Susan Davis

This is part of an occasional series that I’m calling “Coffee Talk” (in homage to a Saturday Night Live skit). I get to talk to many people about their organization’s water and sanitation models, their experiences with monitoring, and what they happen to be thinking about right now, and I thought I would share those conversations. These blogs are intended to reflect the nature of my conversations as I remember them (since I’m usually scribbling notes on a napkin), and are not intended to be direct quotes.  These blogs are not meant to be endorsements or full profiles of any organization, person, or company.

October 2011, UNC Water & Health Conference, Chapel Hill, NC

Susan: Hi Caetie, what are you up to these days?

Caetie: I graduated from George Washington University in May with a Masters in Geography, worked as a research assistant for a couple more months, and recently joined Gallatin Systems.

Susan: What’s your role with Gallatin?

Caetie: I manage client relations.  Right now one of our clients is include CREPA in Ghana. We are helping them all use the FLOW platform for their monitoring programs through a project funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and managed through Water For People. Other clients are the World Bank’s WSP and A Childs Right.

Susan: Part of the FLOW platform is an online dashboard that summarizes the data.  Will CREPA have direct access to that?

Caetie: Yes, they do now. One of the interesting next steps is what the organizations will do with the information once they collect it.  Although FLOW can run almost entirely offline, internet access / connectivity is often an issue.  CREPA is a unique case with FLOW, since we are also doing monitoring capacity building work with them, so we will wait to see whether FLOW implementation takes hold after foundation funding ends.

Susan: What they do with the information they collect has something to do with organizational culture, right?

Caetie: Yes; it has to do with why an organization decides to monitor its work.  Is it because a donor is asking them, or because they want to learn about their work?  Will they dedicate staff to this?  CREPA will be using the data they collection to inform their Sustainable Water Service Delivery Framework.

Susan: Who are potential new customers for Gallatin?

Caetie: I think FLOW could be a census collection tool. We used FLOW in Liberia with World Bank Community Sciences program. Artisanal fishermen in coastal communities use FLOW phones to flag illegal fishing by industrial trawlers. The information went to World Bank folks. I’m not sure what they will do with it, but they could use it to drive policy change or enforcement.

Susan: Thanks for agreeing to be a panelist at the Monitoring Workshop at the UNC Water & Health conference.  One of the things we’ll be talking about is the core indicators effort being undertaken by a group of donors, academics, and implementing organizations.

Caetie: I think core indicators widely accepted in the water field would help groups like CREPA who are getting started with monitoring. In our project funded by the Hilton Foundation, they decided to monitor as many things as they could. It’s probably not feasible to monitor all of these things over time.  Which few pieces of data will give us the biggest payoff?

Susan: Wouldn’t it be great if we could we put together a platform with a small set of indicators and ask all organizations working in a certain area to submit their data?

Caetie: Then we could look at drivers of sustainability. FLOW could be a good place for this because people don’t have to do data entry.

Susan: We want to talk about practical monitoring issues in this workshop.  Do you have any tips for people who weren’t able to make it?

Caetie: We have so many tools, but it’s really about the organizational culture. What will you do with the results?

Susan: I’m sorry I missed the beginning of your presentation on your research mapping walks for water in Blantyre, Malawi; can you give me a summary?

Caetie: I started out asking what can I find out about access to water in Blantyre. I wanted to unravel the concept of access.  You can’t just draw a circle around a water point and say everyone in that circle has access. For example, in some countries, there might be a good water point right next door but the person wasn’t allowed to use it because she wasn’t from the same tribe. I think we need to come up with an access index that includes physical, social, cost/affordability, and uptake factors.

Susan: It seems like there is much more complexity to measuring access than we realize. Any other suggestions?

Caetie:  Have you seen the visualization that Hans Rosling does on Health & Wealth of Nations? What if we could show that as we put more funds into an area over time, coverage and/or functionality increases?