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Indirect support is about creating and regulating the enabling environment for water, sanitation and hygiene services. It includes the costs for macro-level policy formulation, planning, regulation, sector-level monitoring, developing IT systems, maintaining frameworks and institutional arrangements, etc.
Indirect support includes capacity support to service authorities. Service authorities are those bodies, often district local government or an equivalent, with legal responsibility for guaranteeing water, sanitation and hygiene services in a defined area, fulfilling functions such as planning, coordination, oversight of service delivery. It may be the legal owner of water and sanitation assets but not necessarily so. In some cases, service authorities may also have delegated functions of regulation. They may also be responsible for technical assistance, but can contract this out to an association of community-based providers, an NGO or the private sector.
Indirect support includes costs on support to increase capacities, for example capacity building for professionals and technicians and capacity support to local government as service authorities, to adhere to national norms, standards and guidelines.
In comparison to [Expenditure Direct Support (ExpDS)|direct support], expenditure on indirect support is not particular to a programme or project.
==Examples==
'''Institutional arrangements'''
Institutional arrangements for indirect support are assigned to national level entities (Smits et.al, 2011). Specific arrangements differ from country to country for examples see table 1 (below). If there is no independent regulator, government ministries and agencies are tasked with responsibilities such as planning and policy formulation or even regulation. Donors, NGOs, research institutes and other entities at a national level may also contribute.
'''Table 1. Institutional arrangements for indirect support for different countries'''
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