A more professionally based recruitment of water professionals and mandates based on medium- and long-term consensual strategies may help stabilise the activity of state agencies. Ideally, state agencies and basin agencies should replicate as much as possible the high standards of the ANA. A new version of the national plan, emphasising its strategic nature, based on a vision for the next one or two decades and addressing explicitly the very distinct conditions of the various regions of the country, could be a very useful tool for building consensus on strategic water issues.