOURCE 'REPORTING'), with no independent coverage survey behind them. Completion of the primary series reached 45 per 100 and boosters 682,211 people (7 per 100), so the record shows a partial delivery. The row was last updated on 21 August 2022, earlier than most, so later doses are missing; first-dose reach stayed below half of WHO's population estimate. The VACCINES_USED field is empty, so the record cannot show which products were used or where the doses came from, and it evidences distribution only. The per-100 rates divide by WHO's population estimate. Vaccination is a response to one shock, not proof of general preparedness, and it is filed under the precedent of bol-covid-vaccination and ven-covid-vaccination as a judgement call because no hazard-specific delivery with an official figure was found for this country in this batch. The source is a CSV with no prose; the numbers are read from one row. The cited URL is the blob the WHO dashboard serves, the same one bol-covid-vaccination cites.
๐ฑ๐งLebanonsince 2021delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Lebanon's health authorities reported to WHO that 2,740,227 people, 40 per 100 population, had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose by 22 December 2022, from a first dose given on 14 February 2021, with 2,414,223 (35 per 100) completing the primary series.
Lebanon's health ministry ran a national COVID-19 campaign through its primary care network and mass vaccination sites and reported progress to WHO.
Preconditions
A routine immunisation programme and cold chain
A supply of doses large enough for a national campaign, however obtained
Registers good enough to count who received a second dose
Limits: The figures are Lebanon's own reports to WHO (DATA_SOURCE 'REPORTING'), with no independent coverage survey behind them. Completion of the primary series reached 35 per 100 and boosters 660,249 people (10 per 100), so the record shows a partial delivery. The campaign ran through Lebanon's 2019 to 2022 financial collapse and the August 2020 port explosion, and first-dose reach stopped at 40 per 100, which is the more informative reading: a partial delivery by a state in crisis. Donor financing of the doses, if any, is not shown in the CSV. The VACCINES_USED field is empty, so the record cannot show which products were used or where the doses came from, and it evidences distribution only. The per-100 rates divide by WHO's population estimate. Vaccination is a response to one shock, not proof of general preparedness, and it is filed under the precedent of bol-covid-vaccination and ven-covid-vaccination as a judgement call because no hazard-specific delivery with an official figure was found for this country in this batch. The source is a CSV with no prose; the numbers are read from one row. The cited URL is the blob the WHO dashboard serves, the same one bol-covid-vaccination cites.
๐ณ๐ฟNew Zealandsince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Cabinet agreed a 12-week wage subsidy on 16 March 2020, the Government announced it on 17 March, and the Ministry of Social Development paid employers on average within three and a half days of an application, paying more than NZ$13 billion across three stages by the end of December 2020.
Cabinet approved a flat per-employee subsidy paid as a lump sum to employers, and the Ministry of Social Development ran it through its existing benefit payment systems on applicant self-declaration, with Inland Revenue data used for checks after payment.
Preconditions
A payment agency with bank details and identity data for most employers and workers already on file
A fiscal position that allowed NZ$5.1 billion to be committed within a day and raised to NZ$9.3 billion within a week
Political acceptance of overpayment risk, recovered afterwards by audit and voluntary repayment
Where else it has been used: The same flat-rate, employer-paid design was used in Australia's JobKeeper (March 2020); New Zealand reused its own scheme for the August 2020 and 2021 resurgences.
Limits: The live OAG pages answer scripted requests with HTTP 403; the text was read on 2026-10-02 from the Internet Archive copy (https://web.archive.org/web/2026/https://oag.parliament.nz/2021/wage-subsidy/part3.htm), with the dates in Part 1 (paragraphs 1.12 to 1.13) and the 3.5 days in paragraph 3.3. The average is the Ministry of Social Development's figure as reported by the auditor, with no distribution: it does not say how long the slowest payments took. Speed was bought with a high-trust design in which applicants declared their own eligibility; by 5 March 2021 the Ministry had received 20,973 repayments worth NZ$726.2 million, about 5 percent of payments, and nearly NZ$300 million went to public organisations before decisions were made to return money. The NZ$13 billion is a spending figure, not a measure of jobs saved: the Government's estimate that the scheme indirectly supported about 1.8 million employees is not an outcome measure, and the auditor notes it could not determine with certainty how many recipients could have used other support. The audit covers the scheme to early 2021 and not the later 2021 stages.
