CoST, Infrastructure Transparency Initiative in partnership with WIN, Water Integrity Network and with support from the Inter-American Development Bank have published their framework methodology setting out how to identify – and therefore address – poor decision making and planning failures in water infrastructure.

Good quality fit for purpose water and sanitation infrastructure is essential for vulnerable communities to have access to clean water, to improve public health, ensure food security, promote gender equality and more widely deliver many of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We need to ensure that limited financial resources deliver the required outcomes; reducing undue influence and bias decision making and increasing efficient use of limited public funds.

This Framework for Integrity in Infrastructure Planning (FIIP) helps to achieve that by focusing on the early-stage planning (rather than later stages of tendering and construction) given this is an area often forgotten but critical to ensuring quality, fit for purpose, value for money water infrastructure that meets communities’ and environmental needs. It is a framework made for procuring entities in the water sector who are tasked with planning, financing, and developing water-related infrastructure ranging from donors and development agencies to government agencies and private companies involved in infrastructure planning. It can also serve as a guide for civil society, helping them ask the right questions when water decision-making and planning processes lack transparency.

This framework was piloted in two Latin American countries where it proved its value in providing valuable insights to improve the robustness of water infrastructure planning processes; highlighting areas (‘red flags’) that require further investigation or procedural and policy improvements and providing insight on potential trade-offs being made between social equity, environmental risks and service affordability.

If you are involved in decision-making around water infrastructure or holding the decision-makers to account, you can utilise our Framework for free by following the methodology available to download.

If you have any questions and would like to find out more, get in touch at: CoST@infrastructuretransparency.org