Chapter 13

Knowledge creation and sharing
through public-public partnershipin the water sector
By Milo Fiasconaro

Managing water resources is not an easy job. Providing safe drinking
water to citizens and businesses, and treating wastewater so that it
can be returned to the environment without putting health or nature indanger is a complex enterprise that requires a wide range of different
skills and knowledge. For a water operator, the continuous developmentof workforce capacity – from the chemist to the plumber, from the IT
technician to the geologist – is therefore crucial in order to provide
an ever-improving service. Further, socio-economic transformation,
climate change and legislative evolution are creating new challenges,
requiring that water operators constantly search – both internally andexternally – for potential new solutions or approaches.
More generally, the absorption, use, reproduction and generation ofknowledge – be it embodied in workers, machines or scientific texts –represents a fundamental dimension of the mission of a water operator.
While this is true for both public and private operators, the ownershipmodel can significantly affect the way an operator ‘organises’ knowledge
management. Two main differences can be identified.
The first difference has to do with the diverse ‘spatial nature’ of public
and private operators. A public operator is necessarily territorially boundto the public authority or consortium of public authorities conferring on
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the possibility for a public operator to provide services outside thegeographical perimeter determined by the mandating public authoritie[s]is explicitly forbidden by law). On the contrary, a private operator,
particularly a multinational, will tend to be organised in a networked,
trans-territorial fashion, connecting and integrating different plants
and facilities across the world. As a result, a multinational company canquickly mobilise, disseminate and transfer new knowledge in its network.
In other words, once an effective solution to a shared problem is identified
in a private water plant, or once a process improvement is developed at
a decentralised research facility or at headquarters, such knowledge canbe easily, effectively and cheaply transmitted to the company’s plants
and management centres worldwide. In addition, the relative economic
cost of generating new knowledge will tend to be lower for private thanfor public operators due to economies of scale. In short, knowledge
generation for a private operator will likely be easier and cheaper thanfor a public operator, thanks to its size and transnational nature.
The second difference concerns the incentives or rationales for investingin knowledge generation. The main drive for such investments from bothpublic and private operators is the need to find solutions to concreteproblems. However, a private operator can also decide to invest in
knowledge creation (through internal research and development, R&D,
or external acquisition) as a competitive strategy: developing newtechnological solutions that, once patented, can create a competitive
advantage over competitors, thus increasing profits. Obviously, suchinvestments can also cause economic losses if they do not yield the
expected results – a normal entrepreneurial risk for a profit-making
entity. For public operators, selling technologies or patents is notnormally part of their mission or mandate so they cannot recover costs
involved in R&D activities in that way. In most cases public operators
can only recover costs through the tariffs they charge on domestic orbusiness users, which means they have to be extremely careful about the192

Knowledge creation and sharing through public-public partnership in the water sector

way they use tariff-generated resources to finance uncertain explorative
efforts; otherwise they could be sanctioned, for example by a Court ofAuditors, for misuse of public resources.
These two ‘structural’ differences between the public and private models
of water management help explain certain intrinsic limitations, orasymmetries, that public operators face when it comes to knowledge
generation and management. The problem becomes even more acute in
the case of newly created public services, especially if they are the resultof de-privatisation processes. For reasons explained elsewhere in thisbook (see Chapter 11 for instance), one of the most daunting difficulties
public authorities face when they decide to bring water management backinto public hands is precisely the definition, sourcing and organisationof the knowledge needed to manage the service. The range of concreteknowledge-related issues is enormous, like understanding the skills
needed to manage the service (and then recruiting accordingly), or
gaining control or buying the software needed for user databases (or any
other soft or hard assets needed). For all these reasons, public operators,
and the public authorities in charge of their organisation, have to devise
modalities for knowledge generation and use that are different from theirprivate counterparts.

Public-public cooperation as an alternative to marketbased solutions
Public operators have different options to compensate some of theasymmetries in knowledge generation described above, and to improvetheir capacity to address current and future challenges in water
resources management. Some options are more ‘traditional’ because
they have been in the public water sector for quite some time. We canmention the possibility for water operators to purchase innovative
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consulting companies for the provision of specialised services, or to
recruit and train specialised staff.
A promising alternative is the growing number of public operators
deciding to pursue public-public cooperation as another strategy forknowledge creation. Public-public cooperation can offer some advantages
compared to traditional market-based solutions. These advantages lie
in the ‘public nature’ of the organisations involved, allowing actors topursue general interest objectives that can go beyond the specific andcontingent interests of the parties involved in the partnership. In thischapter, we illustrate how public-public partnerships in the watersector can advance public service objectives by presenting two common
forms: collaboration between water operators and academic institutions,and collaboration among public water operators within national andinternational networks.