๐ฏ๐ฒJamaicasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
From March 2020 the Government of Jamaica built the CARE programme on its PATH cash transfer and tax registration systems, paying cash transfers to 458,295 beneficiaries (183,326 men and 274,969 women) for job and income losses and a COVID-19 PATH grant to about 266,100 PATH beneficiaries within the first year of the pandemic.
The Ministry of Finance created a family of temporary grants (SET Cash for those who lost jobs, general grants for registered self-employed workers, compassionate grants for others) and paid them by matching applications against tax registration numbers, while the Ministry of Labour and Social Security paid an extra PATH grant through the existing conditional cash transfer.
Preconditions
A tax registration number held by most adults, which let the government verify applicants it had no benefit record for
An existing conditional cash transfer (PATH) with a beneficiary roll and payment channel
Fiscal buffers built during the 2013 to 2019 consolidation, which paid for the response before external finance arrived
Limits: Both totals are published in the ICR's results framework (Annex 1, page 23: 458,295 and 266,100) and equal the sums of the male and female counts in Table 3 (page 18); the text on page 12 says 'more than 450,000 beneficiaries', 6.6 percent above target. The CARE measures were prior actions of a World Bank development policy loan approved in 2021, so the lender wrote the targets and rates its own operation (Moderately Satisfactory overall). The construct is speed, and the ICR gives no elapsed time from shock to first payment: it dates the measures to Cabinet decisions from March 2020 and says the PATH grant reached households 'within the first year of the pandemic', with beneficiaries determined in mid-2020. Eligibility for SET Cash covered job losses from 10 March 2020, so the rule was written to the shock, but the record cannot say whether money arrived in weeks or months. The ICR notes the government did not collect data on all indicators (for example, tourism jobs retained under BEST Cash). Beneficiary counts are not household counts and may overlap across grants.
๐ง๐ฉBangladeshsince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Bangladesh's Department of Social Services paid old age, widow and disability allowance entitlements early from 25 March 2020 to 30 June 2020, reaching about 4.36 million beneficiaries through its digital government-to-person payment system, and the World Bank reimbursed US$165.84 million within 16 days of the government's July 2020 request.
The social services department advanced payment of existing allowances through the government-to-person system that pays straight into beneficiaries' bank and mobile money accounts, and a contingent emergency component in an existing World Bank loan refinanced the outlay after the fact.
Preconditions
A government-to-person payment platform already paying allowances into individual accounts
Mobile money accounts held by most beneficiaries
A contingent emergency clause in an active loan, so that refinancing did not need a new operation
Limits: The figures are in a PDF: the 4.36 million in paragraph 44 (page 10) and indicator I.11, and the dates in Annex 6 (page 31). The World Bank financed the project and the ICR praises its own instrument: the 16 days measure how fast the Bank reimbursed spending already made, not how fast the government acted, since the financing was retroactive for transfers paid from 25 March to 30 June 2020. The government's own change was modest: it paid existing beneficiaries of existing allowances early and through mobile money, and the source reports no new beneficiaries; other COVID-19 transfers paid outside these allowances are not covered by this record. The ICR also records the limits of shock response: Component 5, a cash transfer for people injured in the 2024 uprising, had policies and systems in place but was never paid, because the government's prefinancing did not arrive, and the allocation was cancelled. The poverty database meant to target new shocks (the National Household Database) never became usable.
๐ฒ๐ฒMyanmarsince 2020dismantledbears on Institutional responsiveness
Under its COVID-19 Economic Relief Plan, Myanmar's government distributed food to about 5.4 million households in April 2020 and cash transfers that had reached about 6 million vulnerable households by November 2020, and the World Bank reported in July 2021 that these transfers had come to a sudden halt after the military takeover of 1 February 2021.
