Digitalising the Water Sector: Implications for Water Service Management and Governance

Digital technologies are becoming central to water governance and management, yet their impact and developmental implications are under-researched, particularly in the global South. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by examining the process of water service digitalisation and the resulting effects on service providers. Drawing on qualitative methods, we apply ideas on digitalisation, value, and power to investigate the implementation and impact of digital technologies in Ghana’s state water utility company. We find digital water innovations to be recent, and delivering relatively limited impacts as yet, with value mainly accruing at the utility’s operational rather than strategic level. The digital technologies present avenues for power shifts and struggles internally and externally as well as some changes in water management structures and responsibilities. We end with a brief discussion on the implications for water service governance and research.

[1]  Andrea Castelletti,et al.  Benefits and challenges of using smart meters for advancing residential water demand modeling and management: A review , 2015, Environ. Model. Softw..

[2]  T. Buabeng,et al.  Implementing Public Private Partnerships in Africa: The Case of Urban Water Service Delivery in Ghana , 2013 .

[3]  Antina von Schnitzler Democracy's Infrastructure: Techno-Politics and Protest after Apartheid , 2017 .

[4]  Christos Mourtzios,et al.  Making urban water smart: the SMART-WATER solution. , 2020, Water science and technology : a journal of the International Association on Water Pollution Research.

[5]  Jan Cherlet,et al.  Epistemic and Technological Determinism in Development Aid , 2014 .

[6]  Federico Caprotti,et al.  The Smart City as Global Discourse: Storylines and Critical Junctures across 27 Cities , 2019, Journal of Urban Technology.

[7]  Cara Beal,et al.  Toward the digital water age: Survey and case studies of Australian water utility smart-metering programs , 2015 .

[8]  Ayona Datta New urban utopias of postcolonial India , 2015 .

[9]  Simon J. T. Pollard,et al.  Risk Analysis Strategies in the Water Utility Sector: An Inventory of Applications for Better and More Credible Decision Making , 2006 .

[10]  C. Fischer,et al.  Diffusion of Electronic Water Payment Innovations in Urban Ghana. Evidence from Tema Metropolis , 2020, Water.

[11]  A. Browne,et al.  . (2021). Resocializing digital water transformations: Outlining social science perspectives on the digital water journey. , 2021 .

[12]  Dennis Broeders,et al.  In the name of Development: Power, profit and the datafication of the global South , 2015 .

[13]  Sam Kayaga,et al.  Strategic planning for water utilities in developing countries , 2007 .

[14]  A. Sarkar The role of new ‘smart technology’ to provide water to the urban poor: a case study of water ATMs in Delhi, India , 2019, Energy, Ecology and Environment.

[15]  Johan Hellström,et al.  ‘You Can’t Cheat the Community Anymore’ : using Mobiles to Improve Water Governance , 2014 .

[16]  Eric Gossett,et al.  Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think , 2015 .

[17]  Jochen Monstadt,et al.  Hybrid constellations of water access in the digital age: the case of Jisomee Mita in Soweto-Kayole, Nairobi. , 2019 .

[18]  Upmanu Lall,et al.  The Future of Water: A Collection of Essays on “Disruptive” Technologies that may Transform the Water Sector in the Next 10 Years , 2019 .

[19]  K. Vairavamoorthy,et al.  Multi-criteria Decision Analysis: A Strategic Planning Tool for Water Loss Management , 2011 .

[20]  Richard Heeks,et al.  Datafication, value and power in developing countries: Big data in two Indian public service organizations , 2020 .

[21]  L. Taylor,et al.  The Power of Smart Solutions: Knowledge, Citizenship, and the Datafication of Bangalore’s Water Supply , 2017 .

[22]  Chris Johnson,et al.  Implementing the NIS Directive, driving cybersecurity improvements for Essential Services , 2020, 2020 International Conference on Cyber Situational Awareness, Data Analytics and Assessment (CyberSA).

[23]  R. Stott,et al.  The World Bank , 2008, Annals of tropical medicine and parasitology.