From Megha Phansalkar, Water Supply and Sanitation Department, Government of Maharashtra, Mumbai
Posted 28 September 2007

I am Dr. Megha Phansalkar working as Knowledge Management Specialist with the Water Supply and Sanitation Department, Government of Maharashtra.

We are scaling up ‘community driven approaches’ in the drinking water sector, through external and internal funding projects. We are therefore interested in learning about projects/initiatives in the sector, where Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) tools have facilitated interaction by supplying information and encouraging learning to help in participatory decision making. (for e.g. preparation of PRA maps on the computer, data base of related water resources stored and analyzed by the community, natural resource mapping done with the help of some computer application etc.) We would further like to document such initiatives (including the before and after situation, and other related aspects).

Thus, I would like to request Solution Exchange members of the Water and ICT for Development Communities to please share the following:

• Case studies where ICTs have been used as a tool for participatory decision-making in the drinking water sector, including pilot projects, which have not been scaled up
• Suggestions on the possibility of using ICTs in villages to collect data on drinking water

Our compilation of case studies would help implementers like us, to take a few successful initiatives to scale. Additionally, the case studies would be available as ready reference material for usage by stakeholders.

Please see attachment below for the responses.