The vision
To “transform our world”, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) adopted by governments aim to ensure no one is left behind: that everyone has the water and sanitation (SDG 6). Achieving this target requires accelerating progress dramatically and a shift to providing services instead of infrastructure. Solid data for costing, financing, planning, implementation, operation and maintenance of WASH services is needed. To get this data, we will need to transform the way we manage data in the WASH sector.
Recognizing the need for different data
Progress is being made to adjust the data we use to make decisions and to focus on the SDGs. JMP and GLAAS have been working on their indicator frameworks to evaluate progress towards the SDGs in each country. National governments are assessing the current situation and are starting to adjust their national monitoring and evaluation frameworks. Financiers, universities, businesses and NGOs are also innovating new business and service models to address the deficiencies of the paradigm of the last 15 years.
But data is stuck
Most organizations are working by themselves and their data remains in their own silo. National governments collect large-scale data for coverage figures. Businesses track and manage the services they provide using mobile-enabled water points and toilets for their own purposes. Local governments carrying the responsibility for water and sanitation services often have access to neither. Data sharing is now a slow manual process, including administrative barriers and requiring significant technical expertise.
Working together towards better use of data
More intensive learning and sharing is required to improve our use of data. Three steps are necessary towards better collaboration and transforming the use of WASH sector data in countries:
- Bring together sector stakeholders in a country. Include the innovators of new indicators and service delivery models to discuss how we use WASH data and identify the sector data needs.
- Research, develop and test minimum data, indicator and methodological standards in each country to guide the collection, use and sharing of data across organizations.
- Establish a national strategy for the use of WASH Data.
Some international and regional initiatives, such as WPDx for water point mappers, IATI for donors, IB-NET for urban utilities, SIASAR in several Latin American countries, and AMCOW in Africa show a very promising start as to what can be achieved when different sector stakeholders come together to discuss their data needs and develop a common standard. This is just a beginning.
WASHNote team
Nicolas Dickinson
WASHNote is led by Nicolas Dickinson with a background in both working with people and iterative process to setup appropriate tools and technology to support their work:
- Advising country-led monitoring and evaluation of water and sanitation services at national and district/municipal levels and Sector Wide Sustainability Checks
- Author and maintainer of several open-source R and Python packages for data management and AI with a focus on applications in WASH (Africa), energy (Netherlands) and humanitarian sectors (Global)
- Supporting the development of international and regional monitoring of WASH commitments and the enabling environment (SDG 6, Ngor Commitments, SWA partner commitments)
- Training for water and sanitation agencies on monitoring and evaluation systems, data collection, data processing, and life-cycle costing.
- Evaluating mobile-enabled water, sanitation and energy services
- Supporting the commissioning and procurement of technology
- Developing data exchange and technology standards in water (WPDx) and energy (net-zero housing performance data API)
- Developing tools for life-cycle costing and financing for operators and NGOs and financiers such as multi-laterals and governments
- Providing data analysis for WASH and energy projects and programmes
Nick is an associate at IRC.
Read some of Nick’s blogs!
Merel Laauwen, associated consultant
Merel Laauwen, Independent Consultant (https://lwn.earth/) holding an MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management from the University of Oxford. She supports WASHNote with analytical support in data-driven projects. Having grown up in Shanghai, she brings experience in international contexts.
- Providing data analysis and visualization support for WASH projects
- Managing the market research and communications for WASH Web
- Developing the vision and long-term strategy for WASH Web
Samuel Setsofia, intern (until April 2024)
Samuel is an AI Chatbot Intern with a BSc in Biomedical Engineering and Software entrepreneurship certificate from MEST Africa. He has experience building software, managing projects and assessing the user centric performance of software products.
- Product design, development and testing
- Product management
- User-feedback integration in user-centered design
Autonomic, partner
Autonomic (https://autonomic.zone/) manages our cloud services. The worker-owned IT coop has extensive experience in developing solutions in diverse contexts globally.
- Supporting the use of open source tools and co-op cloud services.
- Set up and maintenance of WASH Web infrastructure
- Set up and maintenance of data science workspaces (e.g. RStudio server) and database instances
Wattopia
In 2015, a partnership was established with Wattopia, a company that operates in a different market and context, the sustainable energy transition in the Netherlands, but with a similar approach and resources. This collaboration led to the hiring of the first WASHNote/Wattopia joint team in 2017.
Wattopia was founded in 2009 by Marten Witkamp under the name SustainabilityServices. Over the years it became increasingly clear where Wattopia’s focus and added value lay: developing transition tools for a sustainable living environment. Wattopia helped shape the zero-in-the-meter standard in that context.