 Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone who's joining us today. Welcome to this webinar on improving data systems for sanitation. My name is Wadsirai Majuro and I will be moderating today's webinar. This webinar is hosted by IWA in collaboration with SOS, Eastern Southern African Water Sanitation Regulators Association, and the World Health Organization. Just some disclaimers before we get into today's webinar. The webinar will be recorded and made available on demand on the IWA Connect fast platform. The speakers are responsible for securing copyright permissions for any work that they'll be presenting today. And any of the opinions, hypotheses, conclusions, or recommendations that are contained in today's presentations as a sole responsibility of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect IWA opinion. Okay, I see we have about 89, oh yeah, more participants joining us today, 91 now. So a warm welcome again to everybody. Just to make sure that today's session runs smoothly, a bit of housekeeping. Please use the chat box that is at the bottom of your screen to introduce yourself, tell us where you are, which organization you represent, where you're joining us from, or if you have any general comments or other interactive activities. Use the Q&A box specifically to send questions to the panelists. So if you need a question to be answered, please use the Q&A box. Do not put it in the chat. Okay, just to highlight the context in which this webinar is being held. This is a follow up to a previous webinar that was held in June on safely managed sanitation, which was introducing WHO's new learning package on this topic. Some of the key messages from this webinar highlighted that widespread institutional strengthening in the areas of governance, finance, data, capacity and innovation is needed to support the transition to safely managed sanitation. It also highlighted that acceleration sanitation needs to be delivered through professionally managed services and regulated services rather than through household and market-based interventions alone. So today's webinar is picking up on the data aspect. For a bit more context as well, this is linked to IWA's work, sorry, next slide please, on inclusive urban sanitation. And this work seeks to reshape the global urban sanitation agenda by focusing on inclusive sanitation service goals and the services systems are required to achieve them. This is going beyond infrastructure and technology. It also seeks to engage the public, private and academic sectors to share their experiences and define global goals and fundamentals of a public sector approach to service outcomes. And the initiative is being progressed through the Sunny Action Campaign, which is IWA's global call to action on inclusive urban sanitation. There's an advisory board and a task force that has been formed in this regard. This is also linked to IWA inclusive urban sanitation champions program, which recognizes excellence, leadership and innovation sanitation sector. This is open to individuals, teams and champions and there are various categories for this program. The winners will be announced at a ceremony during the IWA Development Congress that will be held in December in Kigali, Rwanda. Okay, so coming to today's session, we have three speakers who are shown on the screen. Again, my name is Batsurai Majur and I'm the one who's moderating the session. I work at the World Health Organization headquarters in Switzerland. Our speakers today are from the Eastern Southern African Water and Sanitation Regulators Association, SOS, that being Yvonne Magawa, followed by Chawla Ndilema, who's with the National Water Sanitation Council, the regulatory authority in Zambia, as well as Francesco Mutes, who's with the WHO side of the joint monitoring program on water supply, sanitation and hygiene. Keep introducing yourselves in the chat. I see we have 127 participants that are connected. That's great to see. Just a quick overview of today's agenda. We'll have three presentations from the speakers that I've just introduced each 10 minutes. After each presentation, we'll have 15 minutes of interaction. Well, we'll have an ideation activity of about five minutes just to jog your brains and 10 minutes to allow for any questions from your side. And then we'll have an overview of our key messages. So with that, let's get started. And I'll introduce today's first speaker. Chawla Ndilema has over 17 years of experience in water supply and sanitation regulation, working with Norskow at senior management level. She specializes in governance, sector reforms, economic and means center regulation, water operators, partnerships, skills development, and many other activities. She has a master's degree in a business administration with a bachelor's in development economics and a postgraduate in integrated water resources management. She also has professional qualifications in areas of corporate governance, utility management, and organizational development. With that, Chawla, over to you for today's first presentation on demonstrating national level efforts to close sanitation data gaps in Zambia. Thank you very much. Thank you for the introduction and a very warm welcome to our participants. I've already been introduced, so I will go straight into the subject matter. I'll be focusing on the issue of demonstrating national level efforts to close the sanitation data gaps in the case of Zambia. Now, before I even delve into the presentation, I'm sure you all know that data is a deal breaker. The lack of data is actually a deal breaker for most of the work that we do, either as service providers or as regulators. So we cannot emphasize the need for data. Now, in Zambia, we realizing that we really need the data to actually be able to regulate and also to be able to provide services for sanitation in particular. We have tried to demonstrate how this data can be utilized. And in doing so, we've tried to really showcase some of the information that we've been able to collect. Of course, this is still work in progress. But just to reflect how this data can be reflected and how it can be utilized by different stakeholders, we've tried to incorporate some pieces of information that we've been able to collect in our benchmarking reports. And some of the information includes the issues of population that is accessing sanitation by various means, either sewer connections, septic tanks or pit latrines. And we've also tried to now emulate the GMP ladders in trying to reflect the same information. So basically what we're saying there is that we need standards for sanitation facilities if we are going to be able to gather this data and package it in a manner that will help to inform decision making. We need to have standards for sanitation facilities. Then we also need to have standard data collection tools. So what sort of tools are we using to collect the data? And across the country, across all the stakeholders that are working in that space, we need to agree on standard tools so that when we are collecting this data and packaging it, we know it's data that is comparable. We know when we say septic tank, we mean septic tank. And when we say pit latrine, we mean pit latrine so that people can make decisions based on that particular data. Then of course, we also need a system for data collection. So without a system, you cannot be able to collect the data because what basically happens is that when you don't have a system, you have various pieces of data sitting around everywhere and you won't have a consolidated picture of what is on the ground. So systems are very important. And in any case, we need to have these systems integrated to the national level. So if we have systems that start from the grassroots, from the service providers, they need to really culminate into the national level systems that should be able to inform policy and decision making. Now talking of integrated systems, again, our case is that we are trying to see how we can develop a system that is integrated. So as a regulator, we do have a data capture system, which is called the national, the national information system. And this is a very robust system that we use to capture data, but it's data that is at the level of the regulator. So data comes from the service providers into the regulator, and this is basically meant for the regulator to make regulatory decisions and also inform some of the regulatory tools. Now, moving from there, we need to see how we then now aggregate this data and analyze it. And this is now the job of the regulator. The regulator needs to analyze the data and be able to visualize it in different forms. So like