The Sustainable Development Goal 6 has drastically changed the focus from access to a household sanitation facility (as was prioritized under the MDGs) to consideration of the full sanitation service chain. Despite 2.1 billion people gaining access to improved toilets or latrines since 1990, we have a long way to go to meet the new SDG target of safely managed sanitation for all.
The World Bank’s Water Global Practice, in partnership with sector development partners (including The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Emory University, The University of Leeds, WaterAid and Plan International), have jointly developed and advanced an approach to tackling urban sanitation challenges, termed Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS).
Water and sanitation utilities require a new strategic management approach to provide WSS quality services that ensure continuity of operations, encourage continuous improvement, develop strategic capabilities, and create efficient and sustainable strategic business models.
To guide WSS utilities to reinvent and strengthen themselves, the World Bank has developed Utility of the Future (UoF), a program designed to catalyze, materialize and maintain transformation efforts in WSS utilities. The goal is to become the Utility of the Future — a future-focused utility, which provides reliable, safe, inclusive, transparent, and responsive WSS services through best-fit practices that allow it to operate in an efficient, resilient, innovative and sustainable manner. This is achieved through the strengthening of the essential processes of a WSS utility to face their current challenges, and the development of future-thinking capabilities to be one step ahead in a fast-changing environment.
NewIBNET invites water utilities and other service providers, regulators and researchers, to systematically share data on service delivery performance and on their management. Based on such data, NewIBNet offers analyses and other data-based services that will allow NewIBNET members – water and sanitation service providers, regulators, and others – to take informed decision, including on management action and on investments, and thus to improve their performance themselves.
