Symposium Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery

Background paper for “Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium”

By: Stef Smits, Ton Schouten, Harold Lockwood and Catarina FonsecaWith contributions from Kerstin Danert and Piers Cross

Monitoring WASH services means different things to

different people

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Source: MWE 2009

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Why? – purposes for monitoring• Project cycle monitoring• Project or programme result monitoring• Inventories for asset management• Service delivery monitoring• Monitoring the enabling environment• Value for money

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

What? – scope of monitoring

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Who? – responsibilities and incentives• Multiplicity of purposes with an even larger number of

organisations involved– Who needs to know– Who needs to provide information

• Increased interdependency between the two groups– Between levels – In sequence, incl timing

• Adds complexity, and if not managed well, monitoring becomes an extra burden: reporting

• Need to look at (dis)incentives

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Who? – responsibilities and incentives

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Degree of inter-institutional cooperation

Com

plex

ity

Organisational project-level monitoring

Infrequently updated asset

inventories

Institution-based monitoring

Sector-level monitoring

How? – steps in monitoring

How? – information systems

• Requires often algorithms, indices and/or scoring• Applied in consistent manner• Documentation of how these are defined - avoid black

box

What Definition Example Example

Criterion The broad category of what you want to monitor

Financial performance Access

Indicator State or level of that broad category

Financial balance of service provider

Coverage

Parameter Measurable factor(s) which make up the indicator

Starting balanceIncome and expenditure of last period

# of people per facilityType of facility (improved or not)

How? – information systems

• Information and communication technologies

Vision Strong national sector monitoring systems that allow planning and sustaining WASH services

•Engrained in national sector institutions, with mandate to carry out monitoring, act upon results and provide accountability over them•Clear institutional arrangements and incentives, with dedicated financial and human resource capacity•Information systems: clear indicator sets that can capture complexities of WASH service delivery supported by ICT

Trends towards achieving vision• From tracking increase in access to monitoring service delivery

– Achievement of MDGs

– Human rights framework

– Increased focus on service delivery

• From project monitoring to sector level monitoring• Increased demand for accountability over service delivery and

use of public funds– Citizens voices

– Aid effectiveness agenda

• Rapid developments in ICT applications– Reducing costs and time lags in data management

• Global monitoring initiatives

Challenges• Additional complexities of monitoring

service delivery, particularly around sanitation and hygiene effectiveness

• Governance of monitoring:– Assumption of willingness to share data

– Of monitoring processes

– Of information systems

• Capacity for monitoring and use it for action: human and financial resources

• Alignment of global and regional monitoring

…and this is where the symposium comes in

6 topics• Monitoring the finance needed for service delivery (Catarina

Fonseca, IRC)• Country-led and country-wide monitoring of rural and small towns

water supplies (Kerstin Danert, RWSN)• Project monitoring: A vicious cycle of donor accountability or a

necessary stepping stone to better national WASH sector monitoring? (Harold Lockwood, Aguaconsult)

• ICT for monitoring sustainable service delivery (Joseph Pearce, Wateraid)

• Monitoring for sanitation and hygiene (Carolien van der Voorden, WSSCC)

• Building coherence in global-regional-national WASH monitoring (Piers Cross with UN-Water GLAAS)

Guiding the discussion

• Use this and the topic keynote papers as a framework – but flexibly, and suggest additions and improvements

• Relate your examples and experience to the trends and challenges towards the achievement of the vision

• Monitoring the discussion

Have a good symposium!

Symposium Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery