Learning from failure: lessons for the sanitation sector – new discussion paper
Posted: May 11, 2013 Filed under: Events, Sanitation Leave a comment »A version of this post first appeared on the BPD Water and Sanitation blog.
I last blogged about the discussions at the Learning from Failure in Sanitation workshop organised by the UK Sanitation Community of Practice (SanCoP). Now five of us have co-authored a discussion paper called Learning from failure: lessons for the sanitation sector. We presented the paper at the most recent SanCoP workshop, held at University College London in April 2013. The abstract is below and the full paper can be downloaded from BPD Water and Sanitation, one of the SanCoP convening organisations. Comments are open for discussion on the BPD blog and we would love to hear feedback and ideas.
Nicola Greene and I have also co-authored a shorter commentary piece for the journal Waterlines based on some of the ideas in the discussion paper, entitled Crossfire: Can ‘admitting failure’ help the WASH sector learn and improve its work?, available in the April 2013 edition of Waterlines.
Learning from failure: lessons for the sanitation sector
Stephen Jones, Nicola Greene, Andrés Hueso, Hayley Sharp and Ruth Kennedy-Walker
Abstract:
This paper explores the idea of learning from failure in the sanitation sector. The recent trend of ‘admitting failure’ in aid and development forces sanitation practitioners, researchers and policy-makers to ask if we can and should address failure more openly in order to improve our work. The ideas in this paper developed from discussions at a workshop on ‘learning from failure’ convened by the UK Sanitation Community of Practice (SanCoP) designed to kickstart this debate.
We first discuss the concept of failure itself and identify different approaches to learning from failure relating to sanitation. These include acknowledging past failures in order to learn and adapt, and planning for ‘safe’ future failures through deliberate experimentation and innovation. We also argue that a series of further steps are required: understanding relevant previous approaches to learning from failure in the sector; recognizing different types of failure; seeking different actors’ perspectives on failure; and framing the debate about failure constructively rather than negatively.
In the second part of the paper we examine different practical examples of how actors in the sanitation sector have tried to learn from failure, to assess how this happened and what changes resulted. In the final section of the paper we conclude with suggestions for how individuals and organisations working in sanitation and international development more widely can learn from failure. We also propose the UK Sanitation Community of Practice (SanCoP) itself as one example of a ‘safe space’ in which people can meet to discuss and learn from failure.
April 2013
Five ways of thinking about failure in sanitation
Posted: November 15, 2012 Filed under: Change, Events, Sanitation 5 Comments »I’m inspired back to blogging by a thought-provoking workshop yesterday on Learning from Failure in Sanitation, organised by the UK Sanitation Community of Practice (SanCoP). Huge thanks to all who contributed. We will share notes and ideas going forward very soon. If you are interested in joining the network, email us and join our Linkedin group. For now, these are my thoughts on one of the key questions of the day: what do we mean when we talk about failure? There are at least five approaches to thinking about failure that I picked out from the discussions: Read the rest of this entry »
More changing Theories of Change, and the importance of flexible and trusting donors
Posted: March 2, 2012 Filed under: Change, Sustainability Leave a comment »I wrote recently about the how the Triple-S sustainable rural water services initiative has tried to promote change in the sector:
- Relationship-led (i.e. using champions to mobilise change)
- Value-led (i.e. leveraging peer pressure and creating coalitions for change)
- Evidence-led (i.e. providing proof that the current approaches don’t work and proof that other ones do)
These were the approaches originally identified with the external learning facilitators from the Impact and Learning team at the Institute of Development Studies. The Triple-S team and the “ELFs” have just held a further learning retreat, and agreed on the need to improve external communication: more blogging and more resources on the Triple-S website.
So, good news: more members of the team active on the Water Services That Last blog. It’s great to see the self-reflection and insights on the internal process involved in trying to create external change. Here’s Ton Schouten, previous project director of Triple-S:
We did not have a theory of change when we started … but a lot became clearer in the first year of Triple-S. The clarity did not come out of a planned, linear process; it was not done in a well-organised workshop of two days. It took hours of talking in corridors, meetings, waiting areas and trains to sharpen our ideas of how to make a difference. And it was gut feeling, years of sector experience and good intuition that fed our thinking. For a long time it concentrated on how NOT to do Triple-S.
