Performance Assessment System to Wastewater Utilities Strategic Planning

Urban water utilities face growing challenges in compliance with increasingly demanding legislation, tightening budgets, ageing personnel, decreasing infrastructure reliability, increasing operational costs, regulatory pressure, and climate change. Within this context, tracking the alignment of the performance with the mission and strategic objectives of the organization, based on reliable and up-to-date data, is of utmost importance to enable effective and continual improvement management. Organizational performance assessment in the water sector has been a topic of growing attention since the 1990s due to the increase in the role of regulators and tighter legislation. Proactive utilities are incorporating sustainability, resource efficiency, resilience, and continual improvement principles in their practices. Strategic planning provides the road map for management and interconnecting the different areas of the organization. An essential component of strategic management planning is the adoption of a tailored performance assessment system (PAS), allowing a better response to these challenges from the water utility management perspective. This paper presents a novel PAS at the strategic level, which was tested and validated with wastewater utilities, in a co-creation process. The proposed PAS fully adopts the objectives recommended in international standards, with a corresponding set of criteria and metrics, and a validated proposal of reference values for the metrics.

Developments in the Rorschach Assessment of Disordered Thinking and Communication

In its first 100 years, the Rorschach has been heralded as a valuable method for investigating disturbances in thought organization and reasoning. It has survived periods of intense scrutiny and criticism, as contemporary researchers continued to demonstrate the empirical validity of the Rorschach as a measure of disordered thinking ( Mihura et al., 2013 ). It is fitting to mark the centenary of Rorschach’s “experiment” by summarizing contemporary contributions of the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS) and reviewing the empirical and conceptual bases for using the inkblots to assess disordered thinking and communication.

Performance Assessment System for Energy Efficiency in Wastewater Systems

Performance assessment is essential to effectively evaluate and monitor the activity of water utilities, support decision making, and encourage continuous improvement. Performance assessment systems (PAS), covering several service objectives and criteria, have been successfully applied in water supply and wastewater systems. Tailored approaches focusing on the assessment of the energy use and efficiency in wastewater systems are still limited. This paper aims at the development and demonstration of a comprehensive PAS for energy efficiency, tailored for wastewater systems, incorporating criteria related to energy consumption, operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, and environmental impacts, such as untreated discharges and greenhouse gases emissions, among others. Management and control of excessive or undue inflows to these systems is specifically addressed by several novel criteria and metrics. The proposed PAS should be adapted by each utility to be aligned with the objectives of the organisation and with the implemented asset management strategy. The proposed approach and the resulting consolidated PAS are thoroughly described. Results from the application of the PAS to several Portuguese utilities are discussed. This PAS aims at contributing to a reliable and replicable process to assess energy efficiency in wastewater systems and to encourage a more rational energy management.

Policy implementation of the performance assessment system of aparatures in Cilandak Jakarta IPDN campus

This study aims to identify and analyze and formulate a model for implementing the Apparatus Performance Assessment System Policy (Sikerja) at the IPDN Cilandak Jakarta Campus. The type of research used is descriptive with a qualitative approach. To formulate a model for the implementation of the apparatus performance appraisal system policy (Sikerja) at the IPDN Cilandak Jakarta campus, researchers used Soft System Methodology (SSM). In this study, an analysis of the implementation of the Sikerja policy was carried out with the dimensions studied were communication, resources, disposition and bureaucratic structure. The results showed that the implementation of the Sikerja policy at IPDN CIlandak Jakarta campus has been carried out quite well in the disposition and bureaucratic structure dimensions, however in the communication and resource dimensions there are still obstacles. The Implementation Model of the Apparatus Performance Appraisal System (Sikerja) policy at the IPDN Cilandak Jakarta Campus is a model that adds a dimension of commitment as an additional dimension in implementing the Sikerja policy.

ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT SYSTEM

The paper considers the content and features of the efficiency assessment system of the Asian Development Bank. The article presents the basic requirements for the creation of reliable systems for assessing the activities of development banks, based on foreign experience. The author gives a brief description of Asian Development Bank’s activities, emphasizes the importance of Asian Development Bank’s Independent Evaluation Department. The author’s analysis of the Asian Development Bank performance assessment system showed that the bank uses both classical financial indicators and specialized generalized economic indicators that are quantitatively measurable. The entire system of economic indicators is divided into 4 levels, which makes it possible to separately assess both the development in the Asian Pacific Region, the contribution of Asian Development Bank to this development, and the quality of management in the Asian Development Bank itself; for each level of assessment the author used its own set of indicators (indicators). Asian Development Bank’s corporate performance cascade system ensures that all staff are engaged in achieving set goals. It is important that Asian Development Bank uses the transition from quantitative data to qualitative characteristics, which solves the problem of inaccurate data: clusters of indicators are formed. Asian Development Bank’s performance assessment system is not linked to the use of a single performance criterion.

How Reliably Can Examiners Make Form Quality (FQ) Judgments in the Absence of the Form Quality (FQ) Tables?

Form Quality (FQ) scores are well-validated measures of the accuracy of perceptive processes, of reality testing, and of the severity of psychological disturbance. Research studies reveal that inter-rater reliability of FQ scoring is good when visualized objects are available in the FQ tables. However, many visualized objects are not found in the FQ tables so that scoring must rely on one’s individual judgment. Thus, a major question remains unsolved: How reliably can examiners make FQ judgments in the absence of the FQ tables? To address this question, we used the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS) method. We asked 21 graduate students from our research labs to rate Form Accuracy (FA) and FQ for 86 objects from a subset of four Rorschach card (I, III, VI, and VIII). The results clearly reveal that FQ judgments made by individual examiners without using the FQ tables are not reliable. When scoring FQ, one should carefully scrutinize the empirically supported FQ tables and base the FQ score on these rather than personal judgments.