the charts that I showed there, there were charts basically reflecting the same information, but in different forms. So one was showing the access levels based on the various forms of sanitation. The other one reflected the same data, but using the GMP ladders. So we aggregate the information, we analyze it and provide it at a national level where other aspects can also be incorporated as you look at the data. So you could integrate things like climate change, health, in trying to analyze the data and make sense out of it. And then from there, you package the information and report it to the various stakeholders. So that basically means that you transform the data into information that focus on critical KPIs. So for our decision makers, you need to really pick out the critical aspects that need to be brought out for them to make the decisions and package them in a manner that would be easy to understand and very quick to absorb by the different stakeholders. And basically when we are dealing with data, we need to make sure that it's responding to the needs of the different stakeholders. So the packaging has to follow the needs of the stakeholders, depending on which stakeholder you want to interact with, you need to package the data in such a way. And then it's always important to have the end in mind. What is it that you're trying to achieve with this data? And that will inform how you package it, how you disseminate it, and who you target your dissemination to. So I think really the takeaway is that data must move from sub-national to national levels for it to be able to be utilized for decision-making processes. Now coming to the issue of using this data, we need to move from data to information for decision-making. Now most of the countries, most of the institutions have lots of data that they collect and it's sitting in their systems or in their reports. But you will find that there's usually a gap between data and information. So this is where now, as regulators and also other stakeholders, we need to see how we move from data into information for decision-making. And there what I'm showing you are just two maps that are basically trying to reflect what we could do to package the data into information for decision-making. So the first map there on your left is looking at sanitation distribution in one seat in Zambia called Chipata. And basically with that data, what you see is that we're trying to reflect the sanitation ladders. So those graphs that I showed earlier, if you want to now package easy to understand and for decision-making, you could actually take that very information and package it into a map like this one where you are basically just showing color coding and immediately somebody is able to see where the need lies. For example, where you see the blues is where you find that these are households that are lacking sanitation. So it's easy for you to target interventions and design strategies to deal with the issue. Then on the other side, you also get a map that is showing you basically information on toilets. And again, when you package it like that, literally it's showing you where you have your toilets and where you don't have your toilets. So the brown color there shows you that you have very few toilets in those areas. And again, this is a map that is for the same Chipata but packaged in a different way for people that would want to intervene to actually construct the toilets themselves. Whereas the other one is trying to look at the ladders, people may have the toilets but are these safely managed. So again, this is different ways of packaging the information for different stakeholders. So there are the key messages that you need different information package for different stakeholders. You also need to map your facilities. So if you don't have a visual picture of your facilities, it will be very difficult for you to actually package the information. Because you know when you are discussing sanitation, it doesn't help to just put the information, the data in text. It will be very hard for anyone to pick the information and understand. And then of course you need the key message. So below each of these maps, you could say the majority of the population do not have toilets and very easily somebody will be able to pick it from the brown colors they will be able to see. On the other side, you could say the majority of our population do not have safely managed facilities. And again, with the map and just one key message, one or two key messages, somebody will be able to pick what you're trying to say. And you know from there, you can actually influence decision making. So what I'm trying to say here is that simplicity is the ultimate soft occasion. That's a quarter I'm picking from Leonardo. We need to keep it simple. If we want to move data to information for decision making, we need to keep it simple. And not the graphs that I showed earlier, those graphs that I showed earlier are too technical, and maybe they are useful for us who are working at the technical level. But when you move up the ladder at national level, and when you want to target policy makers, the politicians, you will need to have different methods of packaging the data and also be able to make it as simple as possible for them to understand. Thank you very much. So I thought I could share that and I'll be able to receive any questions that you might have. Thank you very much, Chola for that presentation and really for highlighting that need to package data in a meaningful way that transfers or transmits useful information. If you have questions for Chola, please type them in the Q&A box that is at the bottom of your screen. I see there's already a question that is there, Chola, so you can have a look at it. And in the meantime, we have a little activity just to jog in both brains a bit. So the map on the screen right now is part of the ideation activity that I'm just going to share with you. And the question is, the World Health Organization is concerned with the sanitation related disease outbreak in three areas of city A. They need expert advice on the most vulnerable areas for intervention. What data would you need to collect to guide your decision and where would you advise them to prioritize effort? The green dots indicate safely managed facilities and just as a recap, safely managed needs, safely managed facilities are those improved sanitation facilities that are not shared with other households and where excreta are safely disposed of in situ on site or transported and treated off site. So we'll give you a few minutes to just think about what data would be needed in order to address this intervention. This is an open-ended question, so there's no ideal answer. We're really trying to engage your thoughts on what would be useful. I'll allow a minute for that. Okay. Thank you, everyone. So again, if you have questions for Chola, they'll go in the Q&A. And if you have any responses to this question, they'll go in the chat. I see some that are coming through now. Increase coverage of increased sanitation in the areas that are lacking. I think the question was more what kind of data would you like to see rather than the interventions? Can you see if there are the responses that are coming through? Safe sanitation coverage, personal hygiene facilities, water accessibility, etc. So like I said, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. So it's a number of variables or a number of data pieces that would meet the number of consumers or the size of the population, the type of facilities, the service type, the sort of non-sort, sources of water, containment facilities, emptying methods for on-site systems or location of tutoring plans, etc. But thank you to everyone who participated in this question. Now with that, we'll turn to the questions for Chola. Chola, one of the questions that was in the chat is, is there a one-stop platform for accessing, storing, analysing and visualising sanitation data from various sources and levels? Thank you very much for that question. And I think I did try to type some response to that, but I will still just go back to the same question. So as far as I know, you know, data needs to vary from institution to institution. So like you indicated in your ideation activity, there is no one-size-fits-all. And as far as I'm aware, there's no off-the-shelf system that can provide or answer to all your needs. So the best way to go about it is actually to develop your own system that will respond to your data requirements and also your context, because contexts also differ. So what institutions need to do is to engage in a process where you understand the data needs, first your own, but