Exploring the integrity challenge in the water sector : paper presented at the IRC symposium ‘ Pumps, Pipes and Promises: Costs, Finances and Accountability for Sustainable WASH Services' in The Hague, The Netherlands from 16 - 18 November 2010

Curbing corruption can make an important contribution to improving both the performance of existing water supply systems and the development of new systems. The Water Integrity
Network (WIN) has developed the Annotated Water Integrity Scan (AWIS) as a tool to help reduce corruption in the sector. The AWIS is a tool that can be used to quickly assess the situation (integrity in the water sector) and identify practical steps for improvement. This is one of a suite of tools WIN is developing to support coalition building and action programming that promotes good integrity practices to reduce or prevent corruption in the water sector. The scan explores integrity of the water sector defined as practices impeding corruption and promoting respect for the rule of law. Rather than measuring direct indicators of corruption it looks at the checks and balances that are in place to reduce risks and opportunities for corruption. The scan looks at three dimensions of integrity, transparency, accountability and participation and makes an assessment of anti-corruption practice. The first experiences of using the AWIS tool in Ghana, Honduras, Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso and South Asia are promising. Tests of the tool and the associated workshop methodology in various settings have looked at urban and rural water supply as well as irrigation and show that the tool is useful in assessing the situation, but also to establish dialogues. It has to be further established how far AWIS can be adapted to other subsectors such as urban wastewater management, hydro power, multi-purpose dams, and environmental sanitation. [authors abstract]

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