The civilian government widened its maternal and child cash transfer and social pensions and set up emergency food and cash distributions through ward and village administrators, using community identification of the neediest households because no national poverty registry existed.
Preconditions
A functioning civilian administration down to ward and village tract level
Donor and budget finance that could be reallocated within weeks
Political continuity, which is the precondition the 2021 takeover removed
Limits: The 6 million and the halt are in one sentence on printed page 38 of the July 2021 Monitor ('reached about 6 million vulnerable households by November 2020 have come to a sudden halt'). The source does not say who stopped the transfers, by what decision, or whether every government transfer stopped: the line on printed page 43 that 'all government cash transfer programs and remittances stopped' is an assumption of the Bank's poverty simulation (method in Annex 1, page 51), not an observation, so the record does not claim that the maternal and child cash transfer or the social pensions ended. The food distribution to about 5.4 million households in April 2020 and repeated cash payments of 40,000 kyat to 5.4 million households in July and August 2020, rising to 5.6 million in September and 6.1 million in November, are the government's figures as relayed by the December 2020 Monitor (Coping with COVID-19, https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/906171608086222905/pdf/Myanmar-Economic-Monitor-Coping-with-COVID-19.pdf, printed pages 52 and 66), which notes its own survey found lower numbers. The figures are approximate and dated by month only, so the speed of the 2020 response is shown only by month. The COVID-19 transfers were emergency rounds of modest size (the December 2020 Monitor calls the support far from meeting needs), so part of what stopped was temporary by design; the reversal is that they stopped suddenly during a deeper crisis rather than being replaced. The halt followed a coup, not a policy judgement on the programme, and the source does not separate loss of finance, loss of donor support and loss of administrative capacity. A World Bank country monitor is an international source reporting on the government's programme, not the government's own accounts.
๐ฒ๐ณMongoliasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Mongolia's parliament passed the Law on Exemptions for Social Insurance Contributions and Assistance from the Unemployment Insurance Fund on 9 April 2020, waiving contributions retroactively from 1 April to 30 September 2020 for voluntary contributors and affected employers and workers, and 152,475 workers had received relief under the World Bank-financed part of the measure by 31 December 2020.
Parliament legislated a time-limited waiver of social insurance contributions for employers and workers hit by the pandemic, administered by the social insurance administration through its contribution records, with a development loan refinancing part of the foregone revenue.
Preconditions
A contribution-based social insurance system with employer and worker records
A parliament able to pass emergency legislation within weeks
External finance to backfill the insurance fund
Limits: The 152,475 (71,894 women) is an indicator in an implementation status report, not a completion report, and it covers only the part of the relief the World Bank refinanced (US$10 million); the Project Appraisal Document of June 2020 (https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/815051592878000582/pdf/Mongolia-Emergency-Relief-and-Employment-Support-Project.pdf, paragraph 22) gives the law's date and expected the whole measure to reach about 120,000 voluntary contributors and over 400,000 workers and 38,000 employers at about US$228 million, so the national total is larger and is not in this source. The 8 days is our arithmetic from those two dates and flatters the speed: the law was retroactive, so it says nothing about when employers actually stopped paying. The relief was part of a March 2020 stimulus package; waived contributions weaken the social insurance fund, a cost the indicator does not show. The ISR is the lender reporting on its own project.
๐ฑ๐ฐSri Lankasince 2022delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
After Sri Lanka suspended external debt service on 12 April 2022, the government topped up Samurdhi and categorical cash transfers to Rs 5,000 to 7,500 per family per month from May to December 2022 for 2.5 million existing recipients and 0.8 million waitlisted recipients, raising spending on these programmes to Rs 142 billion in 2022.
The government used the existing Samurdhi and categorical allowance rolls, plus the waiting list of households already screened but not enrolled, to add a flat monthly top-up within weeks of the debt standstill, with multilateral emergency loans paying for it.