also for other stakeholders, and then begin to build a system that will respond to those data needs, the data needs of the stakeholders and the data needs of the institution that is involved. So basically, I think that's what I would say on that question. Thank you for that. And I see there's another one here from Andy Naracot. Sourcing data from different stakeholders involves, from the different stakeholders involved along the sanitation chain requires considerable buy-in and alignment between actors. How did Moscow get buy-in and support from the various ministries, agencies and service provider associations who collect data and plug the data gaps required for public health or performance monitoring? That's a very good question. And I think that is one of the very key challenges that we need to be aware of. So in sanitation, basically what you find is that there are various stakeholders, but each play a different role. And for you to get to consensus on issues of data is really not an easy thing. So what you need is constant engagement with the stakeholders, and you need to begin by clarifying the roles and responsibilities. Who's doing what so that you also, in doing that, you are also going to be streamlining the sort of data that is required for each of those stakeholders. So the process there really requires very, very intense engagements with the stakeholders to make sure that you understand, first of all, the data that is required, the definitions of the different aspects that you are collecting, and also to accept that one of the stakeholders should be responsible for the role of collecting data. So in our case, we did get through this very laborious engagement with stakeholders. And at the end of it, we agreed that NOASCO should be the custodian of the data, and should actually be the one in the forefront in collecting this information. So that's what I would answer for that one. Thank you for that children. Yeah, I think what you just highlighted is very key having a custodian for the data. That's absolutely important. I see there are many more questions that are coming up in the chat, and I think we'll probably need to move on. But if we have one more question, a time to one more question. The question from Mohammed Almighty is, policy makers can be planners, legislators or financial planners? How can you unify the form of data presentations to all? So the answer to that question is what I mentioned towards the end of my presentation, that you need to understand what each stakeholder is looking at. So like you are saying, policy makers can be planners, they can be legislators, they can be financial planners. And with that already, it gives us indication that they will require different forms of data. So the data that a legislator would need is not the same data that a financial planner would need. Or if at all they need the same data, the context of that data would vary. So for example, if you are looking at a legislator, the same data that I was showing, those maps that I was showing there, for a legislator, when you look at issues of safety managed and you look at the numbers of facilities that are not safely managed, you may wish to send a message there that probably our legislation is not strong enough on the facilities that are being constructed. And therefore the legislator needs to deal with issues of legislation to be able to make enforcement easy. Whereas, you know, for a planner, you could actually combine that information with other relevant information like maybe disease outbreaks and things like that and be able to send a message that speaks to the planner. For the financial person, you would also package the same information to talk about the investment requirements, perhaps that would, you know, be drawn from that piece of information. So I think the message that I sent out in my last slide was that we need to have the end in mind. What are we trying to achieve? So if I'm trying to influence investments, a financial person, I will package that information to speak to what those people stand for so that they are able to make decisions in that regard. Thank you very much for that, Chola. I think with that, I'll say thank you. And if you could look at the other questions that have been addressed to you in the Q&A box, please keep the questions coming. We will have time for more questions towards the end of the webinar. But for now, let's move on to our next speaker, who is Yvonne Magawa, who is Executive Secretary of SOS, the Eastern Southern African Association of Water and Sanitation Regulators. She oversees the support to African water and sanitation regulators to improve urban sanitation services by integrating non-suit sanitation in regulation. Yvonne has over 18 years of experience in water and sanitation regulation and holds an MBA, and her responsibilities have been mainly focused on formulating and implementing corporate strategy, risk management, and corporate branding. Her background in the life sector includes working in development cooperation and the Zandian National Water and Sanitation Regulator. And she has been instrumental in supporting the growth of SOS since its inception and has published several papers on water and sanitation regulation in the region. With that, we move over to you, Yvonne, to talk about regional approaches to spend the sanitation data system. Thank you very much, Patsy, and also thanks to Chola for the introduction. So as mentioned, I am focusing on the regional approaches on what we are doing as the Eastern Southern Africa Water and Sanitation Regulators Association, which is an association of 12 countries. To recap, why regulators look at issues of data? We know that regulation is data intensive. Without the correct data, you get the regulation wrong because you are depending on the data regarding the quality of service in order to make decisions about how the sector should move. In most cases, the data is guessed. We are not getting the real situation on the ground. The service providers sometimes make up the numbers. Even ourselves at country level, at the national level, we make up the numbers. And there is a common energy that says if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. But we are collecting a lot of information that is supposed to help us to track progress, including for SDG 6.2. But the questions that we need to be asking ourselves is who has the responsibility for data collection? And do we know what we have achieved? Do we have the baseline of where we're coming from? And do we have the targets to guide where we're going? And how do we then plan the interventions? The regulator has a core mandate, which is to advise on the status of the sector. This is in fact enshrined in most legal instruments of the regulators as a function, as a mandate of regulation to be able to advise on the status of the sector to do this. The regulator monitors and reports on the performance of the sector. The Landscape Study, which was done by ours revealed that in 56% of countries across Africa, which is 54 countries that were done, reports are produced on service provider performance by these regulatory entities. And within that report, benchmarking is a key features of these impressive reports. So a number of KPIs are tracked. We have only highlighted the 10 key performance indicators. And if you look at the percentages, you find that most countries do try to track the progress on coverage, but in terms of other indicators, these are left behind. When we look at what we call sanitation coverage, it is actually sewage coverage. And in a number of cases, the non-suit side is completely left out. We have tried to put the water supply and sanitation data in the form of a pyramid. Where is the lowest level of collecting this data? This is at the consumer level. And the consumer is concerned with service quality and price. As we build up, we realize that there are different purposes for the data, different interests at the different levels of why data is needed. The same piece of information that relates to coverage in terms of the profile of a consumer, for example, and what type of water point they have will be treated differently at a different level. So the utility they are concerned with, how are they providing the service? So they want information on their operations. They're using that piece of information to be able to plan for where they need to put services, how they are handling, how the commercial side is performing, the technical side is performing, and so on. Whereas at the municipality level, they are more interested in seeing who is covered and who still needs to be catered for within planning and which new areas need