Reblogged from water services that last:

By Patrick Moriarty and John Sauer

What is it that IADB’s Max Valasquez Matute in Honduras finds ‘only a bit short of a miracle’?  The decision by seven INGOs to align their programming in Honduras in support of an Everyone Forever movement aimed at delivering full coverage in sustainable rural water, sanitation and hygiene services.

Whether there was divine intervention or not, the meeting we attended on the 24 May between the assembled board members of the…

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I had the privilege to spend much of the last two weeks in rainy and verdant Kampala, in the company of a big part of our amazing Triple-S country teams from Ghana and Uganda. We were there to talk about our learning and research agenda, and to reassess our approach in the light of still draft findings from our on-going mid-term assessment.

As with most mid-term assessments, the picture of ourselves that we see reflected in the mirror held up to us by our assessment team isn’t entirely flattering. Nevertheless, as you can’t blame the mirror for the face you see in it, we had little choice but to roll up our sleeves and move forward.

I interpret a large part of the identified space for improvement as revolving around the difficulty of communicating clearly and effectively what we are doing. This is, on one hand, not that surprising. Triple-S is explicitly informed by an understanding of the water sector as a complex adaptive system: consisting of multiple actors with multiple linkages and often unclear and contradictory rules of engagement. We have sought to engage with the entirety of this system in Ghana and Uganda, to work with the main actors in the system towards a shared understanding of the overarching challenge – and a sector-wide search for viable solutions. This is a very complex space in which to act!

That said, and while wanting to maintain our overall system-wide focus on, and understanding of, the need for sector wide and systemic change, we are carrying out a number of specific activities within this space and we need to tightly define and communicate these.

I really like the pair of diagrams below, that our friend (and former grant manager) Rachel Cardone did as part of a presentation that she gave when we visited the Santa Fe institute together in 2011. Rachel was explaining how the Triple-S project differs to more traditional approaches in the identification and subsequent scaling of innovation. The upper diagram describes the ‘traditional’ approach, the lower the ‘Triple-S’ – indeed IRC – approach.

“Traditional” approach to scaling innovation

Triple-S approach to scaling innovation

The main difference is the amount of time and effort that is put into the series of steps that are taken BEFORE actually starting to ‘test’ an exciting potential innovation – what Rachel calls ‘socialising the concept’.   Much of the last 2-3 years of Triple-S work has revolved around this – developing a shared understanding of the vision and challenges of providing rural water services.  However, in the last six months or so we have moved decisively into the “test in a messy real world environment” (circled in red) section of Rachel’s diagram – the innovation incubator or development lab part of our programme.

What we’ve yet to do is to catch up our externally focused communications work to this fact – and to explicitly spell out the experiments that we are currently involved in – some as lead, some as support – all of which directly address identified areas of weakness – or gaps – in existing approaches to service delivery in Ghana or Uganda.

The list below is tentative – over the next few months our country teams will spend time on more clearly defining each experiment – setting out objectives, time-frames and means of verification where these do not already exist.

I personally like the idea of supporting the creation of a development lab for the sector – as part of the move towards a learning and adaptive sector[1].  It doesn’t mean that every experiment will come with an RCT attached – but it does mean that we will seek to find and promote the appropriate level of rigour and evidence for each experiment.  As such, I see this as a natural progression from our existing work on supporting – or establishing where necessary –broad sector platforms for learning – such as Ghana’s excellent Resource Centre Network.  And most exciting of all are early indications that a number of the more advanced experiments – are leady starting to scale.

Reblogged from water services that last:

By Patrick Moriarty -

I mentioned some cool new outputs from IRC’s Ghana programme in my previous post.  These factsheets  present a rich picture of water services and their governance based on a total survey in our three Triple-S  focus districts in Ghana.

The fact sheets aren’t cool due to their content – which is actually rather depressing.  What is cool is the technology used for the data collection, the way in which the indicators we used were developed, and the impact that the factsheets are having.

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Reblogged from water services that last:

By Patrick Moriarty  -  

It’s always difficult call these things, but I think (and hope) that the last couple of weeks may, in retrospect, come to be seen as a watershed on the long and painful road to achieving universal access to water and sanitation services worthy of the name.

