Transfer of Ownership in Water Supply and Sanitation Systems

Fully in the tradition of the Aguasan Workshops, this year's central theme·- "transfer of ownership" -·was explored through actual case examples of water and sanitation development projects from several African and Asian countries. At the same time, an attempt was made to apply and, if needed, further adapt a conceptual tool borrowed from the management sciences. The tool is called "CATWOE", which stands for Client, Actor, Transformation, Weltanschauung, Owner, Environment. Specifically designed to deal with questions of roles and transformation proeesses in management systems, CATWOE promised workshop participants an innovative approach to the theme of ownership transfer.

Application of CATWOE to the case examples did not yield the expected results, however, and the workshop had to shift its approach in mid-stream. Nonetheless, the trial application of CATWOE and subsequent evolution of the Workshop produced some valuable insights and the answers to many open questions eventually emerged.