to be opened up. Whereas the regulator is more concerned with compliance, how the service providers actually performing according to the conditions that have been set for the sector. So they look at service quality, they look at what sort of issues consumers are complaining about. They look at the performance of the service providers in terms of the tariff and various other aspects of compliance. At the national level is sector oversight. How are we going to ensure that the sector is catered for within the national plans? So investment planning, the policy, how are we doing against the performance of policy? At the region and global level, which is the JMP level, for example, we're looking at monitoring and tracking the progress of the sector so that we are able to put together certain goals. So if you look at this pyramid, as you go upwards, the aggregation of the numbers becomes larger and larger, which means if we are wrong right at the lowest level, we are wrong throughout and the margin of error becomes bigger. So we need to be able to assess performance very well. We need to be able to guide the sector very well and that is why closing the data gaps, even for sanitation, becomes very critical. As a regional regulators association, we are investing in closing this data gap through the regulatory systems as well as national information systems. We have developed a data strategy as a source, which is trying to address issues of investing in data infrastructure, as well as capacity building and a number of other interventions. But as a source, we are trying to develop what we're calling a maturity index that allows us to gauge where countries are in terms of the data framework that they have for the sector. And therefore, we will be able to identify where to intervene. So this is combining IMS and GIS for data collection and also having the correct capacities to be able to manage this data. We need to be able to identify system purpose, which is something that we're trying to assist countries to do. Why do you need the system? Who should be part of that system in terms of the data collection? Who are the users of the system? So you need to be able to define the system users. You need to be able to know the custodian of system. As the example was given in Zambia, a decision was made for the regulator to be the custodian of the system. But within other countries, it may not be the case. So the custodian of the national level system is critical in order to know how the other actors feed in. We need to be able to define the data collection responsibilities. Who is supposed to actually collect the data and feed it into the system? Is it the service providers? Is there data collection at the consumer level? Is there data collection from the sector actors like UNICEF, World Bank and so on, who also have various projects in the sector? Who then verifies this data at the end of the day? So we want to strengthen data verification through more robust systems, through digitizing certain elements that will be able to do that cross-referencing. For the plausibility of data. Then we need to understand reporting requirements. What sort of data needs to be reported? How do you present the data? How do you package data for the different levels, for policy level, for informing on the performance of the sector and so on? At the end of the day, all this is grounded in building the right capacity. Capacity in terms of systems, capacity in terms of the human resource, capacity to be able to collect, to use and give value to data. So as a source, some of the tools that we are also developing to assist in collecting data to close the gap right from the local level. We are in the process of finalizing the development of a tool called Sanit Tracker, which is going to assist the private operators to be able to collect data about the service on the ground. So it is what we're calling the Uber of Sanitation. For consumers to be able to request for services and private sector will be able to provide those services using digital methods. And also where they empty at the dumping site, they also have ability to be able to accept jobs for dumping and all this will be fed into one system. So at a region level who have an interface that allows us to see what is happening in the different countries in terms of the status of sanitation, the people that are being serviced and so on. The country level will have information about the country, the areas, the utilities, right down to the lowest level where the service provided itself can have information about their business, how they're doing and the utility can have oversight of all this information. The other tool that has been developed as in conjunction with support from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Athena Informomics is called Equiserve. It's available online and this is for informing different decisions for intervention in series. So it tries to do scenario analysis on the impact on equity safety and sustainability of a certain investment into the sector. So it allows you to see how many people you'll be able to cover, what the cost is, what type of hardware decisions you'll be able to make, to be able to have a correct basis for making these decisions. So this is scenario analysis, somehow predictive in order to guide where to best make an investment for the sector. So using these kind of tools also exposes where data is missing in order for you to make a very good decision. So this is the kind of work that we're doing at this hours level. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Yvonne, for that presentation and very interesting to see what is happening at the regional level working together with the various member countries of the SOS. I see there are some comments and also some questions that are in the chat. Again, a reminder, use the Q&A box specifically for questions that you'd like our panelists to answer. And use the chat box for any experiences, any comments that you would like to share with everybody else here just to make sure that our webinar runs smoothly. So while you're sending out your questions to Yvonne, we have another activity for you that is popping up on the screen now. So Country B has decided to develop a national public data system to inform decisions about the sanitation sector. However, they're grappling with a few issues and need your help in three areas. The first is who should be the custodian of the national level system. So there are three options that are there and there's a single choice, should it be the line ministry, the regulator or a different government office. The second part to the question is who should have the responsibility for data collection and entry. This is multiple choice. So you could take multiple entities, the line ministry, the regulator, utilities, private service providers, NGOs or CSOs. And then the third question is who should have access to the data or who should be the users. Again, this is a multiple choice and you can pick from the options that are selected there. I think there might be a couple of people who have not had the pop-up, I remember just because the pop-ups are blocked, but we have some answers that have come through on the first one. So the majority have said the custodian of the national level system should be the line ministry and 34% have said it should be the regulator and 9% have said it should be a different government office. Interesting. We move now to the second question, who should have the responsibility for data collection and entry. The majority have said the utilities followed by the regulator, oh no, sorry, followed by the private service providers, 59%, followed by the regulator, 54%, then the line ministry, then NGOs and then CSOs. And then on part three of that question, which was who should have access to the data, who should be the users. The regulator is leading 89% and then the line ministry, then the utilities and development partners, interesting at 77% NGOs followed by CSOs. Is everybody able to see the results on the screen? Well, thank you everyone for your input. It looks like some people were not able to see, I'm not sure why it might have been a problem with pop-ups that were not appearing. But again, this was to really gauge your thoughts on some of these questions that countries are grappling with now. So thank you very much for your input. So with that, we can turn now to the Q&A. And one of the questions, I see one you'd like to answer this question live. How does adopting digital methods of data collection and bridge sanitation gaps in rural communities? Yeah, thanks Pasi. When we change to digital methods of collecting data, we are trying