Despite international and national momentum, access to adequate water and sanitation services remains incomplete across the Western Balkans. The weak capacity of public utilities is one of the elements hindering sustainable planning, financing, and delivery of water and sanitation services. Utilities of the Future (UoF) is a novel approach to trigger sustainable performance improvements in utilities.

The UoF Centre of Excellence aims to enhance the capacities of supported utilities to adequately plan and deliver safe, reliable, and sustainable water and sanitation services to the population. It will be operated by the World Bank team that developed the UoF approach. Three complementary pillars will consitute the UoF Centre of Excellence: (i) an operations centre providing institutional support to utilities across the world, in line with the UoF approach- (ii) a knowledge hub supporting policy-relevant analyses, documenting lessons learned, and connecting a community of practice at local, regional, and global level- (iii) a new facility giving performance-based access to grants for utilities from the Western Balkans to receive enhanced corporate development support, implement ‘quick-win’ measures and prepare strategic infrastructure investments.

Evidence-informed policy dialogue: general lessons learned from the UoF experiences are shared within an international community of practice, which contributes to constructive, evidence-based policy dialogue at national and regional level.

Improved utility performance: utilities participating in the programme are motivated to, and succeed in, sustainably improving their operational, managerial, and financial performance thanks to short- and long-term measures.

Risultati principali attesi:  

Policy, Institutions, Regulations (PIR) assessments: PIR assessments in each country will identify enabling factors and key bottlenecks related to water sector framework conditions. This will inform policy dialogue and the deployment of the UoF approach.

Knowledge sharing: lessons learned will be systematically documented and shared with relevant stakeholders and a community of practice connected at global, regional, and national level.

Utility action plans: participating utilities will elaborate action plans for 100-day and 5-year horizons with support from the programme team, and commit to implementing those plans.

Short-term measures and project preparation: utilities selected on a competitive basis will receive funding to implement "quick-wins" that enable immediate performance improvements and/or to prepare strategic infrastructure investment projects.

Risultati fasi precedenti:  

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