Ultimate reform goals may be built on smaller but critical early investments in a utility’s financial management and information systems, as well as a gradual process of transferring knowledge to key institutions and building of relationships among compact stakeholders. Success in the achievement of any long-term goals depends on building a base of high-quality data and improving the systems to support data-driven decision-making. This can involve early but often laborious work to clean up utility accounting systems and databases, while also allowing for the time necessary to establish strong working relationships and knowledge transfer. Project plans and timelines should account for this full range of activity to be successful, especially given the importance of ensuring that reform activities lead to visible, tangible improvements to build support (as described above). Under the PSRP, significant effort was undertaken to improve accounting and financial data and management, which later served as inputs to the ESCOM MIS and the cost-of-service study and tariff application. This work also improved the quality and availability of information which could be used by decision-makers to assess progress and manage for results; although, the data was not always used to that end in Malawi.
Lesson Learned