Template for assessing the governance of public water supply and sanitation service providers

This note proposes a template for assessing the governance of urban water supply and sanitation (WSS) service providers and its impact of the quality of service and performance of operations. The template can be used for decentralized autonomous public corporations responsible for providing the WSS service to customers as well as other institutional arrangements ranging from government departments to autonomous public WSS asset holding companies subcontracting operations to professional operators. This template complements the extensive work done on performance indicators through the International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET). IBNET has developed a series of indicators to help carry out a complete physical check-up of an urban WSS sector or an urban WSS service provider. Annex gives the complete list of IBNET metric indicators aimed at measuring service coverage, sustainability, and affordability. When reliable data are generated, the indicators give an excellent snapshot of the quality of the WSS service and of the performance of WSS service providers and picture of their evolution over time. In many cases however, it is difficult or even impossible to find reliable data on basic parameters. Designing and implementing a program aimed at generating reliable data is often one of the first gaps to be addressed to help define and monitor the progress of performance improvement programs. The performance of a WSS service provider is obviously influenced by its corporate governance and the environment it operates in. Too often the functions of policy formulation, regulation of the WSS service, ownership of WSS assets, financing of WSS infrastructure development and provision of WSS service are governed by unclear and unenforceable mandates and/or contracts. While IBNET provides an excellent framework to measure the performance of a WSS service provider, no standard appraisal methodology exists for the governance of the WSS service provider and its environment. This template sets out to fill this gap. The template has been developed at the request of World Bank staff that feels that it could help improve effectiveness and efficiency. The template is aimed at assessing the situation in one city or country, including making comparisons over time (e.g. before and after certain interventions). Although not a benchmarking tool per se, it also allows to make cross comparisons at least within countries if not between countries.