Steve Wilson posted on February 16, 2012 12:32
Technical assistance providers and federal agencies that serve and support tribal water and wastewater systems have developed a unifying and comprehensive strategy to coordinate services. This approach has given everyone involved a better understanding of the roles they each play in supporting tribal systems and has resulted in improved working relationships that are paying dividends for the tribes they serve.
Tribal Technical Assistance Workgroup
A national workgroup was formed to look at the technical services being offered to tribal water and wastewater systems. The group included tribes; those providing tribal services including rural water associations, regional RCAP affiliates, tribal organizations; as well as the federal partners also serving tribes, IHS, USEPA, and USDA. The IHS found that about 12% of American Indian and Alaskan Native Village homes do not have safe water and/or basic sanitation facilities, compared to 0.6% of non-native homes in the US. The committment was made to try and reduce the number of tribal homes without access by 50% by 2015.
In evaluating services, they found that service was inconsistent across Indian Country, in some areas there was coordination among service providers, but in many some areas there was not. Lack of coordination and communication has lead to confusion, conflict, or inefficient use of limited resources. The workgroups objective was to maximize the benefits that coordination and communication would provide to create a higher level of service for all tribal systems, while minimizing the duplicate services and conflicts that were barriers to service and wasting resources. The result of their efforts was the Tribal Access Workgroup Report that describes their efforts, and provides recommendations on how to move forward to develop better coordination and communication among tribal service providers.
The Recommendations
The workgroup came up with 9 recommendations to improve coordination that revolved around two specific action items. One was development of an online tool that should be maintained to allow service providers and recipients to easily identify their respective TA partners. The other action item was to hold semi-annual technical assistance coordination meetings, and in the report, the structure, format, protocol, and justification are all provided in detail.
Outcomes
The online tool is the Tribal Contact Manager database, found under "Tribal Resources" on SmallWaterSupply.org. If you are a provider or tribe interested in knowing who your partners are, you can search the database for a list by organization, then click on the specific office to get to their contact information.
The technical assistance provider (TAP) meetings are ongoing. I have been fortunate enough to participate in these meetings, so far, in Arizona and Nevada, and its clear that this approach is providing the service providers with a new, improved paradigm with which to develop services. Region 5 is holding its next TAP meeting next week, we are already seeing the providers sharing information in advance of that meeting.
Communication and coordination are always crucial pieces of any service program. Formalizing an approach that takes advantage of everyone's strengths is already providing dividends for the providers. We are excited to see the long-term value of these coordination meetings come to light as tribal services become more consistent, efficient, and effective.