برنامه ریزی استراتژیک برای خدمات شهری آب در کشورهای در حال توسعه

A common feature of public water utilities in developing countries is their lack of a commercial orientation. As a result, many utilities find themselves locked in a cycle of poor corporate performance—with low coverage of services, huge amounts of non-revenue water and insufficient funding for maintenance and expansion. Strategic planning in such turbulent times should be relevant, cost-effective and transforming. This paper discusses a strategic planning framework to assist utilities in developing meaningful and useful performance improvement plans. Recent application of this framework in Africa has demonstrated its relevancy, cost-effectiveness and potential to transform poorly performing water utilities.

Public water utilities in developing countries face enormous challenges in meeting the water needs of their growing urban populations. Many of these challenges are as a result of inappropriate utility management practices, including the lack of a commercial-oriented culture. A number of options have been tried in an attempt to address this problem. The most notable one is private sector participation—which has included contracting multinational water companies to run water utilities (World Bank, 2003). Although some developed countries may consider privatisation as the most viable option (Lam and Chan, 1998), private sector participation in developing countries has had only limited success, and there is growing pessimism about the scale of performance improvements to be expected from private sector involvement (Budds and McGranahan, 2003). On the other hand, there is growing optimism that public water utilities in developing countries can improve their own performance by applying commercial management principles (Zuleta et al., 2005). One such principle that utilities can adapt is strategic planning—which is traditionally viewed as setting a long-term direction based on sound predictions, analysis of options, and key decisions about the future of an organisation. Regrettably, water utilities, traditionally dominated by the engineering profession, often lack the necessary tools and capabilities to carry out strategic planning. The training of most water utility managers, although thorough in the functional areas of engineering, accounting or human resources, is often insufficient in strategic concepts, frameworks and tools. In addition, most utilities, while embracing strategic planning concepts, have attempted to embark on strategies without sufficient institutional analysis, internal participation, and adequate commitment of resources. With the growing urban populations, water utilities in developing countries must adapt quickly to reduce the growing service gap, by reducing unaccounted for water, increasing revenues to cover operation costs, and expanding services to the urban poor. In addition, utilities must also adapt to the changing institutional and policy environment in which they operate. Given these uncertainties, this paper offers a strategic planning methodology to assist utilities in developing plans and articulating strategic actions to improve their performance and survival in an ever-changing environment. The framework for the methodology is explained and case studies are presented to illustrate how it can be applied to develop utility performance improvement plans. The research that led to the framework arose from a capacity building partnership project between the Water Utility Partnership of Africa (WUP), Severn Trent water (a UK water utility), Loughborough University (UK) and six African water utilities in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Congo, Benin, and Lesotho. The methodology represents a new way for public water utilities to transform themselves and improve performance by addressing the internal and external problems they face.

This paper has attempted to provide a strategic planning framework and methodology for urban water utilities. The paper has focused on developing countries—where there are dismal levels of access to safe water and sanitation services, and water utilities have not performed as expected. Although the institutional set up of utilities in developing countries differs greatly, a number of shared management challenges can be identified, such as inefficiency in operations, high proportions of unaccounted for water, ineffective management information systems, and general lack of a commercial orientation. In addition, public water utilities are operating in a constantly changing policy and institutional environment, with governments committed to implementing reforms aimed at making utilities more efficient, accountable and commercially oriented. Such reforms would undoubtedly require utilities to change both their structures and strategy. The authors have urged that public utility managers need to draw lessons from strategic management concepts practiced in the private sector in order to develop relevant, cost-effective and transforming strategic plans. A framework for strategic planning has been provided, which in its simplest form, is composed of four central questions: where are we now, where do we want to be, how might we get there and how do we ensure success? Providing comprehensive answers to these four basic questions, through internal participation, generates a relevant and cost-effective road map for the utility, which integrates both strategic and tactical planning. Case studies and examples have been given to illustrate how the framework can used in practice. While strategic planning concepts are not entirely new, the contribution of this framework is to offer a systematic and repeatable methodology for utilities seeking to develop meaningful and useful performance improvement plans.