Topic 1: Monitoring the finance needed for service delivery

Monitoring the finance needed for sustainable services

To achieve sustainable services, financial sustainability is critical. However, tracking financial flows in the water sector is notoriously complex and fragmented and even more so for sanitation and hygiene services. Understanding the full life-cycle costs of (rural) WASH services is a necessary condition towards increasing the sustainability of investments in the sector. Equally important, is to explore how the monitoring of financial flows can be utilised at international, national and project level to identify the sources of funds required to cover the required expenditures. The increasing level of ambition in the sector, to reach universal coverage by 2030 AND to make sure these services sustain for the long term. Meeting this ambition will require different approaches financial monitoring and planning than the ones used widely at present.

1. Key note: Why monitoring finances matters

The session which opens the financial theme will discuss the importance of financial monitoring at project, national and international levels. Particular attention will be given to global monitoring environment in light of post-2015 monitoring. The proposed indicators for sustainability and affordability will be presented and discussed.

2. Monitoring financial flows at global and national level

This session showcases different approaches and indicators that are being tested and used at global and national levels to monitor and use financial data. This will include an examination of how financial monitoring can lead to improved planning and budgeting and can impact policy priorities.

3. Improving service delivery: Linking monitoring with decision making

This session will examine how financial monitoring by service providers and NGOs can guide decision making. This will be introduced through a reflection of how the financial monitoring indicators utilised by UK service providers can inform operational decision making. A series of country case studies will then be presented demonstrating different ways that regional governments and NGOs can track and utilise the costs of annual recurrent expenditures.

4. Financial monitoring to assess cost effectiveness of sanitation and hygiene interventions

This theme will reflect on a range of cost effectiveness studies of sanitation and hygiene interventions to assess the methodologies used in these studies and the role they can play in improving the targeting of future investments and the sustainability of interventions.

Continue to read about topic 2, or return to the IRC symposium 2013 pages here.

Seminar 'Moving towards a service delivery approach'

For participants of the Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium, taking place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, between 9 - 11 April 2013, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre and the Institute of Development Studies organise the seminar 'Moving towards a service delivery approach: Introducing the concepts of service delivery, life-cycle costs approach and tracking progress'. The aim of this one-day event is to introduce the key concepts of service delivery including the life-cycle costs approach, and look at the trends and shifts in the water and sanitation sector while focusing on infrastructure to service delivery.

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