Preconditions
Existing transfer rolls and a waiting list of pre-screened households
Emergency multilateral financing available within weeks of a default
Payment channels that kept working during the 2022 fuel shortages
Limits: The recipient counts and the Rs 142 billion are the government's own statement in its Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (attached to the Letter of Intent of 6 March 2023), published by the IMF, not an IMF measurement; the 3.3 million is our sum of the 2.5 and 0.8 million, which the staff report also gives as about 3.3 million beneficiaries at end-2022. The eLibrary HTML has no page numbers. The top-ups were financed by emergency assistance from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, so the speed reflects donor money as well as the government's decision. The source gives the months, not the date of first payment, so the elapsed time from the April 2022 debt standstill to payment is known only to within a month or two. The staff report itself says the real value of cash transfers eroded in 2022, with poorer households facing higher inflation, and that Samurdhi targeting was poor (38 percent of the poorest quintile covered in 2019, 12 percent of the richest receiving transfers), so the speed of the top-up does not show that the money reached the right households. The 2023 replacement of Samurdhi by the Aswesuma scheme is a separate, slower reform and is not covered here.
๐ณ๐ตNepalsince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness
Nepal Rastra Bank's monetary policy of 17 July 2020 expanded its subsidised refinance facility to five times the available fund for COVID-19 affected businesses, and by mid-July 2021 Rs 148.75 billion had been approved to 48,890 borrowers, against Rs 7.49 billion of refinance outstanding a year earlier.
The central bank turned an existing subsidised refinance window into a pandemic credit programme by multiplying its size, setting sector rates (1 percent special, 2 percent small business, 3 percent general) and letting commercial banks, development banks, finance companies and microfinance institutions on-lend it.
Preconditions
A standing refinance facility with procedures banks already used
A banking system with liquidity and branch reach to on-lend quickly
A central bank willing to take credit-allocation decisions by sector
Limits: The URL serves a PDF, which NRB labels an unofficial translation; the 7.49 billion baseline is in the Monetary Policy for 2020/21 (https://www.nrb.org.np/ofg/monetary-policy-2020-21-full-text-english-version/, paragraph 48) and the expansion in paragraphs 100 to 103 of the same document. The central bank reports on its own scheme. 'Approved' is not disbursed, and the two figures are different measures (an annual stock against a cumulative approval), so the comparison shows scale, not a like-for-like increase. The rule changed about four months after the March 2020 lockdown, at the regular annual monetary policy rather than in an emergency statement, so the speed is moderate. Uptake was uneven: under the same document the business continuity loan for tourism and small firms to pay wages reached only Rs 956.7 million, and 30 percent of refinance could go through customer evaluation or microfinance lump sums that the source does not break down. Refinance at 1 to 3 percent with borrowers paying 3 to 5 percent went to borrowers banks chose, and the document gives no count of first-time or small borrowers. Other relief in the same section (repayment extensions for Rs 93.63 billion of loans, restructuring of Rs 129.21 billion) is not added here.
After restricting non-essential activity in March 2020, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago paid a Salary Relief Grant of TT$1,500 a month for three months through the National Insurance Board, spending TT$226.3 million on it in fiscal 2020 against a TT$490 million allocation, and the Ministry of Social Development and Family Services paid income support to 46,533 people outside the national insurance scheme.
46,533 persons, persons receiving covid-19 income support (ministry of social development and family services), 2020-09. 226.3 million TT$, salary relief grants paid in fiscal 2020 (october 2019 to september 2020), of a tt$490 million allocation, 2020-09. Ministry of Finance, Trinidad and Tobago, Review of the Economy 2020, retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
The government split its pandemic income support by registry: the National Insurance Board paid a flat grant to registered workers who were terminated, suspended or lost income, and the social development ministry paid income support and food cards to people outside the insurance scheme.
Preconditions
A national insurance register with employer and contribution records
A social assistance ministry with an existing public assistance and food card system
Fiscal room from energy revenues and the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund
Limits: The figures are in a PDF: the 46,533 is footnote 54 on printed page 85 (Labour Force and Employment), the TT$226.3 million is on printed page 98 (Transfers to Households) and the TT$490 million allocation is in Box 4 that follows. The ministry is reporting on its own government's programme in a pre-budget document, with no audit. The source gives no date of first payment and no count of Salary Relief Grant recipients, so speed is shown only by the fiscal year: money was paid within the six months to September 2020. Less than half of the Salary Relief Grant allocation was spent in fiscal 2020, which may mean fewer eligible claims, slow processing or payments falling into fiscal 2021; the source does not say which. Eligibility for the grant depended on national insurance registration, so informal workers relied on the smaller income support channel. Persons and grants may overlap across programmes.
