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Thank you for writing this, Susan! This is such a valuable challenge. So much of the effort for data collection essentially revolves around maintaining funding and keeping programs or organizations operational, rather than moving toward the point where the clipboards are no longer necessary. I’ve written about this (tangentially) in a recent post (https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/a-lesson-from-warisata/). Essentially, does our data collection exist to maintain our own control and ownership of the programs, or does it exist to better transfer the ownership to the people we are monitoring? Thanks again.
Susan, WASH resource management and importantly economic regulation of water price depends on a strong understanding of the status of assets & service infrastructure. The real price of water service is linked to the sustainable costs for quantity and quality (incl abstraction and treatment of water and wastewater). You can’t manage what you don’t measure and you can’t set fair pricing targets if organisations don’t invest properly in rural water provision leaving communities without any chance of reasonable economic service provision. Single point provision is high cost compared with enhanced service provision, to bring the price point down the investment in infrastucture (eg wells) is driven by price and constructed to poor and unsustainable standards which leave communities at an economic disadvantage from the start. Engineering for Change means quality engineering design from the start.
Prof Robert M Kalin BSc MSc PhD FICE CEng FRSC FGS
Hi Bob – thanks for your comment. Yes, of course, I agree that service providers and governments need to regularly monitor and manage services. This article is focusing on the monitoring and evaluation activities of (some, not all) external actors like non-profits and their donors who (often) focused on projects vs. services, and are monitoring without managing (or supporting such management by service providers and local government).
Ultimately I look at it as: You want to have the quality data you need, to know how to take action, to achieve better WASH services. Depending on what you currently gather, that may be more or less data, or in most people’s case, more of some and less of others. My recommendation is to be intentional on gathering data so that it enables better decision making and taking action.
Riley – thanks for your comments, and sharing your important post (“learning to listen” – yes!). Maybe this should have been titled “less collection of data for data’s sake, less action by external actors, more support of local actors towards systems strengthening,” but that’s not as catchy. 😉