Dear Elisabeth

You wrote: "I learned from the HIFA2015 Dgroup that Dgroups rely on good moderation, as the messages are pre-filtered before sent to the group."

I would just like to clarify that there are many different types of Dgroups, according to users needs - some of these groups are moderated (ie pre-filtered) whereas others are not. Some (most) are open, others are invitation-only. Dgroups is an alliance of international development organisations (eg DFID, FAO, SDC) that supports over 700 active communities of practice in international health and development. More info here: www.dgroups.info

Neil Pakenham-Walsh
Coordinator, HIFA2015
Current chair, Dgroups Foundation

Hi Elisabeth,

I am a member of the group. It's been set up by SNV and Antoinette is the moderator. I am a member of the group but not an active one. It is my understand that it has been established primarily for practitioners in the South to encourage them to interact and communicate with eachother rather than an international platform like SuSanA.

There may be opportunity for transfer some key points being raised in the Dgroup discussion to SuSanA to see what additional discussion this may stimulate, but I am keener of a separate "time-bound structured discussion" rather than "spontaneous" threads and discussion. I was mentioning this to someone who I am hopeful can take on a role in supporting the WG and for this structured discussion.

I'd like to ask some of the more active WG members and also some other people such as Guy Hutton and Sophie Tremolet to see if they would be willing to lead on the discussion on some key issues for a week and then summarize key points before handing over to the next moderator.

I remember when I started work in this sector quite some time ago now, WEDC and GHK organised an e-conference on Strategic Sanitation Planning and it was very interesting and informative. I can't find any reference to it when I did a quick search but I have the files somewhere. As the contributions are written, it makes it relatively easy to produce a e-conference report such as this one wedc.lboro.ac.uk/resources/books/WSfDP_-...onference_report.pdf.

best regards,

Jonathan

Dear Jonathan,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I didn't know about this particular Dgroup yet. The e-mail that you copied said:

Currently there are 130 people from 23 countries in the urban sanitation Dgroup. Note that the urban sanitation Dgroup is a subgroup from the WASH Asia group which has 360 people.

Is Antoinette from SNV the moderator for both of these Dgroups? I learned from the HIFA2015 Dgroup that Dgroups rely on good moderation, as the messages are pre-filtered before sent to the group.

I take it you are a member of that group? What are your experiences with it?

You wrote:

I would be keen to see something similar on SuSanA.

Can you please explain what you mean with this? Do you mean time-bound structured discussions which are more strongly moderated than our "spontaneous" threads and discussions?

Do you see any potential in feeding content from the Dgroup discussion to this forum and vice versa? I suppose one difference is that theirs is a closed group whereas this is an open group so perhaps the type of communications are somewhat different (?).

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dgroup discussion on municipal financing for urban sanitation infrastructure investment

Please note that this discussion is not on SuSanA but on dgroups.org/snv/washasia/urbansan
If you want to participate, you need to register to be a member of the "Urban Sanitation and Hygiene" group.

I would be keen to see something similar on SuSanA.

Explanation of the Dgroup discussion:

+++++++++++++++++

Dear colleagues,

Last year we conducted a learning activity around “Urban Sanitation Planning and Finance”. As part of that activity, we conducted a Dgroup discussion on the same topic of “Urban Sanitation Planning and Finance”. After this several of you participated in the Learning Event in Indonesia in November 2013.

During our discussions, we realised that it is important to deepen our understanding of sanitation financing, basically in two aspects:

1. How do municipalities finance their upfront investment in treatment works

2. How to make such services financially viable (be it by the municipality or by others)

Therefore we asked the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney (ISF) to do a literature review on the first point, which is also the basis for this upcoming discussion.

At a later stage we will be organising a separate Dgroup discussion on the second point, as this links to our upcoming learning event in December.

“Municipal finance of sanitation infrastructure investment” is quite a complex topic. We feel that a Dgroup discussion may help to make it more accessible to all of us. We also hope that the discussion will add quality and practical insights to the paper written by ISF. Your contributions will be integrated by in this paper.

For whom is the Dgroup discussion?

The discussion is for all people interested in urban sanitation and hygiene, though our focus has been mostly on Asia. Currently there are 130 people from 23 countries in the urban sanitation Dgroup. Note that the urban sanitation Dgroup is a subgroup from the WASH Asia group which has 360 people.

What will we discuss?

There will be 3 topics and each topic will run for a week to 10 days. The first topic will start next Tuesday. Below are the three topics.

Week 1 (2 Sept – 15 Sept) Principles for financing water and sanitation infrastructure in developing countries

Week 2 (16 Sept – 25 Sept) Accessing repayable finance for sanitation - mechanisms and examples

Week 3 (26 Sept – 3 Oct) Other finance mechanisms and summary of insights on financing sanitation

How does it work?

On the first day of the discussion, you will find the content of a Topic and some questions in your inbox. Everybody is invited to share their ideas, comments and examples, responding to the Dgroup message. All experiences and opinions are welcome and please don’t be shy to contribute.

As this is quite a technical topic, some of our countries are planning to organise informal discussions within their own programme around the topics, and then post the outcomes of those discussions. I would like to reiterate that all ideas and opinions are welcome. Only if we reflect and discuss, we can get a better grip on the topic.

Please write your message in the main email text and not in an attachment, because some participants are based in remote locations with limited internet speed. Dgroup automatically stores attachments on the website, so people would need to go there to read your attachment.

Looking forward to hearing from all of you over the coming weeks!

Best,

Antoinette Kome
Global Sector Coordinator WASH
SNV Netherlands Development Organisation
Indonesia
www.snvworld.org