The Authors
Clare
Ferguson

Aither was pleased to work with the Essential Services Commission at the end of June to provide support to the Victorian water corporations in developing outcomes and measures in preparation for the upcoming price review.

In addition to discussing the importance of appropriate outcomes and how to approach developing these, an important part of the workshop was to bring awareness to some of the common issues we see in this space and to better equip participants to avoid these pitfalls themselves.

These common issues include:

  • Adding extra unnecessary complexity
  • Confusion around terms, definitions, and frameworks
  • Ineffective or poorly defined outcomes, including outcomes that reflect outputs
  • Outcomes that don’t align with the agency’s span of control

We emphasise the need to establish a clear, simple framework at the outset, with unambiguous terms, definitions and structure as the foundational step to avoid some of these issues and set you on the right track to establishing effective outcomes. You can read more about this in our thought piece The Importance of Effective and Robust Targets.