Updated guidance for driving purpose in strategic infrastructure planning

Strategic infrastructure planning is challenging in all parts of the world.

Governments need to balance the growing demands for high-cost infrastructure services with the need to limit spending.

The Enabling Better Infrastructure (EBI) programme helps governments by giving them access to the tools, insight, and support they need to be more deliberate when planning their infrastructure.

In 2019, the programme produced a report outlining 12 principles for prioritising and planning infrastructure.

It identified all the critical factors to set up a stable, sustainable, and investable infrastructure project pipeline.

The updated version, which draws on wider international consultation, has helped to drive ongoing learning, allowing for EBI insights to be refined and made simpler.

This includes actionable, example-driven, tried-and-tested guidance from governments across the world.

Three components have been produced to boost the accessibility and usability of the EBI guidance:

1. Eight principles to set up a strategic planning process – sets out all the inputs governments need to consider when creating a strategic planning process.
2. A core three-step process for building an infrastructure strategy – provides an easy-to-follow procedure for governments to develop an infrastructure strategy, showcasing how other countries have done it.
3. Strategic planning gap assessment tool – outlines questions to help countries benchmark themselves against international best practice.

Being more deliberate helps governments achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a structured and effective way.

The insights contained in the updated EBI guidance can help governments to:

• achieve clarity on setting up or downscaling a strategic planning process
• consider how other countries have put in place a strategic planning process for their context
• understand how their country compares with others around the world