Partnerships between water operators and academic
institutions
The first example of public-public partnership pertaining to knowledge
management in the water sector consists in collaborating with research
entities, particularly universities. Objectives can vary but a typical goal
is to increase knowledge on a specific issue or solve a specific problem.
In Italy, concrete examples include: Gruppo CAP (water operator in theprovince of Milan), which has signed a partnership agreement withLa Sapienza University (Rome) for an in-depth analysis of geologicalmorphology of the aquifer in the Milan area1; or Uniacque (water operatorof Bergamo), which has signed a research contract with the Italian
National Research Council for a study on pollution of surface water frommicro-plastics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.2
Another common objective behind water operator–university collaboration is ensuring the promotion of academic investigation on water194Knowledge creation and sharing through public-public partnership in the water sector

resources management and training of young professionals. Examples inthis domain include the joint financing by the Scottish Government andScottish Water of research awards and a scholarship programme for PhD
students focusing their research on water issues,3 or the co-financing
by EMASESA (Seville water operator) of a Master’s in Technology andManagement of the Integrated Water Cycle at a local university.4
Finally, another objective can be ensuring that students are aware ofcareer opportunities with water operators and in the water sector moregenerally. Indeed, a shortage of qualified workers represents one of
the major challenges of the water sector, as pointed out in a UN-Water
report.5 An example in this context comes from Eydap (Athens’ wateroperator), which has created summer time dedicated positions for higher
education students (250 in 2019) in its numerous departments.
What is common – and important – in all of these examples is that theknowledge generated through collaboration will remain in the public domain or contribute to the general interest. More precisely, the knowledge
generated in the partnership will not be captured in a proprietary form
(e.g. a patent, a licensing contract, etc.). On the contrary, such knowledge
will be used and shared by the water operator to address or better
understand a specific problem; for its part, the public academic entity canpublish the knowledge generated – if scientifically relevant – throughpublications, thus contributing to the general advancement of knowledge
in society. In short, launching a knowledge partnership between public
entities means that the result of joint work will not serve to generate
profits but will be accessible to all, thus contributing to the well-being ofsociety as a whole.

Networks of public operators
As a not-for-profit entity, a public water operator can share knowledge
freely through a second type of public-public partnership: participation in195Knowledge creation and sharing through public-public partnership in the water sector

national and international networks of professionals and water experts.
Over the last 15 years, there have been a growing number of networks
that bring together only publicly owned operators, in comparison totraditional professional networks that used to encompass the private
sector as well. In the European context, some of these networks havea national scope: this is the case of France Eau Publique (Public WaterFrance), Asociación Española de Operadores Públicos de Abastecimientoy Saneamiento (Spanish Association of Public Water and Sanitation
Operators), or Allianz der öffentlichen Wasserwirtschaft (Alliance ofPublic Water Companies, Germany). They can also have an international
scope, as is the case of Aqua Publica Europea (European Association ofPublic Water and Sanitation Operators).
All of these networks were explicitly created to pursue two main
objectives. The first objective is to enable public operators to develop theirown policy proposals for water resources management given they may
have different views and ideas to put forward than private operators. The
choice of ownership model is not just a matter of dialectic confrontation
on a political level (e.g. whether one thinks an essential service like water
should be a profit-making business), but it also has concrete implicationsin terms of how water resources are – or should be – managed fromsource to tap. The ownership model will affect the way technological ororganisational options are selected, or decisions taken over investments,
or even how potential conflicts between alternative water uses will bearbitrated. Consequently, public operators need their own space toelaborate and channel their alternative proposals.
If such a ‘representation need’ is often the main reason behind thecreation of these networks, having a dedicated platform where to shareknowledge, expertise and solutions on concrete management issues
certainly represents the other main drive for the creation of ‘public only’
associations. The greater homogeneity of the membership can facilitate thedevelopment of trust and the circulation of information among members:

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when trying to address a specific problem, an operator can be confident
that commercial interests do not motivate solutions suggested by othermembers. The idea that the non-profit nature of relations can facilitate
knowledge-sharing and capacity-development initiatives among peers
was also behind the creation of the Global Water Operators’ Partnership
Alliance (GWOPA), under the umbrella of UN-Habitat. Although GWOPA
is not an association like those mentioned above, it was launched morethan 10 years ago by a UN Secretary General Advisory Board on similargrounds, namely that water resources management issues are partly a‘capacity problem’ and that peer-to-peer learning on a solidarity basis
can be a powerful tool to disseminate best practices and know-how.
More generally, the creation of networks of public operators can respondto knowledge-sharing needs, based on two rationales. The first one ispractical: the assumption is that in a national or transnational networkof operators there already exist several solutions to common problems,
which can easily be shared precisely because there is no commercial
competition among members. In this sense, networks of public operators
can compensate the ‘geographical asymmetry’ mentioned above by
becoming catalysers of information and capacities that are not bound bycompetitive concerns and can consequently be shared freely.
The second rationale can be more value-laden: if water is a common goodand water provision, a natural monopoly, and if all economic resources
generated by the water management cycle should be reinvested in thewater cycle itself, then the knowledge needed to manage and address
water management problems should also be a common good. Importantly,
public operators would have a duty to share this knowledge.
Public water operators’ duty to help other operators is enshrined in Aqua
Publica Europea’s Founding Charter, for instance. Aqua Publica Europea
is a knowledge-sharing platform that performs this mission in different
ways. For example, it routinely organises technical meetings to address