๐ฒ๐ฒMyanmarsince 2017delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Myanmar's Ministry of Construction and rural roads department had used US$37.2 million of a US$200 million IDA credit approved in July 2016 for recovery from the 2015 floods and landslides, rehabilitating 60 km of rural roads, 10 percent of the target, and starting no national road works in Chin State, when disbursements stopped after the military takeover of February 2021, and the project closed on its original December 2021 date with an Unsatisfactory outcome rating.
After the 2015 floods the government took an emergency recovery credit for roads, bridges and community works, but slow procurement, safeguards breaches and then the 2021 coup left most of the money unspent.
Preconditions
Agencies able to design and procure civil works quickly after a disaster
Safeguards compliance on politically sensitive roads
A government the lender could keep financing
Where else it has been used: Same stop date as mmr-nep; the contrast with Nepal's earthquake housing (npl-ehrp), delivered through cash grants rather than procured works, is the useful one.
Limits: The disbursement figures are on the ICR datasheet (pages 1 to 2) and the 60 km rural road figure, 10 percent of target, is in the component review (page 12); all were read from the plain-text version. The shortfall was mostly in place before the coup: by September 2020, four years after approval, US$27.4 million had been disbursed (ISR table, page 3), the national roads in Chin State never started because donor and government-financed linked works broke safeguards, design work for the large roads was unfinished, and in July 2020 the government requested a 23-month extension that was never processed. The World Bank's pause of all disbursements in February 2021 under its policy on de facto governments then fixed the outturn, so part of the Unsatisfactory rating reflects the lender's stop rather than the ministries' work. The ICR had no contact with the authorities after the takeover and no borrower report, so later works financed by other sources are not counted. US$12.4 million of goods under component 3 were procured and distributed with UNOPS support, so that part was not delivered by national procurement. Recovery of one flood event says little about warning or evacuation capacity, which this project did not measure. The 2015 floods themselves, and any relief delivered in 2015, fall outside it. Nothing delivered was lost, so this is a slow delivery and not a reversal.
๐ต๐ฐPakistansince 2006delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Pakistan's Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority inspected all 463,243 houses due for reconstruction in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after the October 2005 earthquake and certified 438,789 of them, 95 percent, as compliant with seismic-resistant standards by the time the World Bank credit closed in May 2011.
A federal authority with army support paid owner-driven housing grants in four tranches, each conditional on an inspection against a seismic-resistant design, and trained masons to build to it.
Preconditions
A damage census done within weeks
Military logistics in mountainous terrain
Bank branches or mobile payment points reaching rural households
Where else it has been used: Nepal (npl-ehrp) copied the tranche and inspection design after 2015; it is Sri Lanka's tsunami ICR (lka-tsunami-housing), not this one, that names Pakistan's programme as having learned from Sri Lanka's homeowner-driven model.
Limits: The table is in Annex 2 (printed page 23) and was read from the plain-text version. The same annex's text gives a different base, 353,931 houses to be reconstructed of which 337,177 were completed, and says 3.8 percent of eligible houses saw no work at all; the record uses the table, and the two figures cannot be reconciled from the document. The data are ERRA's own, compiled from army monitoring teams and partner organisations. Compliance at certification is not occupancy or durability. The programme cost about US$1.5 billion, of which the World Bank credit financed part, and the credit was later enlarged to cover the 2010 floods, which are outside this figure. It is a 2006 to 2011 delivery and says nothing about Pakistan's response to the 2022 floods.
