This target is focused on institutional and technical tools dedicated to the improvement of the water supply and sanitation utilities performances. The daily performances of utilities are less considered than necessary as a crucial issue to obtain a real and not theoretical achievement of the Millennium Goals. Discussions will be based on the clear setting apart of complementary responsibilities (national regulators, local authorities, public services’ operators, whether public or private) and implementation of the best tools to clarify their relationships. Introducing and establishing adequate indicators systems in order to organize performance monitoring, creating national observatories of this performance and other regulatory tools, reinforcing research and its platforms, stimulating innovation and improving local authorities’ skills and capacities, and coordinating efforts at different level of organization could definitively be the premises of a large movement of progress.
Modernizing governance for more efficiency and transparency

The Local and Regional Authorities’ process for the Forum will highlight LRAs’ major role in achieving the MDGs and develop the Istanbul Water Consensus. Governance will be discussed with the help of case studies and implemented best solutions concerning decentralization and coordination of State, regional and local level. How LRAs can build confident partnerships enabling to provide best technical solution? How and how far the LRAs’ activity should be controlled by State regulatory bodies? How LRAs can implement transparency and participation of any stakeholders and communities?
Assessing and benchmarking to enable performance

Since now about fifteen years, technical approaches to assess and benchmark the public utilities performance have been developed (ISO 24500 10-12 norms, IWA, OECD and WHO publications, national or regional tools). The same questions remain: How to define the quality of service? How to use the evolution of indicators for implementing progress actions? How far is the benchmark between utilities relevant? How to give a realistic picture of each of them as well as a simple and useful interpretation of these indicators? How to simplify information for stakeholders’ participation? What is the financial and social pay-back of the expenses accepted for monitoring and control activities?
Capacity building and education
How to have technical staff trained to operate efficiently? Why not include capacity building systematically in the international TOR by the ODA and local authorities?
What is successful and why?
The aim of the group is not theoretical, but to collect feedbacks of good experiences. With the help of its partners, ASTEE will publish a review of such case studies.