Managing the Flow of Monitoring Information to Improve Rural Sanitation in East Java

Global scaling up rural sanitation is a Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) project currently being implemented in India, Indonesia, and Tanzania. Working with local governments and the private sector in 29 districts of East Java province in Indonesia, WSP's approach combines generating demand from local governments prior to initiating project interventions and demand from consumers for improved sanitation facilities and behaviors prior to making a greater range of sanitation products and services available through local markets. This demand responsive approach combines Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), behavior change communication, and sanitation marketing approaches to help villages become open defecation free (ODF). At the end of the third year of project implementation, household access to sanitation is growing at rates hitherto never seen in rural sanitation projects in Indonesia. On average, one-third of all triggered communities have become ODF within a year. However, across districts, varying levels of progress have been achieved depending on the extent of political support garnered, implementation capacity developed, and the cost-effectiveness of interventions undertaken. However, during 2009 the project team observed that while monitoring data was being generated regularly in the communities, much of this data was not reaching sub-district, district, or higher levels for regular consolidation. With the number of triggered communities running into the thousands in East Java, it had become too labor and time intensive for government outreach staff to collect data manually from each triggered community on a monthly basis. In response to this challenge, a community-based participatory outcome monitoring system was developed.