Benchmarking for the provision of water supply and sanitation services to the urban poor: An assessment framework

Assessment frameworks and indicators have been developed to guide water utilities in their benchmarking exercises. These systems are tailored to developed economies, where customers generally enjoy well-functioning piped services and are not well suited to assess the strategies, processes and practices targeted at services provision to the poor in less developed economies. The PROBE projects proposes a supplementary benchmarking framework, that allows the assessment of the enabling contributions by key stakeholders, as well as the quality of water and sanitation services in informal settlements. The framework comprises 13 indicators with 62 and 66 variables for water and sanitation respectively. The overall outcome is summarised in a single matrix. A field manual guiding the application of the framework was developed and tested. The results confirmed that the framework is able to assess performance of pro-poor water and sanitation services and has the potential to encourage dedicated knowledge exchange among stakeholders. Copyright © 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.