Interactive tool · oversight & transparency
You can't oversee what you can't see. Check 20 core indicators that a board, regulator or resident should be able to find. You'll get a transparency score for six areas, the biggest gaps, and a ready-made information request you can send to your utility or council.
Why these 20
The list draws on the kinds of indicators used by the IWA performance-indicator system, national regulators and the OECD water-governance work. It is deliberately short: a board that sees these 20 every quarter can spot most problems early.
Hours of supply, interruptions, drinking-water compliance and incidents. These are what residents notice first, and what Flint's oversight failed to escalate.
Ask: are results shown by area, so that poorer districts aren't averaged away?
The water balance, leakage per connection or ILI, and the renewal rate. Together they show whether the network is being maintained or used up.
Ask: is there a published annual water balance?
Cost coverage, the funded and deferred capital plan, ring-fencing and a plain tariff explanation.
Ask: the 10 budget questions.
Households above the affordability benchmark, disconnections, and who is still unserved. The UN human right to water makes these central, not optional.
Ask: test a typical low-income bill with the affordability calculator.
Treatment compliance and storm-overflow spills. England's spill monitoring went from patchy coverage to almost every overflow being reported, and public pressure followed.
Ask: see the sanitation & wastewater page.
Contract awards and variations, board papers and minutes, complaints and consultation results: the trail that lets anyone check how decisions were made.
Ask: screen major contracts with the red flags.