Existing Solutions

Water Operators’ Partnerships (WOPs), water and sanitation utility, govenance, capacity development, benchmarking, decentralized cooperation

technical

Partnerships

Water Operators’ Partnerships (WOPs) are peer-support arrangements between two or more water or sanitation operators, carried out on a not-for-profit basis in the objective of strengthening their capacity. WOPs are being promoted as a simple but effective method of bolstering the ability of water and sanitation service providers to play their full role in delivering quality basic services to all.  

The Secretariat of the Global Water Operators’ Partnerships Alliance (GWOPA), a global mechanism to scale up WOPs, hosted by UN-HABITAT is driven by an international Steering Committee and supported by a global network of partners and members.   

Water Operators’ Partnerships strengthen operator performance through direct peer to peer technical support. The not-for-profit partnerships can focus on a range of themes and take a variety of forms, however the principle of action-oriented learning is common to all WOPs. WOPs employ a mix of classroom and on the job-training, exposure visits and joint action planning to teach or reinforce staff skills and put them into practice.

Currently, GWOPA also co-organizes training programs focusing on technical areas identified through needs assessment workshops with water and sanitation utilities and emerged as priority areas, such as water safety plans, non revenue water and service to the poor.  The striking characteristic of the GWOPA’s training is that it can serve to catalyze new WOPs – by providing an opportunity for operators to identify potential partners – or can complement ongoing WOPs.   Such trainings can contribute directly to the improvement of the performance of public services. 

 The GWOPA has developed variety of electronic tools.  One of them is the Geo Referenced Utility Benchmarking System (GRUBS) developed for the hosting of utilities benchmarking data on Google Earth, can offer the platform to monitor the performance of utilities using the globally scandalized indicators.   There is also a possibility that GRUBS would host the data obtained through the mapping of institutional actors responsible for the components of the right to water to promote better governance of water and sanitation utilities.

 The Pipeline, the social networking platform currently targeting for utility staff, has a potential to facilitate the information exchange and networking of the group of responsible body at the various level, such as regulators, local authorities, utilities and CSOs by expanding its target from utility staff to other groups.

 On top of that, WOPs themselves are the solutions for cost effective and efficient capacity development of utility which should be following the assessment of utilities performance.  In this process, other tools such as “Operators/WOPs profiles” and “Resources” can support the utilities’ efforts to be engaged in the WOPs by providing case studies, good practices and lessons learned and brokering partnerships. 

WOPs are being implemented in Africa, Arab region, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, andSoutheast Europe through regional and national WOPs platforms and with direct supports of donor organizations.   

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan requested UN-HABITAT to lead the development, and host the secretariat, of the global WOPs mechanism called for in the Hashimoto Action Plan of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB). During the annual Stockholm World Water Week in August 2007, the Chair of UNSGAB, his Royal Highness, Prince Willem-Alexander ofOrange, launched GWOPA as a global mechanism to scale up WOPs.

GWOPA/UN-HABITAT counts amongst its supporters utility associations on all continents representing thousands of water and sanitation utilities, regional development banks, international financial institutions, labour unions, civil society organizations, learning institute, and development partners.  It is worth mentioned here that the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) is active in supporting the platform amongst those partners and will fund one staff member of the Secretariat starting in year 2012.  

As stated above, WOPs are carried out at the local level with the support of regional and national platforms who are expected to play a role of follow-up of the projects.  GWOPA’s website also function as a platform to monitor the progress of the projects. 

As for the target of “By 20xx, all countries will have adopted governance tools, indicators and mechanisms for performance measurement (service delivery) to monitor and evaluate water policies; and all countries will have put in place at national and local level processes for capacity building on the governance tools application” (Target 2 of CS1), WOPs can offer the answer to the qustion of ”How can we sustainably and cost-effectively strengthen the capacity and performance of the world’s public operators, those key players in achieving global water and sanitation objectives?”

Also, WOPs and GWOPA’s activity could contribute to the following key issues of the above mentioned target.

 -          Improvement of performance of utilities through WOPs, training for technical issues and information sharing through electronic platforms 

-          Modernizing governance for more efficient and transparency through the monitoring of GRUBS and training targeting the governance issues

As for the targets related to the decentralized cooperation and local financing (Target 4 and 5 of CS2), WOPs can be one of efficient ways of spending the financial resources collected through the mechanism like decentralized cooperation. 

Another target to which this solution could provide an answer is “By 2015, urban and utility development plans will include a risk assessment and risk management policy to cope with increased climate and global changes” (target 4 of 3.3) . WOPs are being used all over the world to strengthen operator capacity.  The power of Water Operators to help their peers on a not-for-profit basis will be recognized as an effective tool in efforts to increase access to water and sanitation by the urban poor.  Successful strategies for extending access to all in cities will be transfered by mentor operators who have successfully implemented them. Cities will be helping one another conceive and implement integrated approaches to water and sanitation management that are responsive to the needs of citizens, the economy and the environment. 

The outputs and impacts of WOPs vary, but range from trained staff in the shortest WOPs, to improved efficiency and effectiveness (improved and/or increased access) in service provision in longer-term WOPs.

The fact that WOPs peer support is carried out on a not-for-profit basis, combined with the fact that it increases the sustainability of investments, makes it an efficient choice in terms of finance.    WOPs tend to imply large human resources commitments from both mentor and recipient utilities, yet this investment is only likely to increase the sustainability.

The added-value of WOPs is that the issues ad challenges identified through WOPs, especially through the development of PIPs, could lead long term projects involving donor organizations. 

GWOPA is currently in the process of collecting records of past WOPs initiative, and systematizing documentation of new WOPs in order to better understand the impacts of the approach. Initial results suggest that the approach is likely to bring significant and lasting results, because of its emphasis on strengthening of resident capacity. Demand for the approach, by both ‘mentor’ and ‘recipient’ utilities is growing, as are mechanisms to support  it and tie this form of capacity building in with larger investment initiatives.  These are positive signs that WOPs will be able to sustainably delivery impacts.

-          Number of beneficiaries of WOPs

-          Value of investments resulting from WOPs

-          Percentage change in performance indicators

-          Number of staff acquired and applying skills

-          Number of WOPs in which CSOs are actively involved

-          Reported adoption of good practice by utilities

GWOPA is currently working with the “Global Water Solidarity ” Platform to scale up and promote WOPs as one of mechanisms to implement the projects using the funds through the decentralized cooperation by facilitating the matchmaking between the local actors involving the international cooperation with the water and sanitation operators/utilities to find potential matches.  

GWOPA is now compiling the cases of WOPs to present the lessons for more effective implementation of WOPs in the future.

As stated above in the “Actors,” there are many partner organizations which are supporting or implementing WOPs and GWOPA activities.  One example is that the UN-Habitat Pakistan office has committed to support the Pakistan Water Operators’ Partnerships platform (P-WOP) to facilitate WOPs involving the Pakistani water and sanitation utilities. 

Taeko Yokota

Communications Officer, GWOPA/UN-HABITAT

taeko.yokota@unhabitat.org

www.gwopa.org