Rural WASH Information System
MLC Vanguard | Created by Government of Zimbabwe-UNICEF Zimbabwe
Integrated real time feedback by community informants on the status of changes in WASH infrastructure is allowing for the quicker repair and improvement in services in hard to reach rural areas. The feedback, using RapidPro is reflected in real time in the national Rural WASH Information Management System online portal which is available for all stakeholders to see. Dashboards are available on current status of WASH infastructure from District to National levels, where decision makers can easily monitor it.
4,000,000 Lives Impacted
In one village, stakeholders noted that with real time community feedback and response using mobile technology, repairs to water points were taking place in 3 days versus 3 months and thus providing life-sustaining access to water more rapidly for hundreds of households. This change is being seen and replicated across implementation areas. As of December 2019 5,385,665 children have been reached with real-time data supported water and sanitation service delivery through the RWIMS - 1.8 million of which were reached via community-level use of mobile open-source technology, RapidPro. Some 1,061,277 families have been reached through the innovative use of mobile technology by communities to provide feedback and demand improvements in the quality of WASH services.
The community based real time monitoring component, which has been integrated in the national Rural WASH Information Management System, was piloted and quickly scaled within a period of 6-15 months. The initiative gave the needed evidence to government at all levels - including to community members and other WASH extension workers - of the improved efficiency and effectiveness of WASH service delivery in hard to reach rural areas and government this looks to expand. In those places where the RTM/RapidPro component does not exist, WASH extension workers reported lag times in the repair of water points - which can take many weeks or months before the infrastructure breakdown in known, assessed and ultimately repaired. In the interim, while water points are not functional, in some cases women wake at 3 am to travel by foot to obtain water from water points 9K away.
The Innovation
UNICEF Zimbabwe’s Water and Sanitation (WASH) programme aims to improve equitable use of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene practices. The government has invested in a Rural WASH Information Management System (RWIMS), a near-real-time monitoring system to improve data reliability, equity analysis and use of technological innovations in emergency preparedness and response. Despite the early success of the RWIMS, the Government identified an important gap – the absence of community input, feedback and involvement in WASH services, to enable rapid corrective action based on real time up-to-date data and information on the status of WASH facilities. For example, if a water borehole ceased to function, it would take one to three months for the borehole to be fixed until the Enumerator physically travelled to the village to inspect the borehole first-hand. With the proliferation of mobile technology and internet coverage, government partners realised the evolving technology presented new opportunities. The Government sought to develop a homegrown national system with a local consultant who would be on-hand to maintain it and trouble-shoot as needed. The introduction of the community feedback and real-time monitoring component - the RWIMS SNR - powered by the open-source platform, RapidPro, enabled community key informants to provide feedback to government on water disruptions as soon as they happened, which was reflected immediately in the national database.
A pilot was successfully undertaken to integrate the RWIMS with RapidPro (called RWIMS SNR). The real-time monitoring initiative in Zimbabwe aims to (1) scale up the RWIMS SNR solution to seven provinces; (2) support the development of a national sustainability strategy that provides a more systematic approach to near real-time monitoring in the WASH sector; and (3) strengthen data analysis and utilization by government to ensure that plans and strategies are evidence-based.
About Government of Zimbabwe-UNICEF Zimbabwe
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Zimbabwe WASH programme aims to improve equitable use of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene practices. With the support of development partners, including UNICEF, the Government
of Zimbabwe has invested in the Rural WASH Information Management System (RWIMS), a planning and monitoring system that was successfully established in seven of eight provinces that aims to improve data reliability and equity analysis through enhanced use of technological innovations.
RWIMS is a national system that was entirely designed by and developed for Zimbabwe’s rural WASH sector. RWIMS is an integrated platform that enables data management; information/knowledge generation and sharing; stakeholder connection; and enhanced service delivery. RWIMS has been deployed and piloted province by province since 2015. From its inception, RWIMS was developed as an integrated system designed to capture, manage and analyse WASH data generated at the sub-national level within one national system..
