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Published on: 22/07/2013

Responsible for providing public water services, each municipality should be able to monitor the quality of the service provided to the community. But what should the municipalities be monitoring? How should they be doing it? How can they put the results to good use? These are the main questions debated by experts and participants during the workshops held in Ouagadougou on 10 and 11 June and on 4 and 5 July 2013.

The participants came from IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, the Water and Sanitation Programme of Germany’s international cooperation agency (PEA/GIZ), the NGO Eau Vive, the firm ANTEA, the Sahel Regional Directorate of Hydraulic and Sanitation Infrastructure (DREAHA) and the municipal authorities of Zorgho, Arbinda and Gorgadji.

Concrete Answers

What should the municipalities be monitoring? To answer this question, the experts took inspiration from the PNAEPA monitoring and evaluation conceptual framework, identifying five groups of indicators key to local management of public water services.

  • The first group of indicators first group provides information on technical performance levels. They help to assess service quality in line with the national standards and criteria for access to drinking water (water quantity and quality, distance between households and the nearest water pump or tap, its reliability and the number of people using each pump or tap).
  • The second group of indicators concerns financial performance. They help to assess the costs, revenues and financial viability of the service.
  • The third group of indicators deals with the thorny problem of governance. These indicators will serve to determine whether the municipal public water service management system is in compliance with national regulations. They must also help to assess whether each of the structures involved in the water service provision chain is adequately fulfilling its role and responsibilities.
  • The fourth group consists of activity indicators. They will be used to evaluate the implementation of water-related actions in the commune.
  • The final group of indicators looks at results.

These indicators will be used to assess the results of actions in terms of access rates calculated according to national standards.

Monitoring Leads to Better Planning

Using these indicators, the municipal authorities should be able to objectively identify where the water supply problems lie within their constituencies and develop appropriate actions. Monitoring should enhance the operation of the municipal water service management system. To do so, the experts advise that the stakeholders and institutions within the service provision chain should be responsible for monitoring. Thus, the Regional Water Directorates and the municipal technical departments would be pivotal to service monitoring.

The experts also discussed how frequently the different indicators should be monitored. They looked at how they can be used in the various consultative and decision-making frameworks such as the Operational Budget Programme (BPO) at municipal and regional level, the PNAEP Regional Steering Committee (CRP), municipal water committees and local water user associations.

All these concepts were compiled into a document that the experts will continue to work on in order to produce a final report for the PNAEPA 2014 Review. In the meantime, all the municipal authorities and partners in the working group are keen to start with a  pilot on monitoring of public water services during the final quarter of 2013. IRC will coordinate these tests in collaboration with the Sahel Regional Water Directorate and the municipalities of Gorgadji and Arbinda. They hope to share the first results  as well as the theoretical framework at the PNAEPA 2014 Annual Review.

IRC is supporting improved monitoring of water supply services in the context of the Triple-S project, and in one of the components of the USAID water and sanitation programme, WA-WASH.

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