Can peer to peer learning in WaSH improve through effective MIS?

The traditional thinking , MIS is for accountability, regulation or transparency. Well now lets flip the coin where we want to use MIS for co-creation, collaboration and co-improvement.

One of the examples I will be presenting today is one #wateroperatorpartnership that happened a long time before Lekhnath Water Users and Sanitation committee (LWUSC, Pokhara) and maynilad water supply services (phillipines). It was kind of innovation in WaSH sector as it pointed out the cheap and effective way of improving water utilities with the help of better water utility. It also used National water supply and Sanitation training center as #bridging unit where government could also learn. All in all a program was a great success and ventured awards also. Because of this initiation LWUSC is still one of the most efficient utilities operated by water user committees.

So after a decade I am posing a question in that venture? How did the maynilad water supply services know what areas are to be improved? off course they assessed the situation in LWUSC (which might have taken a lot of time that time also.).Lets say hypothetically they were bad in asset management and maynilad didn't have the good ideas to teach in asset management would that program be still a success? How will you know the weak point of one utility would be strength of other utility before twinning ?

After a decade we came up with the idea that the assessment of utilities needs to be dynamic, the utility needs to self assess their work and come up with their weaknesses. The weakness should be measured through Key performance indicators (KPI's) and proofs of each KPI's . That will create the demand side of peer to peer learning. Now to create the supply side of peer to peer learning we already know what kind of utilities we are searching , the better performers in those KPI's .

See we measured the KPI's for regulation but Voila the recipe is ready for another mouth watering dish :) we have opened up the way of co-learning through the dynamic MIS. Now peer to peer learning is very much possible in national scale and best performers might be treated as elligible candidates for international water operator partnerships. Off course impacts also can be seen through the improvement of KPI's