IRC supports the development of sustainability indicators in Latin America

Background

Over the past few years the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) extended their loan and grant portfolio for rural water supply in Latin America. While formulating rural water supply programmes for the various countries, IADB found that the information base on the current state of rural water supply and sanitation was often very limited.

Governments have different data on coverage levels, but may not have data on past investments; and sometimes don’t know how many systems are still functioning or what level of services is being provided. In some cases, for specific villages and towns they sometimes even don’t know whether there is already a system in place or who has put it in place.

With an incomplete information base, planning for new investments and support to existing services is difficult.

Against this background, IADB requested collaboration with IRC in the field of monitoring sustainability of rural WASH services. Specifically, IRC has been asked to support the development of a generic set of indicators for monitoring sustainability of rural WASH services and support in developing institutional arrangements for monitoring in three countries: El Salvador, Honduras and Paraguay.

The approach

In working on this, IRC is building upon the concepts and methodology for service delivery monitoring, as developed by Triple-S in Ghana and Uganda, but adjusting it to the Latin American context. In order to monitor the sustainability of service provision, one would have to look at:

1. The level of service received, in terms of water quantity, water quality, and reliability
2. The performance of the service providers in their responsibilities, such as administration, operation and maintenance and their organization
3. The performance of the service authority; the entity that provides support to service providers.

Secondly IRC is looking into the various monitoring systems that are already in use, or being put in use in the region, like SIASAR (Sistema de Información de Agua y Saneamiento Rural), an initiative for monitoring sustainability of rural water supply in Central America, in which both the World Bank and government agencies from various Central American countries collaborate. SIASAR uses similar indicator sets as Triple-S and is also based on the use of mobile telephones for data collection.

Combining the experiences of Triple-S and SIASAR, but also the experience of various regulators in Latin America, IRC is trying to come up with a methodology for developing indicators, rather than developing a generic set of indicators. There is no such thing as a prescription of the right set of indicators for a given country. It all depends on the national norms and standards that are in place.

Indicator development in Honduras, Paraguay and El Salvador

As part of the IADB assignment, IRC supports the processes of developing monitoring systems in Honduras, Paraguay and El Salvador. This goes beyond indicator development only, and includes addressing other aspects of monitoring.

Honduras,has joined the SIASAR initiative, to replace its previously existing SIAR. As SIASAR already comes with a standard set of indicators and technical platform, the focus of the work is on supporting the development of the institutional arrangements aspect of the monitoring system. With a large number of agencies (government and non-governmental) involved in water supply and sanitation, it requires a clear definition of what each one’s role would be in monitoring, so that organisations indeed start to use the information coming out of the SIASAR.

Paraguayis not part of the SIASAR initiative, but is interested to develop a similar kind of tool. Here, IRC is supporting the development of indicators and making sure that these speak to the existing legal framework, national norms and standards.

In El Salvador the national government agency ANDA (Administración Nacional de Acueductos y Alcantarillados), has recently set up a dedicated unit for support to rural water supply and sanitation. This wants to develop an information system, so as to be able to better plan its support activities and do macro level planning. IRC has facilitated a seminar to share and discuss the benefits and implications of different information systems, as well as the broader questions around monitoring. One of the big questions raised in the workshops is how their future monitoring will link to technical assistance or to post-construction support. Currently, nearly all post-construction support is provided through civil society organisations, such as associations of service providers. The new unit will have to coordinate its work with these organisations. IRC’s role here is amongst others one of advising on how to develop the institutional arrangements for post-construction support and link that to monitoring.

Lessons learned

While still in the middle of the assignment, there are already some lessons to share.

• It is important to define the objective of monitoring upfront.. In the three countries the interest is not only in monitoring performance of existing services, but also to use the same tool for planning new interventions. This may require including additional indicators. When developing indicator sets, the objective of monitoring must be clear.
• Take the national policies and frameworks as your starting point. There is a big risk that long list of indicators are developed. But then it may be very expensive or difficult to collect data on these. In order to keep indicator sets manageable, it is important to stay close to the national legal or policy requirements.
• Monitoring sustainability of sanitation is very different from monitoring water services. It requires looking at the individual household level rather than community or system level, which makes it more costly. Besides, there is still a vast amount of work to do in developing sanitation indicators.
• What is interesting is that the function of support service providers is being made explicit in the SIASAR. It shows the need for post-construction support and the need to monitor how this is organised and performing.

Contact

For more information on IRC’s work on sustainability indicator development in Latin America, please contact Stef Smits (Programme Manager for of the Latin America Regional Programme), general@irc.nl