Ways to Improve Water Services by Making Utilities More Accountable to Their Users: A Review (Water Working Notes No.15, May 2008)

This review aims to help those who work in and with water utilities, as well as organized users, regulators, and policymakers to improve the quality of water services by making service providers more accountable to the people they serve.
  
This review identifies a range of practical tools that can help to do this. It considers where they have been used, where they have succeeded and, as important, where they have failed, and draws lessons from this experience.

Contents:

Abbreviations and Acronyms
Executive Summary

1. Introduction and Objectives

2. The Context
2.1 The 1990s: Private involvement, regulation, and decentralization
2.2 The specific challenges of public water utilities
2.3 The relationship between monopolies and users responses
2.4 A pragmatic approach to public administration
2.5 Creating a balanced accountability system
2.6 Different routes to accountability
2.7 Accountability tools and organizational development and change

3. Tools for Utility Accountability
3.1 Categories of tools
3.2 The Tools

4. The Track Record of Accountability Tools
4.1 Criteria Record of Accountability Tools
4.2 Effectiveness
4.3 Inclusiveness
4.4 Efficiency
4.5 Sustainability

5. Choosing The Right Tools for The Context
5.1 Changes over time in utilities and accountability functions
5.2 External and internal influences on success
5.3 Conditions in which accountability tools can improve performance

6. Concluding Remarks

References

Annex: Recent and Ongoing World Bank Knowledge Work on Urban Water Utilities
 

Post Date : 01 Juli 2009