Wanted: Positive Thinking!

Institutional development in the water and sanitation sector is a crucial process that needs to be tailored to specific local conditions. It involves more than the mere acquisition of new material, tools and technologies. It requires changes at all levels: adopting new norms and values, and new organizational structures

Institutional Strengthening

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BMC Institutional Strengthening

Institutional Strengthening

The term institutional strengthening reflects a concern for the ability of institutions to develop effective ways of relating to their external environment, sustaining institutional gains and fulfilling their social mandate.

The BMC approach is characterized by the capacity for economic performance, social justice, ecological sustainability, and political responsibility. In this framework we contribute to:
_ strengthening the competence of executives, decision-makers and specialists;
_ enhancing the performance capacity of businesses, administrations and organisations;
_ promoting the ability to act and make decisions at the political level.

Capacity Building

In a broader sense, institutional strengthening aims at helping to create institutions and organizations that are able to adjust constantly to changing environments in order to attract the resources - human and financial - they require to carry out their mandate.

Forms of management and provision of institutional strengthening programmes have evolved over time. During the 1990s we moved from institutional twinning to institutional cooperation and finally to partnerships.

Policy and Administration

We provide comprehensive support to administrators and policy and decision makers, based on an integrated understanding of engineering and business management. Our clients can rely on us for professional consulting in the following areas:
_ Sector Reform
_ Regulator & tariff policy
_ Public service reform
_ Mutual investigation, development and institution of suitable corporate bodies in the given political & legal environment
_ Convincing local political decision makers

Wide Scope of Functions

_ Evaluation of institutional performance and capacities. Sector institutions include ministerial and other government departments, with water related statistics, accounting and information on revenues distribution, and agencies responsible for mapping, land title and cadastral information, hydrological surveys, water related environment offices, as well as relevant educational institutions and R&D capacity.

_ Analysis of the existing water policy, regulatory and fiscal regime. Key features for encouraging investment are clarity of water and environmental legislation, particularly with respect to security of tenure, access to resources, access to foreign exchange and stable and equitable taxation and even-handed implementation of rules.

_ Implementation of new strategies and organizational structures, acquiring new management instruments, improving the information infrastructure, enhancing the capacity for institutional innovation, understanding the contents of effectiveness and efficiency with appropriate indicators and metrics.

_ Promotion of the changes required. Successful change requires wide-spread interest and participation, enthusiasm and confidence in the process, and an approach that recognizes both any inherent resistance to change and the importance of local decision making throughout the process.

_ Capacity building in institutional and individual capabilities and skills such as good governance and professional approaches, judicial and fiscal transparency, how to plan and implement, how to present and communicate, monitor and manage the transition from the role of a reformer to a service provider and facilitator.