EWB Canada: Near-Term Success, Long-Term Failure
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Admitting Failure Case by Owen Scott, EWB CanadaThe intention was:
Giving follow up on an initial survey of rural water infrastructure in Machinga, district, Malawi to help identify areas of high and low service in order to improve planning for new infrastructure.
The course of action was:
Proposing a new approach to updating rural water supply data using an existing network of health department extension workers embedded in rural areas. And being very optimistic that the survey updates could be managed sustainably by the Machinga district without on-going external support.
The result was:
The district had been given substantial funding from one of the EWB NGO partners to do an initial survey and was not excited about the idea of doing an update with their own limited operational budget. The district immediately requested to negotiate additional funding from the NGO partner. I negotiated for our NGO partner to release a small amount of funding for them, less than $200, which they eventually did – leading directly to a successful update of the survey. It was time for another round of data collection three months later. However, this time no NGO funding was available and my colleagues at the district were not happy when I told them this. However, they agreed to try to fund data collection on their own. A half-hearted attempt at data collection emerged, with a less than 50% complete return. Three months later, when it came time for another update, they chose not to do data collection at all. The water infrastructure monitoring system in Machinga had, in effect, been proven unsustainable.
The lesson was:
Upon reflection, I can think of two major failures from this story: 1. Prioritizing tangible activities as outcomes. Success is hard to find sometimes in development work and can have a serious effect on how we think about it. For me, success quickly became about having the district staff collect data –it was tangible, concrete, and simple. Success wasn’t about the district office valuing the program or about behavior change. This all but guaranteed that my own priorities and the actual priorities of the district would eventually become misaligned. 2. Using distorting financial incentives to achieve an outcome. This is a classic pitfall in development, and one that I walked right into. Once I had an outcome in mind – data collection – it became easy to organize the NGO funding needed to make it happen. But using financial means to achieve my outcome (almost bribery in a way) quickly eroded the foundation of actual relevance that would be necessary for long-term sustainability of our program.
Further:
Since the experience in Machinga, I’ve been taking an almost opposite approach. These days, when we work with districts, we bring no external funding, even for the initial surveys. If districts want to work with us to help improve their planning and information management, they are responsible for first funding a full round of data collection without any assistance from us or our NGO partner. This serves as almost a priori proof that the work we’re doing together is: (a) actually relevant to the district (or else why would they fund it?), (b) actually financially sustainable. This has led to district governments being much more invested in the work we’re doing together, and is sowing the seeds for sustainability much better than our old approach.
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