Leistungen
Analytical narratives were produced of decision-making processes concerning water in 29 cities in 13 countries across Europe. An overall study on the international context was produced, in order to identify the presence and activity common to the countries; national context reports were produced for each country, in order to identify structural and political and economic factors relevant to the cities in each country.
The 29 cities and 13 countries covered are (with group of country identified: N(orth), S(outh), A(ccession)):
Estonia A Tallinn
Finland N Hameenlinna, Tampere
France N Grenoble
Germany N Berlin, Munich
Hungary A Budapest, Debrecen, Szeged
Italy S Arezzo, Bologna, Milan, Rome,
Lithuania A Kaunas, Vilnius
Netherlands N Rotterdam
Poland A Gdansk, Lodz, Warsaw
Romania A Bucharest, Timisoara
Spain S Cordoba; Madrid; Mancomunidad del Sureste de Gran Canaria; Palma de Mallorca;
Sweden N Stockholm
UK N Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds
The selection of cases was based on the objective of generating analytical narratives identifying an important process or mechanism.
The international context identified key sets of international actors whose influence ranged across countries. The broad categories identified were European institutions, multinational companies, and other international institutions, notably the World Bank. The impact of EU policies on the process has been not only through the impact on standards of the water-specific legislation and directives, but also through a set of requirements in these directives and other policies which have the effect of encouraging trends towards privatization, liberalisation and commercialization of urban water supply systems.
The 29 case studies themselves provide information on the interaction between a range of PESTE factors, at various levels, on the parties and processes involved in decision-making, including the constraints on decisions and objectives of decision-makers, so that the pattern of these interactions to guide future decision-makers.
In each case study an outcome or outcomes are identified (mathematically, a dependent variable), and the case outcomes are explained in a common way. The tool used by Watertime to explain the decision process is the narrative of the process by which the decision that produces the change occurred. The narrative is organized around key events within the episode. The events initiation and termination as well as their internal dynamic are explored in a similar way in order to allow further comparisons. The events are the unit of analysis which allows identification of the PESTE factors, actors, their characteristics and role, as well as the participation and sustainability issues.
The analysis of decision-making in the case studies used the following key dimensions:
- Actors
- Factors
- Participation
- Time
The case studies identify clearly the key actors and factors, and the extent of public participation and transparency, in each of the cities, for a number of different episodes.
Actors are treated as discrete individual, corporate, or collective social units, including groups, departments within a corporation, public service agencies in a city, or nation-states in the world system. The range of actors in each case identifies the sources of major influence on the decision-making process. The factors influencing events are analysed according to the PESTE framework, a classic subject checklist which constitute the traditional approach for monitoring external trends and shocks: Political factors, Economic factors, Social factors, Technological factors, and Environmental factors.
The results show some interesting patterns: for example, in the transition and accession countries of Eastern Europe, international actors played a very significant role: in the cities of the EU15 countries, local and regional actors were dominant.
The factors identified in the various episodes varied according the type of issue being addressed in the decision-making episode. In most episodes, the issues concerned some form of possible change towards privatization or involvement of the private sector, The factors favouring privatization or the use of PPPs were dominated by political and ideological factors, followed by economic and financial and to a lesser extent technical-environmental or organizational. Factors militating against privatization were predominantly economic-financial and policy-organisational, and to a lesser extent political-ideological.
The Good Practice Recommendations (GPRs) are a structured set of recommendations on good practice in decision-making. In total there are 44 GPRs. They are designed to improve the knowledge available to decision-makers and all stakeholders in the decision-making process. The GPRs are intended to be of practical assistance to those engaged in the process of decision-making, and also represent formal conclusions about the decision-making process derived from the evidence of the case studies, City in Time, and international and national context papers. The GPRs relate to procedural rather than substantive issues.
Their construction is based on the analytical framework of the Watertime studies, which presents data from the 29 cities in terms of actors, factors and events influencing decision-making episodes, in a historical context, with varying degrees of participation and transparency. The GPRs are based on a model of the decision-making process, in which actors and factors are autonomous elements, constrained by the path dependency of history and the possible futures, with the decision-making process as the formal core, functioning within a public sphere through which the activities of actors, assessment of factors, and understanding of past and future is mediated. Although the formal structure relates to a single decision, in practice there will be a constant flow of decisions being made, in parallel and serially.