The potential game changer is the decision of the Dutch government and its development agency, DGIS, to start requiring recipients of finance for WASH service provision to explicitly commit to service delivery: at an agreed level over an agreed time-frame (10 years) - something that they are calling a sustainability clause.

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My name is Patrick Moriarty. I’m the director of IRC’s Triple-S project, and am blogging at waterservicethatlast for the first time – although I also blog sporadically on my own site .  This blog was started by Stef Smits, head of research in Triple-S but is now being opened up to other project staff – and I hope eventually beyond the project to other IRC (and non IRC) projects and people struggling with the provision of sustainable water services.  In the meantime, expect to see at least one new post per week from different members of Triple-S team in Ghana, Uganda and the Netherlands.

Top item on an overloaded agenda at the moment is the upcoming mid-term assessment of our Triple-S (link) project.  As we prepare a terms of reference for the exercise we’ve been engaging with a number of external thinkers to help us create something that can meet the dual objectives of judging whether we are on track to achieve the goals we set ourselves at the start of the project; while also providing a mirror in which we can look at and assess the relative success (or otherwise) methods and activities we are using to achieve them.

As with much of IRC’s work, Triple-S exists in a sometimes productive, often uncomfortable, zone of tension. Between, on the one hand, the demands of our donors and our own ideas of ‘good project management’ with all the inherent requirements for clear goals and objectives that are monitored over time; and, on the other, our own understanding of the rural water sector as a complex adaptive system[1] in which the one thing we can be sure of is that whatever predictions we make now for five years down the road – are bound to be wrong!

To tackle this unavoidable paradox, we have adopted (and been permitted to adopt by our donor) a flexible and outcomes based approach to project management. While maintaining a broad set of overarching project goals (expressed as outcomes) that focus on the improved delivery of water services, we have a relatively free rein to develop intermediate outcomes annually, informed by frequent (4 monthly) learning and reflection meetings that involve not only project staff but also important members of ‘learning alliances’ (link) of key sector actors and champions.  This allows us, in a nutshell, to remain focussed on our overall vision while being flexible as to how to achieve it – exploring multiple possible actions and following up on those that work while dropping those that don’t.

While a very stimulating – and we strongly believe appropriate and so far successful – way to work, this throws up huge challenges in terms of monitoring and reporting.  And, while we believe that there is really no alternative approach to delivering change within a complex adaptive space – one where we are but one actor amongst many and where the only constant is change – it calls for an unusual degree of flexibility and trust from a donor.  This flexible and reflexive approach to prioritising activities and outcomes on an annual basis while holding (more or less) fixed the final end of project targets is testing existing systems of project M&E to their limits.

While we can just about cope with this as a project, it will demand a special set of skills from external evaluators, who will have to shift through three years’ worth of constantly evolving plans – and then help us to make sense of them. To behave like conventional project evaluators in assessing progress towards agreed mid and long-term outcomes, while being sympathetic to and able to help us reflect upon our methodology for delivering change.

In the end, our MTA will as always be a compromise.  Between the competing demands of donors, managers and practitioners – between the desire for an ‘objective’ measure of progress against milestones and for an effective mirror in which to see and assess ourselves and our actions as we work to achieve that same progress.  We hope to have finalised the outline terms of reference for the evaluation in the next week or so – and to have identified a team (probably 2 people) to carry it out for us before mid-March (the evaluation will then take place mainly between mid-March and end May with final report submission in June.  If you are an evaluator with an interest in complexity theory and adaptive/learning focussed approaches (or know of any such) …. we’d love to hear from you!

Once the terms of reference are ready they’ll be posted here. In the meantime, if this piece of evaluation related angst has caught your attention, you may be interested to read more about the learning framework that’s been developed for Triple-S – a framework that explicitly tries to provide for both assessment of progress against outcomes and reflection on the approach to change being used.

However, the flip side of the argument and the risk of standardisation is that locking in a small number of technologies leads to stagnation and takes away any incentive for innovation.  Given the appalling lack of sustainability in existing approaches (an issue that kept popping up during discussions and presentations at the forum) there is clearly plenty of need for innovation – technical, financial, managerial.

