A Guidance Note for the Establishment of Country Level Sector Information and Monitoring Systems (SIMS) for Water Supply and Sanitation

The paper has been written with water and sanitation sector practitioners directly involved in SIMS development as the target audience. Howeever, since all technical terms are introduced and explained in the text, backed up by explanatory notes and examples in the annexes, it should be easily accessible to professionals with a general interest in the water and sanitation sector, as well as those with a general interest in sector monitoring and information systems. The paper was conceived of as living document, as experiences evolve within and outside the region, updates will be made. It should be emphasized that the SIMS model developed here should be viewed as description of the idea. Whilst some components are drawn from best-practice examples in the region, others are still on the drawing board. The authors don't argued for a big-bang approach to development and establishment of SIMS - rather it is argued that SIMS should be developed gradually to allow broad ownership within the sector and to institutionalize SIMS.

The structure of the Guidance Note is as follows:
- Section 2 describes common problems in existing country level sector monitoring systems and typical challenges faced when attempting to improve them,
- Section 3 and 4 present and explain the BUilding Block Model for the development and operationalization of country level SIMS; the rationale behind each of the five building blocks is explained along with a checklist  of important steps for the effective functioning of each;
- Section 5 is a table summarizes the steps in establishing and introducing incremental improvement of SIMS;
- This is backed by country case studies (Annex 1), notes (Annex 2), examples (Annex 3), and a list of abbreviations and references.