Catalysts of Change:

How National and Regional Regulators Are Shaping Innovation, Resilience, and Digital Transformation

Around the world, water regulators play a pivotal role in shaping the future of utility performance, climate resilience, and digital transformation. While their mandates differ, regulators increasingly share a common goal: creating the right conditions for innovation to thrive while safeguarding public trust, affordability, and service quality.

To explore how regulators are driving sector transformation, SWAN spoke with three leaders from Nigeria, Portugal, and India. Their insights reveal how regulators, from local to national levels are becoming catalysts of lasting change.

Defining the Mandate: Regulation as a Platform for Innovation

Ekiti State Water and Sanitation Regulatory Agency (EK-WASRA), Nigeria

EK-WASRA was established to ensure safe, reliable, and affordable water and sanitation services across Ekiti State. Its mandate focuses on setting service standards, monitoring water quality, approving tariffs, and protecting consumer rights. Innovation and resilience are central to fulfilling the agency’s mission.

In 2024, EK-WASRA launched a state-of-the-art Drinking Water Quality Laboratory, enabling real-time digital monitoring to protect public health. The regulator also encourages GIS-based asset mapping, digital reporting by utilities, and adoption of technologies such as smart leak detection and non-revenue water reduction, which is critical in a region experiencing rapid urban growth and climate variability.

Entidade Reguladora dos Serviços de Águas e Resíduos (ERSAR), Portugal

ERSAR oversees structural regulation, economic oversight, service quality, and drinking water compliance at the national level. As a maturity leader within Europe, ERSAR is advancing its digital transformation through ModERniSAR (2025–2026), a multi-year programme modernising internal digital infrastructure and the way operators submit, manage, and use data.

By promoting harmonised practices and a unified data collection system, ERSAR ensures operators can innovate while maintaining service reliability and environmental sustainability. The regulator’s digital evolution is designed to support faster, evidence-based, and transparent decision-making.

Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority (MWRRA), India

MWRRA oversees water allocation, tariffs, and project approvals across Maharashtra, balancing constitutional responsibility, financial discipline, and long-term sustainability. Its mandate ensures water is economically viable, socially equitable, and environmentally sustainable.

Innovation is enabled through a technology-neutral but digitally supportive regulatory approach. The Authority promotes SCADA systems, advanced metering, AI-enabled planning tools, and digital advisory services, particularly for agricultural water management, without imposing financial burdens. Cost-reflective tariffs, volumetric entitlements, mandatory metering, water audits, and basin-level planning provide the data foundation needed for monitoring performance and scaling effective digital solutions.

Regulatory Tools That Incentivise Innovation and Improve Performance

Across Nigeria, Portugal, and India, regulators are deploying a mix of economic, technical, and data-driven instruments to strengthen accountability while creating space for innovation. At EK-WASRA, performance reporting and tariff reviews are increasingly informed by operational data, enabling utilities to justify investments in technologies such as smart metering, leak detection, and digital billing without compromising affordability for vulnerable customers. Flexible compliance pathways allow utilities to pilot new approaches under regulatory oversight, ensuring experimentation occurs within clearly defined performance expectations.

Similarly, ERSAR has built a mature framework that integrates benchmarking, economic regulation, and digital reporting into a coherent system. Its national indicator framework compares operators across service quality, efficiency, and customer outcomes, while tariff methodologies allow innovation-related investments when measurable public value is demonstrated. Digital platforms such as its reporting portals further strengthen sector-wide data quality, enabling more consistent oversight and faster decision-making.

In India, the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority applies regulatory tools primarily through water entitlement frameworks, tariff determination, and performance monitoring across irrigation and bulk water supply systems. By promoting volumetric pricing, efficiency incentives, and transparent allocation mechanisms, the authority encourages utilities and water user associations to adopt improved measurement technologies and data systems. This approach supports more sustainable water use while gradually building the institutional foundations required for digital transformation.

