Purpose: analytical assessment of the current methodological approaches to the systemic water distribution planning and determination of priority areas for its improvement. Materials and methods. The research material was the regulatory-procedural, legal-regulatory framework, publications on the planning and implementation of water supply for irrigation, the results of scientific research work on assessing the current state of system water use, data of fund documents and own author's research. The methodological basis of the work was: information-analytical approach, systemic and comparative analysis, heuristic forecast. Results. The necessity of methodical and technological improvement of system planning of water distribution, which guarantees water supply stability and the equality of each water consumer, is revealed. Based on the results of the information analysis, the priority tasks of scientific methodological substantiation, development, implementation and maintenance of water use procedures are classified, which will contribute to the development of irrigation that meets the requirements of innovative agricultural production. The following tasks have been identified: enhancing the use of existing solutions, improving the current provisions of theory and practice, preparing the breakthrough solutions for planning water use measures. Priority measures to improve the efficiency of water use control actions are proposed, including the replacement of the traditionally accepted decade water supply planning with daily planning, the organization of irrigation water supply from the end user, multi-criteria consideration of the diverse interests of the water use process participants based on digitalization. Conclusions. Implementation of the research results will require a large-scale consolidation of efforts and capabilities of both specialists in the field of land reclamation science and education, and practicing farmers, but the predicted effect of the water use system transformation will exceed their price.