to cut down the time of getting this information from the ground to a point where it can be information for decision making as Cholo put it in her presentation. So when we understand the actual situation on the ground, who has a service, who does not have a service, what type of facility do they have and so on. We are better placed to then make a decision on what needs to change. And whether we need to have new regulations being put in place because we have to understand the type of services that are in place in order to make decisions for the kind of regulations that need to exist. So it will help us to guide how the sector should then operate in terms of what sort of facilities are acceptable, what are the standards for these facilities, what sort of business model needs to be adopted in order to address the gaps. So this helps us to cut down the time that we need to get this data at the moment is taking us a few good months to be able to get the data translated into information produced the reports and so on. We are able to get data more in a few, a few hours a day or two, you can get information when you have the GIS mapping, you can get even more visual information that allows you to actually even pick up areas that have health risks, which is very important because with these color outbreaks that we mostly suffer, it is easy to see how the area is structured and you will be able to do some risk assessment and address them before anything goes wrong. Thank you. Thank you for that Yvonne and yeah, very good point that you're highlighting that with disease outbreaks you want to be able to respond in a timely manner and having that data being available to you in a matter of hours or days makes a big difference. I see also that there's a question that's here that you'd like to answer. Are there any tools to guide me operating a desolaging, desolaging tank with the shortest path from treatment plant to the household septic tank. Yes, so as I mentioned, under the sunny trucker, that is one of the features that the sunny trucker has, where when a service provider a private operator accepts a job to go and empty at the consumer, it actually shows you the map or the distance to the consumer and it shows you where the nearest dumping site is. So we are trying to make the sector also more efficient as much as we are trying to collect more accurate data from the ground. It's also going to enhance the business of the private operators in terms of efficiency to serve and also efficiency to dump. And we also have better records of how much waste is actually reaching the treatment plants, how much is actually being safely, safely treated and complete the whole chain of safely managed from capture containment all the way to disposal or reuse. Thank you for that. And I see a question from Maya Wood and she says, how was the sunny trucker managed financially as a service providers and regulators will need to pay for access. The sunny trucker is an initiative under open access. So this means that it's very, very minimal cost only to manage the maintenance of the system. So you can reach out to us and we'll be able to discuss how that can be can be done. We are still in the pilot phase. So within that phase, there is no cost to it. And we, we are happy to discuss it with something that is suitable for your particular context. Thank you, one. Another question again from Aromagum PK for future systems planned with this existing system then itself to accommodate further data. So, can we add additional system. Yes. And what we're trying to do at the as hours level is to actually reduce the request that go to service providers, particularly utilities. They tend to have a lot of demand for certain data for different purposes. But what we're trying to do is to streamline and reduce those levels of data requests, but having systems that integrate and speak to each other, as opposed to developing systems on top of systems. So we are trying to create this single interface that then speaks to the different utility systems and draws data as needed or the utilities can draw data that is needed from one interface to inform their own, their own systems. So we are really trying to reduce levels of complexity when it comes to how that data is handled. There's another question here from Rahel, and he said how do you how frequently do produce reports from experiencing from experience studying is not a challenge. It's rather sustaining. What is your experience for the time that you've been doing this work and sanitation and what is the change this has produced in raising the sanitation profile. So I guess it's a question of the impact that you have had from this monitoring system. Yeah, what I would do is I will respond on behalf of the regulators because at the as hours level we simply compile what comes from the different regulators in the last few years. We have the regulators moving from reporting just storage to reporting sanitation. And when we say sanitation we're now talking of for sewer and non sewer services. So the regulators are gradually incorporating different KPIs that give a more holistic picture on both sewer than answer it so we can also say series citywide inclusive sanitation. So with this, it means the reports of the regulators are beginning to change. As you saw from the example from Zambia they are now including the JMP ladders which cover all the different aspects of the ladder of the service, but also they are trying to show coverage in the different proportions who is covered by sewer, who is covered by septic tanks really breaking down what sort of facilities you have. And this only comes from doing the baselines for sanitation to understand what is actually on the ground. And once those KPIs are adopted at the country level at the region level we have defined a certain framework. We have provided guidance in terms of the kind of KPIs that can exist across the whole sanitation chain, and what sorts of data is needed to be able to inform those KPIs. So the different countries are adopting in incremental stages, the KPIs which are applicable at a given stage they cannot start with everything, but they are taking on board what is manageable as they try to populate the data that is required to inform the different KPIs. Thank you Vaughn for that response. So I think we might move on to the next speaker, but I see that there are a lot of questions that are coming out in the chat. There's a lot of interest in Sunny Tracker, but also maybe Vaughn if you could share the link to where people can find these regional in the regional framework and the KPIs that you mentioned because I'm sure there'll be a lot of interest in that as well. So our next speaker is my colleague Francesco Mitis, who is a statistician who graduated from the University of Rome, Lassati Pienza, and has been working for the World Health Organization since 1998 in several domains in Rome, Copenhagen, and the headquarters office in Geneva. He's worked in the areas of epidemiological studies, working for living near contaminated sites, health impact assessments for outdoor air pollution, exposure to waste and health, road traffic injuries, and violence and injury prevention. But since 2015, he's been working in the water and sanitation hygiene unit at WHO, first working with Glass, the global assessment and analysis of sanitation and drinking water, and then now working as data manager for the J&P, where he has the responsibility of collecting data, developing and updating country files for the 235 countries and territories that the J&P monitors around the world, specifically for households and healthcare facilities. So Francesco will be speaking today on global efforts and monitoring sanitation for SDGs. Over to you Francesco. Thank you, Bazzi. Thanks to the organizer and thanks to everybody to be here. It's a pleasure for me, trying to deliver in 10 minutes important messages. So there was one question which are the present gaps in monitoring on-site sanitation. I will try to answer to these two during the presentation. But before starting, let's have a quick look to definitions. It's important we are in the same boat. If you see on the bottom right part of the slide, we have our ladders containing five kinds of definitions. Orange and light orange is authentication and unimproved. I think it's familiar to everybody. And the upper three is what used to be improved sanitation facilities during the MDG period. Now it's divided in three. Basic and limited. The only difference is the sharing of the facility. So limited is improved and not shared. Basic is improved and shared. Safely managed is improved and something more, as Bazzi said, is the use of