What’s the solution?  To me it lies in clarifying and strengthening the systems by which pumps (and other bits of kit or indeed different management models) are accepted for inclusion in national rural water service delivery programmes.  Ideally this should be based on a clear and transparent process of testing, during which it can be seen whether the benefits of a new technology (or approach) are enough to outweigh the costs of its introduction (in terms of new skills, expanded supply chains etc.).  Such a system can test the hype of inventors and manufacturers in a rigorous way and help policy makers to understand the costs and benefits in a way that make it easy for them to make a decision.

Indeed several NGOs and other actors support programmes like this as part of their regular work.  And it is a common thread throughout much of our work in IRC – where we’ve identified the lack of emphasis on learning and innovation in the WASH sector as one of the most critical barriers to increased sustainability and equity.   And we are addressing the challenge directly through  the WASHTech programme (coordinated by IRC)  in Ghana, Burkina and Uganda – which aims specifically at defining and strengthening national frameworks and processes for new technology testing and adoption.

That said, I think that there is one myth that may have been missed – or only partially addressed.  And this is the myth that there is an inherent demand for ‘clean’ drinking water in rural areas.  In my experience there isn’t.  There is a demand for water – of course.  There is a demand for convenient water (that you don’t have to march for miles lugging a jerry can to collect).   There is demand for (no adjective added) drinking water.  And for livestock water.  And for irrigation water. And for business water.  And much of this demand is well captured in myth no. 4 – “what rural dwellers need is 20 litres per person per day of clean water”.  Which makes the point that actually people need far less than 20 litres of clean water (probably only about 5 for actual drinking and cooking) and quite a bit more for other uses.  As a long time supporter of multiple use systems (MUS) (link) I can only cheer this one.

But … the assumption is still there that there is demand for these 5 litres of clean water.  And there isn’t – at least not always.  Of course, from a public health perspective people need at least five litres of clean water.  But without basic education and behaviour change interventions people do not demand it. This is not just an academic point – but has critical implications for sustainability and willingness to pay for services – which is of course what the forum is all about.  Becuase, at the end of the day, willingness to pay for difficult to access ‘clean’ water supplies will tend to suffer from easy access to ‘dirty’ other sources unless people are aware of and believe in the health benefits of not doing so.

The challenge is therefore exactly the same as is found in the sanitation sector where, interestingly, the response seems to be to stop trying to provide any service at all ,instead, raise awareness and trigger behaviour change.  Now, to be clear, I am not about to advocate a CLTS for water. Indeed I don’t advocate CLTS for sanitation!  But it does seem that we need to be much stronger within the rural water sector on advocating for and supporting basic hygienic behaviour change as part of our approach to increased sustainability.  Why is it that the WA and the SH seem to be so firmly separated?  Maybe its time for WHooSH….

One of the slides showed the diagram that I’ve included here.  This is a slightly modified version of a concept we first aired during a presentation at the World Bank back in September.  And that we’ve now shown to two different audiences here in Kampala – first at a meeting with government actors on Monday and then in the forum.

I like it because it provides a one-diagram overview of why much of the rural water sector feels as though it’s running to stand still – especially countries that had been congratulating themselves on doing rather well by raising their baseline rates of coverage.

At its simplest, it identifies a ‘danger zone’ where countries that succeeded in raising first time coverage by constructing new infrastructure (capital investment) fail to maintain the infrastructure (due to lack of capital maintenance) or to operate it adequately to provide a service (due to lack of effort on recurrent expenditure and support).  The result is that after what may have been several years of rapid growth in coverage a point is raised where this stagnates – basically as new systems being brought online are offset by old ones failing.  During our workshop last Monday, there seemed to be general agreement that Uganda currently finds itself in the ‘danger zone’ – with both coverage and functionality levels stagnating.

The underlying cause of the danger zone is that as we rush to lift baseline coverage rates, we invest in building capacity for project delivery – often quite effectively.  But we neglect to build the capacity (or create the systems) to actually manage the service over the long term (or we fob it off onto the wonders of ‘community management’ – which is more or less the same thing).  We ignore the need to ensure that recurrent support is properly financed – and we don’t put in place mechanisms by which service providers can access finance for capital maintenance (rehabilitation).

