The weight of water: Benchmarking for public water services

The use of benchmarking and performance indicators to evaluate and compare water operators is a relatively new phenomenon. It has been taking place in the private sector since the 1970s but only migrated to public services over the past two decades. It is now widespread in the water sector, but there are emerging concerns about its commercial bias and relatively undemocratic processes. This paper reviews the history of benchmarking in the water sector, discusses arguments for and against its use, and proposes an alternative performance evaluation framework that may help to better account for universality, sustainability and democratic forms of governance, particularly with public water operators in low-income settings in the global South. I argue that shared forms of performance measurement can be useful but only if they are more explicit about recognizing local difference and if they become better at promoting public awareness and advancing equity. The paper also asks why existing water benchmarking systems do not explicitly differentiate between public and private water operators, and proposes indicators that may help promote non-commercialized forms of public water services. The proposals are necessarily tentative and preliminary – calling for more empirical and theoretical research on the topic – but do offer concrete alternative benchmarking possibilities for further debate and exploration.