improved facilities that are not shared with other households, were excluded safely disposed of in situ or removed through the offsite. That's very important because to calculate safely managed, we need some particular kind of data. We need to seem to be on the same boat to do that. So what we do usually is considered in three parameters. People using sewerage connection, people on subject tanks and people on improved latrines and composting toilet. If a country has a situation in which we have more people using sewerage than the other two, it's defined offsite dominant. To calculate safely managed, we need data on sewerage collection, but not only we only need, we also need data on wastewater treatment at least secondary level or primary level with a long ocean outfall. In this case, we can calculate safely managed sanitation. If the country is on site dominant, that means there is more population on septic and improved latrine and composted toilet than on sewerage. And this is usually the situation of Africa, Latin America, South Asia or least developed countries. We need data on containment, emptying practices, transport and treatment of sludge to have a safely managed sanitation estimate. Otherwise, we can apply some default assumptions like 50% containment or we cannot calculate anything. So said that, we try to calculate this at country, regional and world level for the third time after the SDG started with a report that has been published in July 2023. And the result was a world level, we have 57% of global population with safely managed sanitation more in urban than in rural areas, but also that we have 3.5 billion people lacking safely managed sanitation. And of these 1.9 are with basic service, 560 million will be limited, 545 with unimproved and 419 still practices open defecation. This is given by data for the safely managed sanitation services by data we got from 135 countries, areas and territories out of the 235 that we monitor for seven out of the eight SDG region. No estimate you can see no dark green bar for Oceania, but representing 86% of the global population. A huge progress is our needed to achieve universal access to safely managed services by 2030 as the SDG requires. We will need a five fold increasing current rates of progress for the world 16 fold increase in this developed countries and 15 fold in fragile context. So to go more in the Taylor country level I just show a map that's on the report, you can see that's proportional population with safely managed sanitation services in 2022. Dark green means good or orange means low level gray light gray means insufficient data it means the cases in which we were not able to calculate it with fewer section of Argentina for instance or why for which we do not have data. All the other cases are low and middle income country usually it means that we do not have at national level data represent in mental and empty and transport all. What to do. The main gaps to get not to get those light gray it's to have data. To have data, it means it could mean what we are proposing having also service containing good questions. There were still also service containing good question on size annotation the mix six for instance for UNICEF or the chase eight from the USA the stars to have something on on this annotation and and a lot of national data is containing questions a bit different from what we propose what we propose now now it's been adopted by mix seven service, we still do not have any finalizing completed but they are doing it. And for the first time there are questions on containment. So, you see these three questions. One is, does your septic or improve people train have an outlet pipe for liquid waste answer yes no. Where does this pipe go. Well, it feels so compete to see where close drain was for the trip and plant don't wear open drain water but the surface other don't know. And the third, if in the last year, something happened to your sanitation facility like overflowing containment collapsed and things like this by interpreting this three question we can have an answer. Whether there is containment or not to the sanitation facility that's been during the interview with two households basically, if we do not have this kind of information usually we we assume 50% containment for septic tanks and 100% containment for latrines. And we have on the mix seven questions on empty practices, these were already in the mix six but it's not bad repeating what it was included. So the question is, if accepted tanks already improved lettering composting pilot has ever been emptied. And is, yes, emptied no never emptied, not attempted but cover left undisturbed on full. The second one, who emptied that, if it was a service provider. It was not a service provider so if it was the family, and the third one where the contents was going once emptied. So all of this means that not emptied since means safely managed and emptied and something else safely managed, for instance, emptied and removed of site to treatment plant and emptied and buried on site in a cover pit. But if it's empty or emptied, as were emptied to the water body to open ground field or elsewhere we don't know it's unsafely managed. Anyway, even this few question in a household service can help us to calculate the onsite sanitation situation at country level in a nationally representative way for urban rural area, and from which then we can calculate the national one. Of course, one survey is not enough the survey should be repeated every four or five years or something like that. We are doing a WTO UNICEF with the JMP program also something different we are not only the Cookwood story and agency for the SDG indicator on water and sanitation and a gene. But we are also working under the foundation on Bill and Melinda Gates for an onsite sanitation project. We have the six countries contacted during the first phase Bangladesh Ecuador Indonesia, Kenya, Serbia and Zambia, and a couple of them already produced country or that are available on our website that's listed here in the link. And under the phase two we have other countries Malawi, Republic of Moldova, Oman and Nepal, in which we are starting and all the material is available. The kind of in the core indicators we need the household questionnaire that needs to be used and sanitation inspection form for instance, the main results that we have. And you have these slides with Bangladesh and Serbia would deliver the final survey is give some common points on common key messages, you can have the best emptying practices. And these are two very different countries among themselves, but if you don't have good containment, your safety and sanitation level will be very low at the same thing is happening in the two countries Bangladesh and Serbia. Good emptying practices but very bad containment. Last two slides. There are a lot of indicators that can be used to monitor this kind of things for on-site sanitation. We propose global indicators that could be also national indicators. And you can see that they can be a bit different from our core questions, but if well conceived that they can be used for global monitoring and be compared with the results coming from the other countries. Of course, yeah, you have a long list for each of these. So you see that containment can be deal with the design standard functionality or groundwater risk for instance. But one thing I would like to stress is not to try to develop national indicators that do not match completely JMP or that says different thing. For instance, there are a lot of countries saying we have safely managed sanitation. And in their monitoring system basically, but what they mean for safely managed sanitation is even sewerage. Even sewerage doesn't mean having safely managed sanitation, but there are still a lot of reports around the world reporting this as safely managed. Last thing, we have talked about containment and emitting, but also we have transport and treatment. And in this metrics, you can see the levels of reliability of several kinds of data sources for the kind of facility type. So if you have an elatrin, a septic tank, composting toilet or whatever, the best tool is an household survey. For containment, the household survey can be good, but an household sanitation inspection is much better. For emptying, the household survey can be good, but you can also have data from service provider or from the local government. For transport and treatment, the household survey cannot do anything. The household cannot know after it's emptied where it's going and how it's treated. So it means that we need data from different data sources and different sectors working together to have good results. That's all on my side. