Integrity is an essential protection and resilience mechanism for the water and sanitation sectors, but there is no one-size-fits-all path to building it.
To effectively improve governance and prevent corruption, water sector stakeholders need to understand the integrity risks they face, as well as relevant levers for action. We are here to help.
We research pressing integrity issues as well as strategies to strengthen integrity. We also support water institutions, NGOs, and service providers with integrity risk assessments. Our open-source integrity assessment tools highlight key areas of risk and action for water sector reform, programme design, and institutional development.
Learn from latest research
Identify red flags in planning of infrastructure for water and sanitation
Delayed dam repairs, unfinished pipelines, unused wastewater plants, and major cost overruns are the common results of poor integrity and corruption in early phases of infrastructure planning. The consequences are lasting economic, social, and environmental harm.
Focusing primarily on controls in procurement instead of planning is too little, too late.
Integrity indicators can help examine early-phase infrastructure planning issues, like conflicts of interest or skewed decision-making to manipulation of budgets.
Support us in piloting tools and improving this area of work.
Indicators and data standards
Developed with CoST, with support from the Inter-American Development Bank
Piloted in Latin America
Initial pilots of the FIIP reveal that new infrastructure plans are often in favour of wealthier communities even if needs are not as pressing.
Feasibility studies and impact assessments are also not always carried out fully.
In further pilots, we hope to gain a better picture of whether these findings are consistent in different contexts.
Assess water integrity priorities to improve programme planning
To ensure corruption and integrity failures do not undermine water programmes and sector reforms, we need to understand the roots causes of common management issues, as well as most effective paths for integrity action.
Integrity assessment tools help:
Bring stakeholders to the same table to raise awareness and develop a common understanding of underlying issues of water governance and mismanagement.
Prioritise areas of improvement for integrity action.
Get support for a water integrity assessment:
Data analysis tool
Developed with the Government Transparency Institute
Piloted in Bangladesh, Kenya, and Peru
Facilitation resources for 1-day workshop
Used for input to programme planning in over 11 countries since 2011
WIN and DORP used AWIS to raise awareness on how integrity issues contribute to poor WASH in schools.
In over 30 schools in southern Bangladesh, parents, teachers, and student representatives discussed legal obligations, responsibilities, and funding.
The resulting campaign focused on protection and higher allocation of funds for school sanitation and hygiene.
Assess integrity practices of water utilities
By understanding internal integrity practices and how to improve them, utilities can launch more effective integrity risk management strategies or Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) programmes.
Regulators and decision-makers can benchmark utilities and strengthen sector oversight. They can incentivise integrity practices that contribute to better, more equitable service provision.
Get support for integrity assessments for utilities:
Go a step further with InWASH, a complete toolbox to develop an integrity management action plan for utilities.
Indicator framework
Developed with support from
the IDB
Piloted in Latin America and openly accessibly online in English, French and Spanish
Indicator framework
Developed by the Consortium for Water Integrity in Latin America (WIN, SIWI, cewas) with support from
the IDB
Piloted in Ecuador
“[…] high levels of perceived integrity are positively correlated with good outcomes in terms of higher productivity, profitability, better industrial relations, and higher level of attractiveness to prospective job applicants […]”
Guiso, et al. (2015) "The Value of Corporate Culture". Journal of Financial Economics.
Sign up to our newsletter
