In Vanuatu, UNICEF and partners a) improved water management and water system delivery through the establishment of Water User Committees, b) introduced mobile phone technology to monitor progress towards water and gender targets, c) build staff capacity on gender equality and women’s participation, d) supported the establishment of a mandatory gender balance in Water User Committees, and e) ensured policy and strategic reports to include an analysis of female participation. UNICEF used the data collected by mobile phones to analyze data on water systems. They found that when Water User Committees had women in key positions, the water system performance improved, the regularity of committee meetings improved and the number of fees that were collected improved.
DiMES water services monitoring framework
The SMARTerWASH project was a project performed in Ghana by IRC, CWSA, Akvo and SkyFox Limited. The project built on DiMES and the national monitoring framework for Ghana published by CWSA. The project strengthened the national ICT infrastructure by linking different ICT systems for monitoring (CWSA’s DiMES, Akvo’s FLOW and SkyFox’ SMS-based system for tracking functionality and ordering spare parts) and by ensuring interoperability of the systems. The project tested data collection at scale: data for 131 districts (out of 216) were gathered collecting data from 23.000 handpumps and nearly a thousand piped schemes. The data are available through fact sheets and an atlas that is accessible online. There is, mostly anecdotal, evidence that baseline data have been used to inform planning and corrective actions in several districts (see the SMARTerWASH stories). The data have for example been used in 11 districts in the Upper West, Upper East, Western, Brong-Ahafo and Northern Regions to inform District Water and Sanitation Plans (DWSP). The data have also informed repairs and rehabilitation of over 600 boreholes with hand pumps restoring water services to an estimated 180,000 people and have stimulated several District Assemblies to form or reconstitute WSMTs (e.g. reconstitution of 203 WSMTs in Hilton districts and 24 in UNICEF districts).