Political economy analysis of rural sanitation in Vietnam: changing Theories of Change
Posted: February 9, 2012 Filed under: Politics, Sanitation 4 Comments »The WASH sector is beginning to explore how donors can more explicitly analyse political economy issues in order to better understand how they can influence WASH sector reforms. This is part of a wider growth in other sector-level political economy approaches. Paraphrasing Edelmann (2009), this trend is due to increasingly open acknowledgement that development is political, development aid is political, and stating a ‘lack of political will’ as the explanation for failed development projects is insufficient analysis. We need to understand politics better, and sector-level support requires sector-level political analysis.
The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) has developed guidance on how the water and sanitation sector can analyse political economy in practice. A recent working paper applies this approach to Vietnam, working with DFID to answer the question: why is performance so poor in the rural sanitation sector in Vietnam, and why have apparently effective innovative pilot projects not been scaled up? Read the rest of this entry »
Learning for Sustainable WASH: my four lessons from yesterday’s event
Posted: February 1, 2012 Filed under: Events, Sustainability, Water 4 Comments »The Sustainable WASH Learning Event, hosted by Arup yesterday, was overall an honest assessment and discussion by different actors involved of where the sector has got to on thinking about sustainability, and how this general awareness of the challenges needs to translate into actions which lead to a long-term service delivery approach. Many thanks to the organisers for bringing it together, particularly the team from Aguaconsult and IRC. I know they are busy collating the presentations, videos and discussions – and hopefully plenty of new stories for Sensemaker – but in the meantime here are the four lessons I took from the day:
Analyse local and national politics
Analyse donor politics
Think about scale
Talk about subsidy
What Theories of Change apply in the water sector?
Posted: January 27, 2012 Filed under: Sustainability, Water 1 Comment »“Change is hard” in the rural water sector is the message from the Impact and Learning team at the Institute of Development Studies, who have been acting as external learning facilitators for the Triple-S initiative. They explain that so far Triple-S has based its efforts to promote change towards an approach of sustainable service delivery in the sector on three elements:
- Relationship-led (i.e. using champions to mobilise change)
- Value-led (i.e. leveraging peer pressure and creating coalitions for change)
- Evidence-led (i.e. providing proof that the current approaches don’t work and proof that other ones do)
However, Triple-S and the Impact and Learning team are now reviewing progress to see if these Theories of Change need to be revised, and should be reporting back next week.
How do these thoughts compare with the Theory of Change put forward by WASHCost, Triple-S’s sister project? On the surface, their theory suggests a strong belief in the evidence-led aspect of change – the idea that better information on costs of water, sanitation and hygiene will lead to better choices: Read the rest of this entry »
Rural water services after 2015: what vision should replace the MDGs?
Posted: January 25, 2012 Filed under: Sustainability, Water 1 Comment »In my last post I referred to the concept of a ‘danger zone’ for rural water services – a term developed by the Triple-S project to describe the tension in many countries between the increased coverage created by new rural water infrastructure and the ‘slippage’ caused by older systems failing. This idea highlights the importance of allocating sufficient resources to recurrent costs and capital maintenance expenditure as coverage levels increase. Stef Smits recently reflected on the contribution of the Millennium Development Goals to this tension:
… the MDGs are one of the biggest competitors to the approach of sustainable services at scale … [they] have been great in mobilizing public investments for WASH… However, the focus on increasing coverage makes it also difficult to fund all the other life-cycle costs of water supplies, such as replacement of assets or post-construction support. In that sense, there is a competition brought about by the MDGs on whether to invest in coverage or dedicate funds to the sustainability of services. We would argue that both are needed, but that there are trade-offs between them. Therefore, a careful balance is needed in investing in that, a balance that even shifts over time. Read the rest of this entry »