Balancing Innovation with Accountability, Service Quality, and Trust

All three regulators emphasise a risk-informed, people-centred approach that ensures innovation strengthens, rather than disrupts, service reliability and public confidence. At EK-WASRA, pilot projects are expected to meet defined performance targets and are supported by close monitoring, community feedback, and customer satisfaction surveys so that technological progress translates into tangible service improvements. ERSAR aligns innovation with its core regulatory principles of impartiality, transparency, and competence, with programmes such as ModERniSAR introducing new digital tools and automation while preserving continuity and fairness for operators across the sector. In Maharashtra, MWRRA maintains accountability through legally defined water entitlements, structured allocation planning, and economic incentives that link supply assurances to authorised use. Monitoring mechanisms discourage over-extraction and support equitable access, ensuring that innovation improves efficiency and sustainability without compromising public trust or service quality.

Measuring Impact: Data-Driven Insights for Better Outcomes

Measuring performance remains central to regulatory effectiveness, with all three agencies placing increasing emphasis on reliable, harmonised data to guide decision-making and policy evolution. Regulators are moving beyond compliance monitoring toward outcome-based evaluation, where operational efficiency, financial sustainability, and customer experience are assessed together.

Common performance indicators tracked across jurisdictions include:

• Non-Revenue Water (NRW) reduction
• Drinking water quality compliance
• Service coverage in urban and rural areas
• Continuity and hours of supply
• Revenue collection efficiency
• Complaint resolution times
• Customer satisfaction
• Operational efficiency and dissemination of best practices

ERSAR places particular emphasis on harmonised national datasets to enable evidence-based regulation and cross-utility comparisons. EK-WASRA evaluates innovation pilots against cost-effectiveness and scalability criteria before encouraging broader adoption across the state. In Maharashtra, performance monitoring linked to water allocations, tariff recovery, and irrigation efficiency provides insight into how regulatory decisions influence both resource sustainability and service delivery outcomes. Together, these approaches demonstrate how robust data systems are becoming the backbone of modern water regulation.

Driving Collaboration and Sector-Wide Learning

• EK-WASRA collaborates with academia, industry, and international peer regulators, including ESAWAS and RegNet. Its water quality laboratory serves as a shared hub for utilities, researchers, and private operators.
• ERSAR engages with organisations including Ofwat, AEAS, EIB, OECD, IWA, and the Protocol on Water and Health, co-developing methodologies and strengthening efficiency and drought resilience practices across Europe.
• MWRRA uses a participatory regulatory model with transparency and structured stakeholder engagement. Draft policies, tariff proposals, and technical studies are published and circulated to academic institutions, industry groups, utilities, and experts. Feedback is evaluated and incorporated into final decisions, promoting adoption of innovative practices while building trust across stakeholders.

Recommendations for Regulators Worldwide

EK-WASRA

• Provide regulatory certainty to encourage investment
• Start with pilots, evaluate thoroughly, and scale what works
• Embed resilience across standards and water safety planning
• Invest in data systems and human capacity, not just technology

ERSAR

• Develop robust digital infrastructure for real-time monitoring
• Foster multi-sector collaboration and capacity building
• Create adaptive frameworks that encourage experimentation
• Ensure transparency and align innovation with strategic public goals, including the SDGs

MWRRA

• Encourage technology adoption only when cost-effective, scalable, and contextually appropriate
• Use tariffs, entitlements, and incentives to promote efficiency, reuse, and water conservation
• Combine basin-level planning with robust monitoring to safeguard equity and sustainability
• Engage stakeholders through transparent consultations to strengthen trust and support innovation

Conclusion: Regulators as Catalysts of Transformation

EK-WASRA, ERSAR, and MWRRA demonstrate that modern regulators are no longer passive enforcers. By combining clear standards with flexible pathways, leveraging digital tools, embedding economic incentives, and building collaborative ecosystems, they enable utilities to innovate responsibly while ensuring water services remain safe, equitable, and resilient.

As the global water sector confronts climate pressures, infrastructure demands, and rising customer expectations, regulators will continue to play a decisive role. Their leadership, rooted in transparency, collaboration, and data-driven insight sets the stage for a truly more resilient water future.