WATER GOVERNANCE INDICATORS

STAKEHOLDER CONSULTATION

8th Meeting of the OECD Water Governance Initiative 12 January 2017 Rabat, Morocco

A Tool to support the implementation of

OECD Principles on Water Governance

www.oecd.org/governance/oecd-principles-on-water-governance.htm

A menu of options

• Share best practices

• Understanding failures

• Support reform processes

• National Policy Dialogues

• Assess water governance

Indicators

The role of indicators in the “water policy cycle”

One cannot improve what cannot be

measured

Accountability

Transparency

Bench-learning

Adjusting

Systemic framework to

measure water governance

Measuring water governance : a challenging task

10 key Questions

Indicators to measure what?

Which type of indicators?

Whose views?

At which scale?

Which process?

Who are the beneficiaries?

How the indicators will be used?

Who will collect and produce data?

How to ensure replicability?

How to disclose the results?

Progress milestones

April 3rd WGI meeting, Madrid

– inception

April Session at the 7th

World Water Forum

October Inventory of

existing indicators

November 6th WGI meeting,

Paris, Scoping note

2015

2014 2016

April 1st Webinar

May Mapping existing

indicators by Principle

June 7th WGI meeting,

approach

September Call for proposals

October Coordinator/volunteers

co-production

November 2nd Webinar

December 1st draft on Indicator

framework

2017

January 8th WGI meeting, Rabat

What indicators are meant to be or not

Yes

No

Tool for dialogue to be used by any stakeholder or government

OECD reporting/monitoring mechanism (e.g. PISA)

Voluntary participation and data provision

Compulsory exercise across OECD countries & beyond

Indicators are proposed as a means (measurement) to an end (assessment)

Indicators are not an assessment per se (data has to be interpreted)

Self-assessment framework to be tailored to contexts & places

No ranking but comparisons for bench-learning

Critical comments from Webinars

• Distinction between “national” and “subnational” institutions

Scale: attention to the local level

• Combination of both existing and new proposed indicators

Objective driven vs data driven indicators

• Proposal of selection criteria/pilot testing

Number of indicators

• Levels are independent from one another … but connected • Some redundancy is unavoidable • Level 1 dimensions that could be meaningfully quantitatively measured

found correspondence in Level 2 ( on progress)

Consistency of framework across Level 1 and Level 2 indicators

• Methodological note • Spider graphs

Understanding and visualisation

A three- step approach

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Framework conditions

Progress

Impacts

Proposed Framework Conditions (Level 1)

What: • Checklist • Policy Framework, institutions, instruments • Input and process indicators • Static assessment

How: • Traffic light • facts and tangible data Caveats: • Clustering • Distinction across functions & scales

Conditions are fully in place

Conditions are partly in place or need to be

improved

Conditions are not in place

Observations and challenges

1. Roles and responsibilities

2. Scales

5. Data & Info

2. Scales

4. Capacity

5. Data & Info

6. Finance

11. Trade offs

1. Roles and responsibilities

6. Finance

7. Regulation

9. Transparency & integrity

Scales

Functions

Overlaps

What

• Changes over time: evolution from year “n-3” to year “n”

• Process, output and outcomes indicators

• Some benchmarking

How:

• Quantitative indicators

Caveats:

• Information outside water box

• Qualitative information

Proposed Progress Measurement (Level 2)

Examples of Level 2 indicators

Principles Indicators Changes

3. Policy coherence

Share (%) of spatial development plans including water dimensions

6. Finance Share (%) of revenue in total water revenues for each of 3Ts

9. Transparency and integrity

Number of institutional anticorruption plans

Connection between Level 1 & Level 2

• Level 1: Existence of a ministry, line ministry, central agency at national with core water responsibilities

• Level 2: Number of ministries and public agencies with core roles and responsibilities on water at national level

Principle 1

• Level 1:Existence of public institutions or accredited bodies producing independent and official water-related statistics

• Level 2:Concentration of data across institutions and levels

Principle 5

Challenge n°1

Streamline, streamline, streamline !!

345

185

160

15 13

Transparency & integrity

(21) Capacity

(19)

Stakeholder engagement

(10) Innovation

(7)

Total n. of indicators Average of indicators per Principle

Greater number of indicators per Principle

Lower number of indicators per Principle

Level 1

Level 2

Challenge n°2

Define selection criteria

• Suitable: Is the indicator suitable for the purpose? • Clear: Is the indicator clearly understandable? • Affordable: is the information available at reasonable cost? • Simple: Are data easy to collect? • Reliable: Can the indicator be consistent over time?

Make it practical

• Valid: Can the indicator track changes over time? • Credible: Can the indicator be measurable, considering time

and resources constraints? • Useful: Can the information be useful for decision-making,

learning and accountability?

Make it real

• Appropriate: Is the indicator appropriate according to the scale, the context?

• Flexible: Is the indicator adaptable to different scales/ context?

Make it relevant

• Owned: Have the perspective of different stakeholders been taken into account in the definition of indicators?

• Agreed: Do stakeholders agree on is to be measured? • Shared: Have different views been shared and accepted to

produce valuable information?

Make it participatory

Challenge n°3

Reality check and place-based

A variety of situations for a robust reality check

Geographical setting

Institutional framework

Water risks

Expected outcomes

Track redundancy, incompleteness and inconsistency

Identify needed financial and human resources, the responsible or relevant authorities, the reasonable timeframe for compiling

Streamline the total number of indicators

Test the (local) usability of indicators

Clarify definitions and terminology

Identify the most easy-to-measure indicators and the open data sources

• Does the proposal make sense to you and can it be useful to your government or institution?

• What is the best way for streamlining the number of indicators and under which criteria?

• What is your country/stakeholder experience of pilot-testing and what would you advise us?

• How to define “objectively” the yellow traffic light system (level 1) and how to complement quantitative data with qualitative ones (level 2?

Questions for group discussion

THANK YOU !

Next steps

May 2017

January- February

2017

March-April 2017

June – December

2017

Consolidation/revision Level 1-2-3

indicators

Pilot-testing

March 2018

OECD Working Party on Territorial

Indicators

Data collection

“Water Governance at a Glance” 8th World Water Forum (Brasilia)

July 2017

9th WGI Launch