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much Francesco for that presentation. There are a lot of questions and comments for you in the Q&A box, but also in the comment box. So if you could start taking a look at that and indicate the ones that you're going to answer live. So while Francesco is doing that, we have another exercise for you. And this is essentially to make sure that everybody has stayed awake during today's webinar. So the exercise is coming up now. Okay, so we are back to our map. And in this exercise, Utility W has reported that in the first half of 2023, 217 facilities were emptied in Area A. With a sludge volume of 26,470 cubic meters and 100% safely treated. How can you verify this data? What would be the kind of input that would need to verify this data? You can type your answers in the chat box. So this is an answer to how do we verify that this said volume of 26,070 cubic meters of sludge was treated. And so some of the data pieces we would need according to the participants are where did the sludge go? Who received it? A physical inspection. Checking with plant operators. Check the volume of sludge that they actually received at the plant. How many tracks? How many volumes? Any data available from the utility and cross verified at the treatment facility. Okay. Again, there's no complete answer. The focus is on the techniques for monitoring and verification. And so some of the data that we could be looking for would be again, like you said, data from the utilities. Any records from the treatment plants on the volumes that they received. So you're very right to mentioning that inspection of PPE for workers, type of equipment that has been used, records on volumes that have been emptied. Systems for tracking of facilities that have been emptied, the GIS or other systems and this is going back to Yvonne's earlier presentation. Any effluent standards that have been met in the case that sludge has been treated and whether there was that the records of compliance with the effluent standards. Okay. So thank you everyone for participating that Paul, we're now going to turn to questions for the last speaker, and we'll then also open it out for questions for the other two speakers. So Francesco, there are some questions that have come up for you in the chat. I see that you marked some of them that you'll answer live. The first one is, are the storage treatment plants designed to cater to the load for the quantity generated by the storage connection. If so, where are the connections from from septic tanks and the betrines managed without causing environmental issues. This is a question from Ari Modem PK. Francesco, what do you Yeah, for this if another question I don't have the magical sticks. I have to say, there is an ideal world in which the search treatment plan should be designed together to the load. So they should be able to receive the load of the sludge generated by the series connection. So everything should go should go right if they were designed but we cannot control it. And our monitoring arrived to understand if storage arrives there, we have some some indication from the sector that can tell us how much is reaching the treatment plan of the sludge. We are monitoring this parameter, for instance, for septic and pit latrines. The same, if they are well emptied, and if was doing the survey, the service is doing a good survey, there shouldn't be, there shouldn't be any problem, but we cannot know if after they are emptied, the sludge arrived to the treatment plant. We have evidence of a lot of places where the truck just put a sludge in the rivers, or just in the overground, basically, but not where they should arrive. So the only team to understand if they are not causing problem is trying to monitor and to inspect the work that all the operators are are doing. And the same applies to the second question on bio digester toilets. You can read the question if you want, and I can go on answering to that. Okay, I think since you said it's similar. Maybe I'll just quickly highlight that the question was in relation to, unlike bio digester toilets that can be emptied and buried or covered at the site and the hygienic conditions can septic tank latrines have the same. So I think you had already outlined a response. Yes, the only thing to be to be added is that what we can monitor on that in our smallest project we do it. We have question on protective equipment on gloves or what the staff should wear out to protect themselves while why emptying and transporting the things. So that's something that can be monitored also with our tools that we are applying not with the household service. The household service is difficult to us this kind of things you ask if they are emptied and who's emptying it but you're not asking if the provider or yourself are wearing growth gloves or protective equipment basically. Thank you. And there's another question that says how do you monitor equity and what tool should be employed. Oh, that's a good one. It depends what you mean for equity. If it's during the process or at country level. We monitor at country level than regional or overall safety management sanitation for urban areas, rural areas, and then at national level. And we do it through collect through the collection of harmonized data sources basically as a service but also data from provider, we put them all together in our country files. We through a regression we calculate the estimates and we publish the results that as I said, they are a national urban and rural level. But we also develop something else to try to monitor inequalities. We have the so called inequality files. So we extract from the data sources that we have more variable. Publishing different kind of files and we are able to describe which are the differences in terms of sub national regions. For instance, those numbers different from country to country and also through welcome tiles to a principal component analysis. So these are different kind of analysis that we do not for all the countries we have it 235 country files but we have around 105 110 inequality files because the kind of data that we need that should be of a certain of a certain kind of data cannot be done for for all the country. I don't know if you meant that for monitoring equity. That's what we do on our side to monitor that and try to show to to the countries. How the situation can be different from region to region and from the reaches to the poorest. Thank you, Francesca. I think I'll allow one more question before we need to be wrapping up. And this question I think is addressed to any of the panelists. And it says one of the challenges is definition of the contained system on how the sanitation practitioners and communities and understand them definition and understanding of septic tanks still varies among communities. The key definitions have been a great guidance on standardization of sanitation terminologies. How can we work together to have a unified have unified terminology and understanding. To start to say something on that. I can say, whenever we receive that a source is sometimes we can have problems, just because that our definition are not harmonized. There are a lot of countries defining cesspits or all think tank as a safety tanks in the as well service and to understand that you have to go to the countries or ask the countries what it means. It happened, for instance, in Cambodia for years, they published the pit latrine and septic tanks together now they're starting to work to distinguish them, or in some Arabic countries, the old in tanks and cesspit are included the inside the septic tank figure. To understand this, it's difficult and you have to discuss with country. What we have done to try to harmonize the things has been publishing core questions and indicators where all the definitions are very well specified. These are, I can share the link in the chat. If you want, these are on our website. That's watch data.org. And this is a document in all the UN languages specifying what we mean for sanitation facilities. And that's the document we recommend the countries to use when the developers of service. Thank you, Francesca. And Yvonne and Chola, if you want to come in on this question, how can we work together to have unified technology and understanding of what we need to contain sanitation system. Thanks, Patsy. From the regional level, what we're trying to do to enhance our understanding of common definitions and also working with the pluritio regnet is we are trying to do more of capacity development for the regulatory stuff so that when we say coverage, we are all understanding the