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specific issues by relying on the internal expertise of members; it supports
the activity of internal working groups led by staff from members who
coordinate in-depth exchange of data or information on more complexmatters; it supports the creation among members of consortia to bid forinternational research grants. The most recent initiative launched by
Aqua Publica Europea in this domain is Water Erasmus,6 a programmethat promotes short-term staff exchanges among members. WaterErasmus has been designed to strengthen operators’ internal capacity by
responding to different needs: promoting mutual knowledge of different
management models; facilitating the mobilisation of knowledge andknow-how that is embodied in people; making the workplace more
attractive especially for young professionals and helping them to build
their own international network. Since its launch in 2017, several
operators have participated in the programme:•Scottish Water’s staff visited Eau de Paris (Paris’ water operator) tolearn about their strategy on public drinking water fountains andEau de Paris reciprocated the visit to study Scottish Water’s remotecontrol technologies;•Gruppo CAP (Milan) visited Hamburg Wasser to learn more fromthe technologies and strategies on wastewater treatment, and BCASA(Barcelona’s sewage company) visited CAP to study their internal
performance assessment methodology;•SWDE (Wallonia, Belgium) and SMAT (Turin, Italy) exchanged on
their innovation strategies.

Photo by Gruppo CAP (Milan, Italy): theteam from Gruppo CAP visited HAMBURG
WASSER (Germany) with the Water Erasmus
programme198

Knowledge creation and sharing through public-public partnership in the water sector

Public policies on strengthening knowledge in thepublic water sector
To conclude, it is important to stress that, in the water sector, the scientificand technological content of routine operations has been growing. Due tosome structural differences in terms of public operators’ organisation andmission, it is more challenging for them to develop and integrate suchcontent than for their private counterparts. Public-public partnerships– by activating interfaces with the academic world or by collaborating
in international networks – can represent an effective response forpublic operators to compensate for the lack of transnational economies
of scale that multinational companies can benefit from. National andtransnational associations of public operators pursue the mission ofknowledge-sharing and capacity development autonomously, by relying
exclusively on resources coming from members. However, this effort will
not be enough to address a great challenge of our time: strengthening
the capacity of the public sector more broadly. Governments and public
powers have a crucial responsibility in facilitating and incentivising thiskind of capacity-development effort. This is true for the water sector
and for all other public administration sectors. Mariana Mazzucato7 andseveral other scholars have shown in recent years that a strong, wellstaffed and skilled public sector is an essential condition for fostering thewell-being of societies, including the development of a vibrant privatesector.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Milo Fiasconaro has been the Executive Director ofAqua Publica Europea – the European Association of
Public Water Operators – since 2012. Prior to that, heworked for public authorities on the implementation oflocal development policies. He holds an MA in Human
Geography from Durham University, UK, and a degree in
Political Science from Florence University, Italy.

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Endnotes
1

See Gruppo CAP (n.d.) CAP e la Ricerca Universitaria. http://www.gruppocap.it/attivita/ricercae-sviluppo/cap-e-la-ricerca-universitaria (retrieved 23 January 2020).

2

See Uniacque (n.d.) Iniziative per l’ambiente. http://www.uniacque.bg.it/cosa-facciamo/comunicazione/iniziative-per-lambiente/index.html (retrieved 23 January 2020).

3

See Scottish Water (n.d.) The Hydro Nation Scholarship Programme. https://www.hydronationscholars.scot/apply (retrieved 23 January 2020).

4

See EMASESA (n.d.) Cátedra del Agua. http://catedra.us.es/catedraemasesa/ (retrieved 23 January2020).

5

UNESCO (2016) The United Nations World Water Development Report 2016 – Water and Jobs.
Paris: UNESCO.

6

See Aqua Publica Europea (n.d.) Water Erasmus. http://www.aquapublica.eu/ape/exchange#water-erasmus (retrieved 23 January 2020).

7

Mazzucato, M. (2017) The Entrepreneurial State. London: Penguin.

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