Dear Elisabeth and Meera,
The PAS performance indicator (PI) system is indeed comprehensive as it
not only covers water supply and sanitation services but solid waste
and storm water management as well. That the PI system also distinguishes
between citywide and local levels adds to its attractiveness.

The above aside, the context we are looking at in Uganda are urban settings
of 5,000 to 25,000 dwellers where sewerage is non-existent and municipal services
are under various agencies. Urban authorities in said settings might have
sanitation (excreta management) within their docket, but seldom do much besides
promotional and enforcement activities. Moreover, save for water source protection
interests, the Water and Environment Ministry (MWE) has negligible influence on
solid waste management. Ditto urban drainage.

What we have in mind is to support MWE in formulating performance indicators for
areas where they have leverage. For example urban authorities receive conditional
grants that could be tied to performance, say extending sanitation services to the
urban poor and/or improvement in faecal sludge management.

I have downloaded the presentations that Mansuri shared (Thanks Elisabeth), and
I am glad that the PAS team has more performance indicators in the pipeline. I will
follow the developments closely.

Best,
Fredrick

Dear Frederick and Elizabeth..

In a way it is true that the main PAS indicators are for sewerage as they are aligned with the Government of India's standardized service level benchmark (SLB) indicators. However, some of the local action indicators (LAIs) do also capture onsite sanitation.

More importantly, we are currently in the process of developing new indicators for water water management that capture different sanitation systems in a city including onsite sanitation systems. We have received feedback on the first draft from a number of colleagues in the sanitation space. We hope to have a second draft out soon. Do let us if you are interested ad we will share the next draft with you.

Meera Mehta, PAS Project, CEPT University

Dear Fredrick,

You mentioned that the performance indicators set up by the PAS project in India to monitor performance of water & sanitation utilities / services (forum.susana.org/forum/categories/97-ena...ept-university-india) are not really very applicable to your situation with small towns in Uganda.

You said it's because you have a much higher ratio of on-site sanitation than those towns in India.

Could you please clarify to me why the indicators used in the PAS project are not applicable (even if the ratios are different, they surely also included indicators for on-site sanitation, as their system is very comprehensive, I thought?).

For everyone's information Aasim Mansuri from the PAS project has recently sent me some new presentations about their project which are accessible here in the SuSanA library:
www.susana.org/en/resources/library/details/2091

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear All,
As the post-2015 agenda gathers momentum, the sector in Uganda is positioning itself for the discourse by making deliberate effort to gather knowledge on some of the key issues such as FSM, hygiene (hand washing and MHM), equity, etc.

One area that seems to have substantial gaps is setting up systems to track and evaluate performance of sanitation and hygiene interventions in small towns, where on-site sanitation systems are dominant. I have perused through some of the good work on performance assessment such as the PAS Project in India ("local action" indicators attached; see also forum.susana.org/forum/categories/97-ena...ept-university-india), which proposes indicators at various levels, but the context we are working with is different. Especially the prevalence of faecal sludge vis-à-vis wastewater.

Are there individuals/organizations with experience on M&E systems for small town sanitation? Typical settings would have a populations of 5,000 to 25,000 with reliance on on-site sanitation well above 95% (and not about to change soon going by sector history).

Sanitation, especially enforcement and safe disposal, falls within the mandate of local government (urban authorities), but other actors also have a role to play; i.e. Ministry of Water and Environment for public facilities; Ministry of Health for household sanitation (albeit more of awareness creation, and minimal hardware); and the Ministry of Education for school sanitation. An integrated approach such as the town sanitation planning would bring all the aforesaid actors on board, but there is little sector experience on the same. And that is a discussion for another day.

Best,
Fredrick