same thing. And we define coverage in the same way. So it is difficult when you look at an indicator in a document and you don't see what is behind the indicator. So we are trying to unpack the indicators so that we're able to see. Do we have the same understanding? We're also working with the World Bank IB net team also to try and get more guidance on how to standardize some of these terminologies. So, developing this guidance at the region level helps us to then have similar understanding across the region. But we need to take this to a more global level so may working with WH a regnet working with the World Bank IB net. I think we'll be able to develop more common definitions and understanding of some of these aspects, especially the standards like you're saying issues of the septic tank what is the septic tank and how is it defined in terms of the standards. If that's understanding is the same, then it helps us to also speak the same language. So harmonizing these terminologies is very, very important. And Patsy will be talking about this but we are developing more into those details at the Iowa Development Congress in Kigali in December. So I invite you to join us in a two part workshop for that discussion. Thank you, Ron. Chava, any thoughts from you on this? Yeah. From us, I think what we're trying to do is we are working with various partners. WHO is one of them. We have UNICEF and GIZ to try and develop standards. So what we realized was that, you know, standards were not really speaking to each other. I find that, for example, you want to have a standard for construction. So you get it maybe from the housing authorities, the local authorities that are in charge of regulating that would have their own defined standards. When you come to sanitation, you will have your own defined standards. We're trying to harmonize those standards at national level and come up with one standard that will speak to everything about, you know, construction, about service provision, about the code of practice for sanitation. And so we've already moved quite ahead with that and come up with some final drafts that are under consideration, having done the public consultations on that. What we are doing is that we are developing an integrated information management system. So what we realized was that the regulator has an information system, but the information would end there. So we're trying to, you know, enhance accessibility of information. We're trying to make sure that we have a one-stop shop for all the data regarding sanitation. We want to have a system that integrates from the utilities to the regulator, then to the national level. And at each level, the stakeholder will be able to have rights and, you know, permissions to work with the data that is relevant for their level. And then for the ministry also, the data will be digested and presented in a manner that is relevant at their level. But also other stakeholders like the cooperating partners, the NGOs, who also have access to view the information and use it in their planning and also other interventions that they would want to make. So basically that's what we're doing at national level. Thank you. Thank you, Chola. And I want to say a big thank you to our other speakers, Francesco and Yvonne. This has been a very interactive and useful webinar. I see there a lot more questions that are popping up in the Q&A. So maybe if the speakers could take a few of the three minutes remaining to just type responses there. And again, there's always opportunity for follow-up after the webinar. People are asking again if they can have the presentation sent to them. I'll reiterate the presentations will be made available on the IWA Connect Plus platform. So you can go there and access the recording of the webinar and the presentations and other materials that have been shared. I'll also request my colleague Francesco to share the link to the GMP report. I see questions that's coming up about equity and actually the latest GMP report had a thematic focus on equity. But with that, I want to say again thank you to everyone who joined. Thank you for your questions. Thank you for your comments and insights that you shared. I think a lot of the things that were highlighted in this webinar really underscored the need for understanding who is doing what as the real basis for then building data systems. Chola highlighted that one of the ways that we're able to get all sector partners together and share data was first understanding who is responsible for what. And thereafter understanding what kind of data would be needed from them and what kind of data would be useful for them. So really starting with that ground up level in terms of building up data systems is important. But having a robust data system for informed decision making is absolutely key for implementing any successful inclusive urban sanitation initiative. We also heard from Ivan on the importance of having custodians that are responsible for this data. So somebody has to be making sure that the data is appropriately packaged for the various stakeholders and the various levels of intervention that will be required. And so the custodian needs to be responsible for data management analysis and guiding policy interventions in the field of sanitation. And I think from the poll we see that a lot of that was leaning towards the regulators that are working in this space. From Francesco we also heard how public data systems should prioritize addressing gaps in national monitoring and how this can link up with global monitoring efforts. So again, highlighting that there are big gaps in onsite sanitation systems and any work that is done to address those gaps either through improved household surveys or other approaches such as the small pilots that he highlighted in the countries that are being, that are piloting those surveys would be important in addressing those data gaps. So with that I want to say a big thank you to all our speakers and I also just want to highlight a few of the activities that are coming up in the future. There will be another webinar that will be coming up soon on sustainable estuarine and coastal development that's later on this month. And early in October there will be a webinar on connecting young professionals in Africa as well as somebody asking the comment how young professionals can be helped so please look out for that webinar. There's also the first IWA non-souled sanitation conference that is coming up that will be in Johannesburg on the 15th of October. Please use the link to register for that conference if you're interested in participating. There's also the IWA digital waters on it that will be taking place in Spain in November. You can find out more about that on the IWA website and will showcase the latest in digital developments in the sector. And then there is the IWA Development Congress that is taking place in Kigali from 10 to 14 December. And specifically at this Congress like Yvonne mentioned there will be two sessions that will be held that will essentially be a follow-up to the discussion that we'll have today. These are workshops that will be delving into the nitty-gritty of how do we monitor on-site sanitation and specifically safely manage on-site sanitation. And what can we do to strengthening data systems and accountability mechanisms towards that. So please if you're going to be at the Congress do join us for this session. And with that I want to say thank you very much. Remember to join the network of water professionals. There is a discount that is applicable. You can go on the website that is displayed on the screens to find out more. Thank you. There's also the IWA Digital Watersonnet that will be taking place in Spain in November. You can find out more about that on the IWA website and will showcase the latest in digital developments in the sector. And then there is the IWA Development Congress that is taking place in Kigali from 10 to 14 December. And specifically at this Congress like Yvonne mentioned there will be two sessions that will be held that will essentially be a follow-up to the discussion that we'll have today. These are workshops that will be delving into the nitty-gritty of how do we monitor on-site sanitation and specifically safely manage on-site sanitation. And what can we do to strengthening data systems and accountability mechanisms towards that. So please if you're going to be at the Congress do join us for this session. And with that I want to say thank you very much. Remember to join the network of water professionals. There is a discount that is applicable. You can go on the website that is displayed on the screens to find out more. Thank you.