This page gives an overview of the papers and presentations that were provided on topic 2 of the 2013 symposium in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Published on: 31/05/2013
IRC and the Inter-American Development Bank have been supporting the development and implementation of rural water monitoring systems in El Salvador, Honduras and Paraguay. A methodology was developed and tested to institutionalise service delivery monitoring into the sector, by identifying institutional arrangements and defining responsibilities for financing the costs of monitoring. This paper provides an overview of the approach followed, illustrated by examples (including cost estimates), from the El Salvador, Honduras and Paraguay.
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Ensuring the sustainability of small piped water services in developing countries is a major challenge. The issues encountered most frequently relate to: the operators' lack of skills, problems experienced by the responsible body for the service in monitoring the operator, poor cost recovery and lack of transparency in the water service accounts.
The aim of Water Services Monitoring is to support the responsible body for the service, to reinforce the operator and to provide feedback to users. A Water Services Monitoring mechanism involves:
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This paper draws on the experience of the collaboration between Engineers Without Borders Canada and the Government of Malawi on a process to create a harmonised monitoring and evaluation framework. Ultimately, the system must be easy to use, work within the existing constraints at the data collection level and remain useful for decision making and reporting from district through to national level. It should also meet international requirements and the requests from both implementing and donor partners. This paper addresses challenges of data collection and use for service delivery, looks at the constraints of permanent institutions, and also explores ways to link and harmonise monitoring between various levels of government.
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Incorporating human rights criteria in monitoring initiatives is undoubtedly a complex task. It involves the definition of new indicators, design of field data collection methodologies, statistical analysis of collected data, and use of information generated in policy formation and decision-making. The research presented in this paper has tried to tackle this emerging challenge. It has developed and piloted indicators that measure access to water from a human rights perspective. The proposed indicators have been applied to two different groups within communities in northern Nicaragua: people using a water system managed by a rural water committee against those vulnerable groups characterised by self-provision. The research concludes that data needs to be well analysed, information needs to be adequately post-processed, aggregated and disseminated to promote its use in decision-making.
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This paper presents the development and use of service delivery indicators in various countries. The definition and scoring of the indicators is country specific and ideally based on national norms and standards, as set by government. Its main added value lies in the potential for monitoring water services, informing direct support to service providers and capacity support to service authorities. It has also the potential to stimulate and facilitate better regulation of rural services. Finally, findings from the use of service delivery indicators, inform sector discussions and debate. One of the critical drawbacks of the service delivery indicators is that they represent a bigger set of data to be collected.
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Other relevant presentations on this topic can be found on:
