This page gives an overview of the papers and presentations that were provided on topic 4 of the 2013 symposium in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Published on: 31/05/2013
SeeSaw – a social venture working at the crossroads of ICT and WASH services – is very interested not just in the technology for the WASH sector, but how and why technology gets used. This paper discusses findings from our advisory and other work in Southern Africa, including our own learning from countries where we provide WASH-specific ICT systems. It also draws heavily on the findings of a two day workshop, co-hosted by SeeSaw and the University of Cape Town, that explored ICT-related trends and challenges in both the WASH and health sectors.
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This paper describes the challenges and successes of the Sustainable Water Service Delivery (SWSD) programme in Ghana. The programme has seen a major data collection effort in order to understand better the realities among the various parameters that are now known to be of importance in creating sustainability. This was followed by the derivation and creation of a decision support tool (“model”) to analyse and predict sustainability, on behalf of Ghana’s Community Water Supply Agency (CWSA).
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This paper describes an improved evaluation framework for providing policy makers with evidence of base-effective planning, targeting and prioritisation.
The non-profit reporting process is tedious and inefficient, used primarily to demonstrate that money has been spent and specific activities completed, in order to provide a level of "financial accountability" which justifies continued funding. Water For People has built an online platform, RiR (re-imagine reporting),to improve the reporting process of programmes. This papers describes the tool.
The application of information and communication technologies (ICT) to support the delivery of water and sanitation services is a growing area of interest in the WASH sector. To study how these tools might be incorporated into existing management structures, Matt Ball, Zarah Rahman, Michael Champanis, Ulrike Rivett and Ranjiv Khush conducted field pilots of a mobile phone based application for transmitting water quality data in three distinct water supply structures: a large provincial utility in Vietnam, rural NGO operations in Cambodia, and district health authorities in Mozambique. The use of the application improved the efficiency of information flows in all three settings, and increased data availability at upper administrative levels in Mozambique.
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Technologies that allow rural water system performance to be tracked and managed remotely are becoming increasingly relevant as delivery models that share operational and administrative responsibilities among public and private stakeholders begin to be explored. Water Missions International is utilising one such technology to monitor rural water supply systems implemented under its “TradeWater” private service delivery programme. The LIFELINK system developed by Grundfos is an automated water distribution point that is integrated with a secure payment facility and real-time GSM monitoring system. The LIFELINK system encourages accountability and transparency while allowing an extensive amount of water use data to be collected and used to develop water businesses.
This paper summarises LIFELINK monitoring data available to date for TradeWater operations in Uganda and Malawi.
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This paper gives a brief opinion on the use of participatory processes for designing and implementing widely acceptable, usable, and sustainable ICT tools for the WASH sector. If users’ needs and preferences are incorporated throughout system design and development, it can assist in ensuring sustained system uptake and relevancy.
Mobile Phones for improved Water access (M4W) is a multi-stakeholder collaborative initiative aimed at reducing downtime and improving Operations and Maintenance (O&M) support system in Uganda. It was launched in October 2011 in 8 districts including: Arua, Kasese, Kyenjojo, Masindi, Amuria, Lira and Katakwi. This paper provides insight to experiences with using mobiles phones and PCs for monitoring rural water services in Uganda.
Other relevant presentations on this topic can be found on:
