Dear All,

My name is Jasdeep Randhawa, and I currently work as a Senior Analyst in Castalia Strategic Advisors in Wellington, New Zealand. My background is in law and public policy, with work experience in access to improved water and sanitation services.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) engaged Castalia to draft a Guidance Note to inform ten city-level teams funded by BMGF and UK Department for International Development (DfID), that are working on various public-private partnerships to improve urban sanitation services. The Guidance Note was recently presented by Castalia’s CEO David Ehrhardt at an adjunct to the Reinvent the Toilet Fair held on March 22-23, 2014 in New Delhi, India that was sponsored by the Gates Foundation.

I have attached the Guidance Note (title: "Improving Sanitation Outcomes through Service Level Agreements: A Guidance Note") and the cover note to this post. I hope you find the Note useful for your own work.

This Guidance Note distils lessons from performance-based contracting in sanitation and other sectors to guide the ten city-level teams in designing and implementing Service Level Agreements to deliver sanitation services. This Guidance Note first describes the components of sanitation services to ensure that the SLAs cover the critical elements of the sanitation value chain. It then explains the conceptual and economic framework that underpins the SLAs. The Note gives practical guidance on designing and implementing effective SLAs. The appendix to the Note contains a checklist to ensure all the essential steps in designing and procuring the contract have been followed. The final part of the paper presents key terms for four example SLAs to understand the most important provisions that would to ensure the contract provides the desired outcomes.

Thanks and best regards,
Jasdeep