The structure recognizes that actors will operate in pursuit of their objectives whether or not the public decisions follow a formal pattern of diagnosis, identification of options etc, and whether or not there is a significant public sphere. Actors may seek to influence events without having to be restricted to the public sphere (though others may prefer to operate in the public sphere). They may seek to exert their influence through non-public mechanisms, for example through confidential agreements or contracts, or by bribery. They may operate to create future risks which then have to be faced by the public authority regardless of public preferences, for example through a threat of strike action, or a threat of withdrawal of investment. The same is true in a more general sense of factors: their impact and relevance is partly objective for example changes in the quality or availability of water sources, changes in industrial structure and demand for water but may also be mediated through the public sphere, most obviously in the case of political changes, social conditions.
The GPRs are structured using a number of parameters: by the stages of the decision-making process, by their relationship to information about the past or possibilities and risks for the future, and by category of issue addressed. The GPRs are made available as a standalone set of recommendations, and via the decision support tool.
The decision support tool, the WaterTime Participatory Decision Support System, is designed to support processes of public decision-making on issues related to public water supply. The key objective of the Watertime model is to combine public participation, procedural transparency, and comparative multi-criteria evaluation of options. It makes available the possibility of creating a project online: project administrators can create and efine a project, set up options to be considered and criteria to be used, and upload background documents. It also provides a number of tools to enable public discussion of the project. These include:
- A multi-criteria decision aid (MCDA), implemented within the Watertime system using the pairwise comparison method via an established MCDA engine, Macbeth. This preference elicitation method involves the user completing a matrix of pairwise judgements: is X preferred compared to Y, and if so how strongly (from very weakly via very strongly, with positive indicating an indeterminate positive preference). users are presented with visual feedback on their preferences, and these results can be aggregated by adminsitrators.
- A thread-based tool, an electronic forum. The thread-based mode is designed essentially for easy and quick communication over a short period of time, for communications involving relatively small quantities of relatively simple information.
- A document-based system, through Wiki technology. The data structure of a wiki is entirely freeform documents can be renamed, deleted, merged or split up. Perhaps the most well-known and successful is the user-editable encyclopaedia, www.wikipedia.org
- A form for structured responses to questionnaires. This uses a combination of specific yes/no (and multiple choice) questions and open-ended questions (with textual responses) to gain feedback.
Both the GPRs and the decision-support tool are available in 20 European languages on the project website at www.watertime.net
Result description: The key results are the Analaytical framework (AF) which is based on a thorough literature review of relevant multi-disciplinary theoretical work. It uses the analytical narratives approach to outline a formal framework for structuring and analysing empirical data on decision-making processes. The standard format is a formalisation of this framework for collecting and collating data from case studies in a common format thus enabling subsequent analysis using the common structure. the final synthesis presents the results of the application of this framework and format to the Watertime case study data.
Dissemination and use potential: The results can be disseminated through discussion with research colleagues in the academic and practitioner communities, and in preparing future research projects.
Key innovative features of the result: The AF sets out a comprehensive approach for using analytical narrative techniques in case studies concerned with decision-making in public services. It identifies and categorises general sets of actors at local, national and global level, and provides a framework for categorising factors, affecting these processes. Finally, it provides a coherent framework for formalising sequences of events within any overall episode. The standard format provides an application of this framework to enable data to be collected via spreadsheets and databases.
Current status and use of the result: The result has been published as part of the Watertime documents. The potential use of the AF and standard format in new research projects is being discussed with future potential partners.
The City in Time study synthesised historical and futures results from the historical data collected by the 29 case studies, which provides a valuable trans-European data set.
It addressed a number of core questions on the history:
-What were the strategic decisions that have mostly affected the development?
-Who and what factors define and create demand for services?
- How does the historical context constrain potential best practices for the future?
- What limits do technical choices of the past impose on decision-making?
- On what basis have selected strategies been formulated and decided upon during different time periods?
- Importance of water management culture and diversity.
It elaborated a long-term typology of water services management paradigms over time:
- Early trials in biggest urban centres with private concessions from the early 1800s to the late 1800s;
- Municipalities assuming responsibility between the mid-1800s and early 1900s. Somewhat later in France concessions were replaced by management contracts or affermage;
- Technical expansion and development of the established systems, from the early 1900s to the 1980s (except for WWI and II) - from narrow to wide coverage and improved water and wastewater treatment technologies together with stricter requirements. Municipal or inter-municipal systems were the major option, while regionalisation and river basin became the basis for water services in UK. In France private operators have largely occupied the market;
- Reinvention of privatisation and private operational contracts in the 1990s in some countries and cities while the vast majority of municipal-owned systems improving their performance and continuing buying services, equipment and goods from the private sector;
- New diversity culture of water management of the 21st century in terms of size, roles, technological solutions, alternative options within the wider EU framework while recognising the need of local traditions and conditions.
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