Mr Phiri’s story – bypassing local government doesn’t lead to lasting services

An excellent presentation by Mr. Edgar Phiri – district Water Officer from Mwanza District Council in Malawi – during one of the parallel sessions on day one (the proceedings don’t seem to be on the RWSN blog yet – but as soon as they are I’ll provide a link).  Giving a district’s eye view of three positive and negative examples of external agents working to provide water services within his district.

From Mr. Phiri’s point of view, the two ‘negative’ examples consisted of external agencies (both INGOs) coming to work in the district without sufficient effort to coordinate with his office, leading to poor uptake, poor sustainability and technical problems.  During the subsequent Q&A he clarified that one had initially got in touch but then let the contact fizzle out, the other had simply gone straight to the communities – bypassing the district altogether.

On the other hand, a UNICEF programme took the time to involve local government leading to better results – particularly in terms of functionality.

The problem of external agencies – particularly but certainly not uniquely (I)NGOs – working in districts with insufficient coordination with local government is a constant theme in our work on sustainability.  The tempation, of course, is to bypass ‘inefficient’ or ‘weak’ or ‘corrupt’ local government and go ‘directly to the people’.  The reality is that while this may – to some extent – improve the efficiency of project delivery – it cannot lead to services.  Provision of (or at least oversight and regulation of) basic serivces is pretty much by definition what local government (and lcoal governance) is about.

What is great is to see empowered local government officials starting to speak out about this problem more actively – and to see NGOs, donors and others hearing and responding to their message.

Mr. Songola’s story

Mr. Crispin Songola presenting on the second day (as always – a link to papers will be added when available) reinforces the same point.   Also from Malawi, he presents another case of NGO’s cooperating and not cooperating with local government.  In this case the cooperative NGO was ActionAid who worked closely with the District Water Offices in all stages of the work.  ActionAid basically implemented a scheme that was designed by the WaterOffice and after 4 years, functionality was still at 97%.

In the counter example the NGO failed to collaborate with the district leading to misinformed technology choice and a series of deserted boreholes (and wasted money)

The point of both of these excellent presentations is not that NGOS are all bad or that local governments are all good.  It’s that NGO working in isolation risk on the one hand losing out on the wealth of local knowledge that district level technical staff normally have and on the other leaving communities with systems that are fundamentally ill-suited and un-sustainable.

On the flip side, NGOs working with local government can help to implement district level plans that may otherwise remain un-implemented due to lack of finance and, by working closely with local government staff, can help build the capacities that will be necessary in five years time when the system has broken down and the NGO has moved on to a new district.

Mr. Songola’s recommendations: that districts maintain and regularly updated their plans – and that NGOs respect and support those plans.  Creating a fully integrated NGO/District Government Development Machinery.  As he puts it ‘a SWAp at district level’’

My take home quote from this forum “I’m going back to Sudan to empower communities and local government.”  By a gentlemen from South Sudan who gave feedback at the video booth.  For me, this is the critical message for the rural water sector – that by empowering local government as well as communities we are creating the foundations for sustainable services.

“after three hours of plenary and sessions, we keep hearing about low levels of functionality. 65% of handpumps in Chad being non-functional was the latest figure reported by Philippe Lacour-Gayet from IDO. In the session (again – when links are available we’ll add them), three presenters/organisations (SNV, EWB and IDO), talked about their approaches to support area mechanics for handpump maintenance in Chad, Malawi and Uganda. They have all reported that while on the one hand communities are adept at undertaking very minor maintenance themselves, it is difficult for them to pay for more complicated maintenance – in essence anything above 100USD as this is too expensive.  The result is that many of the area mechanics end up without being paid at all – or are paid by the external organisations who provided the training in the first place.

There is an interesting paradox here, many NGOs train community structures to undertake minor  maintenance; and then train area mechanics to do the bigger more complex jobs (what we would call capital maintenance).  But villagers are unable or unwilling to pay for these larger jobs, meaning that the area mechanics end up becoming redundant.”

I guess that for me this is further confirmation of something that we seem to be seeing increasingly clearly in our own and others data – namely that for the poorest rural communities there is a limit to what they can or will pay to maintain facilities (at least while there are alternatives even if these are not ‘improved’) and that if ‘someone’ else (by preference (local) government) is not prepared to cover these costs the minimal levels of service needed to achieve public health impact will not be maintained.