Last week we had another hectic, information-dense, but also inspiring IRCnergy week. The overarching theme was communication. I spoke to Andrès Gil, who is IRC’s day-to-day presence in Honduras. When I first met Andrès, he was one of the young professionals taking part in the Southern Youth Zone Programme. A Guatemalan, who quickly adapted to his new surroundings and enjoys learning new things, he was asked to continue work for IRC.
He’s currently involved in the development of a multi-country monitoring system for water and sanitation services. The Rural Water and Sanitation Information System (SIASAR) will be implemented in Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. The ambitious aim is to develop a smart phone operated system containing data on communities, service providers, system performance and post-construction support*. It’s a challenge to gather comprehensive information on these four elements without making the system too burdensome to maintain. The system will make the data available to all sector players and allow for cross-country comparison.
Technician entering data into SIASAR system (by Andrès Gil)
Process documentation for learning and change
Cellphone technology used in monitoring systems like SIASAR and FLOW (Field Level Operations Watch) play an important role in speeding up the monitoring process and making data available. However, they also present a range of practical challenges. Andrès helps to identify and document these challenges. He is also tasked with documenting variations from the initial plan; For example at first the software was not completed and technicians had to document the data on paper. He records lessons learned and good practices of using the monitoring system.
Each month, he meets with the technicians piloting the monitoring system to discuss what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes software developers take part in the reflection meetings. Other times he meets separately with each group. Technicians and software developers see the world quite differently. So, it is important to translate the different points of view. Technicians must understand the system and the indicators so that they enter the correct data. An additional challenge is that the monitoring system applies across three countries, so it cannot simply be changed to meet field reality in one country. Within these parameters it’s important to think creatively, to gain consensus among the technicians about what the indicators mean and how to interpret different scores.
Listening to Andrès, I understood that communication between software specialists and technicians is crucial to ensure the monitoring system provides reliable results that can be used. While we need to invest time and resources in effective conversations, it’s also critical to reflect on what works and doesn’t and to document the process. An important issue he signals is the need for tools that visualise the monitoring data. Presenting data in a way that people at community level can understand makes it easier to have meaningful conversations about what action is needed.
A complicated picture of WASG service delivery monitoring system in Honduras (by Stef Smits)
*Technicians monitor basic characteristics of the community and plumbing infrastructure, organizational aspects of the provider, including tariffs, financial strength, operation and maintenance and water basin management, and issues around systems performance and physical condition of the infrastructure, as well as post-construction support.
Further reading
Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery is the topic of our Symposium in April
IRC has been involved in the processes of developing monitoring systems and sustainability indicators in Honduras, Paraguay and El Salvador, building on our sustainability monitoring work in Triple S
Read about work IRC is doing on the sustainability of rural water monitoring systems in this blogpost by Stef Smits
Find out more about mobile phone applications for WASH monitoring in the mWASH report
