Avaliação de políticas públicas de saneamento: a instituição do plano municipal de saneamento e o impacto na eficiência dos serviços de abastecimento de água em municípios catarinenses de pequeno porte

Abstract

The evaluation of a public policy presupposes the verification of its implementation process and its performance, especially with regard to the level of reduction of the problem that generated it. Public sanitation policies have registered significant progress in the search for universal access to water, especially after the strengthening of the concept of sustainable development and the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, huge gaps persist in the quality of sanitation services provided. Federal Law 11.445/2007, known as the Regulatory Framework for Sanitation in Brazil, brought important advances in the national sanitation policy, as in addition to defining general standards, it provided specific attributions to municipalities, including the need to establish the respective municipal plan of sanitation (PMSB). However, the elaboration of such an instrument is a complex and gradual process, which often faces relevant obstacles, especially when analyzed from the perspective of the management of small municipalities. This research, considered descriptive, bibliographical and documentary, of quantitative analysis, sought to assess to what extent the institution of PMSB, from the publication of Federal Law 11.445/07, resulted in efficiency gains in the provision of water supply services of small municipalities of Santa Catarina State. Therefore, the study used Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a mathematical technique that uses linear programming to estimate a non-parametric production frontier from a set of data related to inputs and outputs, as well as statistical tests, such as the Wilcoxon test, to verify the existence of a statistically significant difference between the efficiency of water supply services between the municipalities that have instituted the respective PMSB and those that have not yet established them. The results showed an increase in efficiency scores after the publication of Federal Law 11445/2007, considering that the distance between the efficiency of the best DMUs, considered benchmarks, and that of the others, considered inefficient, decreased over the period analyzed. Furthermore, the results indicated the inexistence of a statistically significant difference between the efficiency scores of the municipalities that instituted the respective PMSB and the others. On the other hand, the research demonstrated the existence of a difference in distribution, with an increase in the efficiency scores, when comparing the results of the periods before and after the institution of the respective PMSB in each municipality. Finally, the study demonstrated the existence of a positive correlation, albeit moderate, between the variables efficiency and percentage of population with access to the water supply service, pointing out that the path to achieving SDG 6 also involves improving the efficiency of sanitation service providers.