๐ฑ๐ฐSri Lankasince 2005delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Sri Lanka's government paid owner-driven cash grants through two state banks, with IDA refinancing, to 47,864 Phase I beneficiaries after the December 2004 tsunami, of whom a 100 percent audit found 44,944 eligible, and the physical completion rate for Phase I houses was 94 percent when the programme closed in September 2008.
The government paid fixed cash grants in tranches through two state banks to households rebuilding on their own land, with divisional secretaries certifying eligibility and IDA refinancing the banks.
Preconditions
State banks with branches in every affected division
A buffer-zone policy settled enough to know who rebuilds where
Local administrations able to certify eligibility and progress
Where else it has been used: The ICR names Pakistan's 2005 earthquake programme (pak-erra-housing) as built on this model.
Limits: Both figures are in paragraph 2.2.6 of the ICR (printed pages 6 to 7), read from the plain-text version. They cover Phase I houses outside the coastal buffer zone only, about 68 percent of the homeowner programme's Phase I, not the whole national reconstruction of more than 110,000 damaged houses, and the donor-driven programme is excluded. About 6 percent of those paid were found ineligible, section 2.4.6 reports that 93 percent of beneficiaries with unfinished houses in the north and east named insufficient funds as the obstacle, and Annex 2 reports further damage to reconstructed houses after hostilities resumed in 2006, especially in Vaharai in Batticaloa District. The completion rate is from the government's own monitoring, reported by the World Bank. The figures describe recovery from one event and not warning or evacuation.
๐ฑ๐ฆLaossince 2010delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Laos's Ministry of Public Works and Transport repaired about 1,100 km of roads, including small and wooden bridges, damaged by Typhoon Ketsana in September 2009 across five southern provinces, out of about 1,842 km the post-disaster assessment found damaged, through a recovery component budgeted at US$8.8 million, and in 2011 used the contingency fund the project created to spend US$3.63 million repairing 28.6 km of National Road 13 North after Typhoons Haima and Nock Ten.
The public works ministry folded post-typhoon road repairs into a running road project and created a standing contingency fund that it could draw on within weeks of the next storm.
Preconditions
A damage assessment done soon after the event
A road project already under way with procurement in place
A contingency line the ministry can trigger without a new loan
Limits: The damaged length is in paragraph 3 (page 5), the component in paragraph 11, the contingency fund use in paragraph 33, and the 1,100 km result in the results annex, all read from the plain-text version. The results table dates the achievement to February 2017 against a revised target date of September 2012; paragraph 32 says 55 percent of the damaged roads, against a target of 60 percent, had been rehabilitated by the end of 2011, about two years after the storm, and that the remaining 45 percent was completed by the government with other funds, at a date the ICR does not give. The 1,100 km is a rounded target reported as met, not a measured count. The repair money came from the IDA Crisis Response Window, and the component spent US$10.6 million against US$8.8 million at approval (Annex 3), so the delivery is the ministry's but the financing was external. The World Bank rated the project Highly Satisfactory.
๐ณ๐ฟNew Zealandsince 2011delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
New Zealand's Earthquake Commission had practically completed 66,252 home repairs under its Canterbury Home Repair Programme by 30 June 2015, after the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes damaged about 180,000 homes, missing the December 2014 completion target it had brought forward from December 2015, with about 8 to 10 percent of repairs needing additional work after completion.
The state natural-disaster insurer took on managed repairs itself, contracted one construction firm to project-manage tens of thousands of jobs, and paid for it from a pre-funded disaster fund and reinsurance.
Preconditions
A pre-funded public catastrophe fund with reinsurance
One contractor able to mobilise a regional workforce
Building inspection capacity to check repairs as they are signed off
Limits: The 66,252 figure, the missed December 2014 target and the 8 to 10 percent rework estimate are in Part 2 of the 2015 follow-up audit; the June 2013 figure is from the Auditor-General's 2013 overview (https://ao.parliament.nz/2013/eqc). The Auditor-General's site at oag.parliament.nz refused scripted requests and the same pages were read at ao.parliament.nz. The Auditor-General says it could not reach an overall conclusion on quality: an MBIE review reported in Part 3 of the same audit found 26 of 74 sampled EQC repairs non-compliant with the structural or durability provisions of the Building Code, and the rework rate is EQC's own estimate. Repair counts are Fletcher Construction's and EQC's figures. The programme covered homes with damage under the EQC cap; about 20,000 more expensive claims went to private insurers and are outside it. Later remedial work on repaired homes, which continued for years and generated litigation, is not quantified here.
