Susan Davis

Yesterday I chaired a panel at the Philadelphia Global Water Initiative conference on performance indicators. Our panel (“Perspectives & Experiences from National & International Organizations” had the honor of being interrupted by the Mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter (a “green city” rock star). Below I’ve shared my talking points for introducing the panel in blog form.

Indicator: A thing, esp. a trend or fact, that indicates the state or level of something

Monitor: Observe and check the progress or quality of (something) over a period of time; keep under systematic review.

We are intimately familiar with performance indicators and monitoring them in our personal lives (body weight, baby length, miles per gallon) and in world in general (unemployment rates, housing starts, Dow Jones Index). So why do we need to monitor performance indicators in international humanitarian and development work?

• Doing good work: Well, simply because we want to know if we’re doing what we think we’re doing. When monitored during a program, data on these indicators can help us make mid-course corrections. When monitored after  program completion, they can help us change the way we design future programs.
• Reporting to donors: Some of our donors want to know if their money accomplished what we said we’d accomplish.
• Advocacy for issue: And it’s helpful for advocacy efforts to be able to say to the general public that our organization is moving the needle on the big social problem we’re trying to solve; advocacy to governments where we work and their role in scaling and sustaining service delivery; and advocacy to our peer organizations on why it’s important to work in coordination, etc.

There are many organizations who have some variation of a monitoring program. Monitoring status of indicators is just part of a cycle, however.  We need to also evaluate, learn, and reform our work based on what we’ve learned.

It may be actually a good sign, although it perhaps should have been discussed earlier in the history of development, that many questions are being debated in the water & sanitation sector:

• What indicators should we measure?  Outputs or outcomes?  Quantitative or qualitative? For example, the WASH Cost initiative is telling us we need to start considering costs. UNICEF is looking hard at equity of water and sanitation access.
• What should be mandatory (and measured the same way across the board) and which should be optional (recognizing that there are scarce financial resources)?  There is an effort underway to identify common core indicators called WASH Monitoring & Evaluation initiative
• Should we / how do we consider cross-sectoral indicators (agriculture, health, economic, environment)
• Should we / how can we include customer (aka beneficiary) goals and satisfaction?
• Do we need to be able to dis-aggregate the data by gender, socio-economic status, age, ethnicity, or other factors?
• What tools (surveys or assessments) should we use?
• Who should collect the information, how much (every single water point?) and how often (every day, every month, every year)? And for how long?
• Who should pay for collecting information?
• Who should “own” the information? Is it ethical to make this information public if it contains financial and/or health information?
• How do we know the information are accurate?  And does access to safe water mean the same thing as use of safe water?
• Who is responsible for doing something about the information we get (for example, if we see failures in water / sanitation projects years after implementation, who should do something about that?)

Okay, I would love to tell you that yesterday’s conference provided all the answers, but I can’t. [There were some good relevant resources highlighted in last week’s TweetChat on water, sanitation & hygiene evaluation.] However, it’s only by knowing what we don’t know that we can start learning. What’s your question about performance indicators? Better yet, what’s your answer?