Conduct early assessments of the data environment and build in activities to strengthen data availability and quality for program use and monitoring and evaluation. Limited data availability and reliability was a challenge of the threshold program which impacted MCC's ability to monitor and evaluate the program. For example, under the District Metering Area Activity, there was no baseline for non-revenue water, a key indicator for assessing the activity. While the technical assistance to the Guma Valley Water Company made some progress towards putting in place some of the meters and other measures for estimating this indicator, there was still no data reported on this on the Indicator Tracking Table (ITT) by the end of the program. Future programs should assess utilities' capacity to collect and manage valid operational and financial data and consider how to provide targeted assistance in this area.
Lesson Learned