๐ฏ๐ฒJamaicasince 2021still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
Jamaica's government received confirmation in November 2025 of a full US$150 million payout under the catastrophe insurance it had bought from the World Bank, backed by a catastrophe bond issued in 2024 and renewing cover first placed in 2021, after Hurricane Melissa met the bond's parametric triggers in October 2025.
The finance ministry bought parametric hurricane cover through the World Bank's bond programme, renewed it when it expired, and received a full payout within days of a storm that met the pressure and track triggers.
Preconditions
A finance ministry with a written disaster risk financing strategy
Budget to pay premiums in years without a storm
An intermediary able to place the risk in capital markets
Limits: The payout figure is the World Bank's announcement that the triggers were met; it does not say when the money reached the Treasury. The damage estimate is the Planning Institute of Jamaica's, reported by the Jamaica Information Service on 3 March 2026 (https://jis.gov.jm/total-loss-and-damage-from-hurricane-melissa-estimated-at-1-952-trillion/), and the payout covered about 1.2 percent of it (our division), so the record shows a pre-arranged instrument paying in full, not adequate protection. The bond is issued by the World Bank and priced by capital markets; Jamaica's institutional move is buying and renewing the cover and building the layered risk-financing strategy around it. Other layers (CCRIF, contingency funds, contingent credit) are not quantified here. The press release is the lender's own statement, which praises the government's strategy.
๐ง๐ชBelgiumsince 2006dismantledbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The Federal Public Service Public Health held a strategic stock of masks for pandemic influenza in military warehouses in Namur from 2006, sized at 32 million surgical masks when the Bioethics Committee reviewed the pandemic plan in 2009. It destroyed the expired masks in operations in late 2015 and late 2018 without replacing them, so Belgium entered the COVID-19 crisis in early 2020 with no strategic mask stock.
From 2006 the federal health administration stored a national reserve of masks under its pandemic plan, then destroyed expired stock in 2015 and 2018 without a replacement contract, so the reserve ran down to nothing between two pandemics.
Preconditions
A pandemic plan that names a stock size but no owner for rotating and replacing it
Storage borrowed from another department (Defence), with conditions that degraded the stock
Limits: The zero is not a counted figure. It is our reading of the committee's prose statement that no strategic mask stock existed when the crisis began. The 32 million is the stock named in the 2009 bioethics advice and the plan's target; the report never gives an audited count of masks actually held in any year. Some of the stock was probably unusable before it was destroyed: the report records that the Namur warehouses lost their heating in 2012 and the masks stayed in unheated storage. The dates of destruction (late 2015 and late 2018) come from a chronology entry built from hearing testimony, which the committee marks as contradicted by other witnesses, not from a finding of its own. Responsibility for the decision not to replace the stock is disputed in the report itself between the former health minister and the experts heard. A mask stock is one narrow input to pandemic preparedness. It says nothing about the pandemic plan, testing, hospital surge capacity or the later rebuilding of a stock.
๐ง๐ชBelgiumsince 2017still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The National Crisis Centre of the Federal Public Service Interior has run BE-Alert, the national system that lets municipalities and provinces alert the population by SMS, including location-based SMS, and information screens, since 2017. By 1 September 2025, 537 of 565 municipalities, covering 95 percent of Belgian territory, were affiliated, 1,369,659 citizen addresses were registered, and the system had been used 273 times in 2025.
The federal crisis centre built one national alerting platform and offered it to municipalities and provinces, which keep the legal power to warn. It added channels over time (registered SMS, location-based SMS, screens) and runs an annual national test.
