Stakeholder consultation on water governance indicators oecd secretariat

1. WATER GOVERNANCE INDICATORS
STAKEHOLDER CONSULTATION
8th Meeting of the OECD Water Governance Initiative
12 January 2017
Rabat, Morocco

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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?

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. A three- step approach
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Framework
conditions
Progress
Impacts

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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)

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. • 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

18. THANK YOU !

19. Next steps
May
2017
January-
February
2017
March-
April
2017
June –
December
2017
Consolidation/re
vision 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