Monitoring rural water services for sound evidence-based planning and finance decision making: lessons from Ghana

This paper presents the evolution of the national rural water service monitoring system in Ghana. In 2015, this system has been used to collect, process and analyse monitoring data from all water facilities, service providers and service authorities in six of Ghana’s ten regions. This has confirmed the earlier findings from three pilot districts regarding the low level of compliance of water services with norms and standards and low level of performance of service providers and authorities. So far, these monitoring findings have informed evidence-based dialogue on improving water service delivery and triggered remedial actions to provide renewed access to over 15,000 water users through collaborative partnerships by the District Assemblies and development partners

The state of handpump water services in Ghana: findings from three districts

This paper presents findings of water service monitoring in three districts in Ghana, using the national water service monitoring framework, which has been developed, based on the norms and standards set for rural water supply by the Community Water and Sanitation Agency. Only 21% of handpumps were found to meet national norms and standards for water services in terms of reliability, accessibility, quality and quantity. Service providers who operate and maintain these handpumps also scored low on compliance with norms and guidelines related to governance, operations and financial management. The monitoring data showed positive correlations between service provider and service authority performance and service levels. Nevertheless, even service providers managing reliable handpumps were found to often not meet the benchmark on certain service provider indicators, which raises the question on whether the benchmarks on these indicators may have been set too high

Monitoring water services in Ghana: the why, the what, the how and the cost

This document presents the framework for monitoring rural and small town water in Ghana It documents the processes involved in the development, testing and refinement of indicators. These indicators are based on the norms, standards and guidelines set by the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) and were developed by its Monitoring and Evaluation Working group, with support of IRC/Triple-S staff, and in consultation with officials from different other levels. They were tested in two rounds of monitoring. In addition, the framework for moniotoring defines the different uses to which these indicators can be put and the procedure through which data are collected, processed and analysed. Also actual costs of monitoring were collected and these currently stand at $4,931 to$6,936 per district Based on these field experiences, we consider that the current framework for monitoring will be feasible for annual data collection