Preconditions
Emergency-planning powers held by mayors and governors, so a federal tool needs local uptake to work
Mobile operators obliged or willing to send location-based messages
A federal budget for a platform that municipalities can join voluntarily
Limits: This is the crisis centre's own news release, not a statistic or an audit. Affiliation means a municipality can send alerts, not that it does so well or in time: the release gives no measure of how fast or how accurately any alert reached people in a real emergency. The 273 uses in 2025 mix real alerts, vigilance messages and tests, and the release does not split them. One person can register up to five addresses, so the count is not people. Location-based SMS reaches unregistered phones, but this page gives no reach figure for it. Coverage took eight years to reach 95 percent of territory, and 28 Walloon municipalities were still outside it in 2025. The page says nothing about the July 2021 floods in Wallonia, the largest recent test of national warning, so it cannot show that the system works when a major shock arrives. A warning channel is one part of preparedness and says nothing about recovery.
๐ฏ๐ดJordansince 2016operating below its peakbears on Institutional responsiveness
After the February 2016 London conference, Jordan's Ministry of Labour opened formal work permits to Syrian refugees and waived their fees. Annual permits issued rose from 36,788 in 2016 to a peak of 90,152 in 2023. In July 2024 the waiver was not extended for flexible or employer-sponsored permits, and issuance fell to 54,586 in 2024.
Jordan's Ministry of Labour turned a donor compact into labour-law changes: it waived permit fees, created flexible permits not tied to one employer, and let cooperatives and trade unions act as sponsors. When the donor-funded waiver lapsed in July 2024, it charged Syrians full foreign-worker fees, and issuance fell by about 40 percent.
Preconditions
Concessional financing tied to the refugee response that paid for the waived fees
A labour ministry able to issue and track permits at volume, with intermediaries such as agricultural cooperatives and unions
Domestic tolerance for refugee labour in sectors open to foreigners, which is what came under fiscal and political pressure later
Where else it has been used: Ethiopia's 2019 refugee proclamation and Turkey's 2016 work-permit regulation followed the same compact logic. Both kept permit numbers low relative to their refugee populations.
Limits: The construct is how fast rules and programmes change when conditions change, but a permit count measures uptake. The speed of the 2016 rule change is shown only by the timeline and the 2016 bar. The annual figures are chart labels in a one-page UNHCR factsheet, and the factsheet credits them to the Ministry of Labour. They count permits, not people: renewals, short-term and retroactive permits are all counted, so 340,000 cumulative permits overstates the number of refugees who ever held one. The World Bank and UNHCR copies disagree slightly (45,000 against 47,762 for 2019). The waiver ended in July 2024, so 2024 is only half a post-change year. The 2025 figure (35,702 to July) is partial and is not annualised here. Fall in permits is not fall in work: refugees may have moved back into informal jobs, and the series cannot show that.
๐ญ๐บHungarysince 2013delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
During the June 2013 Danube flood, which crested at a record 891 cm in Budapest, the government declared an emergency and Hungary's national disaster management directorate ran six days of intensive defence along 807.4 km of levees; of 206,000 people the flood directly endangered, 1,570 had to be evacuated.
The government declared an emergency by river section, and the national disaster management directorate, unified under the interior ministry, took over command of the defence from mayors in 81 settlements and drew soldiers, police, students, public-works employees and volunteers onto the levees.
Preconditions
A national levee system built and maintained over generations by the water directorates
A single disaster management body with legal power to take command from local authorities in an emergency
Upstream gauge readings that gave days of warning before the crest reached Budapest
Limits: The source is the agency that ran the defence, writing about itself six days after the crest, so it is self-reporting with no independent verification. The page gives no count of deaths, injuries or damage cost, and no recovery figure, so it evidences the preparing and defending half of the construct and not the recovering half. A low evacuation count could reflect where the river happened to break out (47,285 hectares, mostly forest and farmland, were flooded) as much as the defence. Much of the protection is a stock of levees rather than a 2013 move, and 36,780 civilian volunteers, 19,515 civil guards and 8,306 soldiers took part, so the outcome is not the directorate's alone. This is one event; it says nothing about the capacity against other hazards such as the 2010 Ajka red sludge spill. The 206,000 is a rounded figure.