By Amanda Gibbins

Many organizations use the mWater platform to gather WASH data and manage WASH infrastructure in Uganda.

At mWater we’ve been working with the Ugandan government to provide the same access to real-time data and analytics. The Ugandan Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE) needed a system capable of regularly tracking water service levels, to help them achieve national and international targets for water access and safety.

What is RUMIS?

mWater worked with MWE to build a Ugandan WASH management information system (MIS).

This MIS is named RUMIS:

R - Rural and

U - Urban

M - Management

I - Information

S - System

Unlike a traditional MIS which can take years to develop, RUMIS was built and put into active use in less than a year.

The Ugandan government agreed that initially RUMIS would be implemented in three Ugandan districts: Luwero, Lira, and Pader. It is being used by the MWE, district water offices, and other government agencies and development partners.

Using the mWater system as its core, RUMIS provides data gathering capacity through its custom app, and interactive analytics through the software platform. Enumerators don’t need to worry about internet access whilst they’re using the app. They can download current water point data before heading into the field, and sync their findings once back in internet range.

Bringing RUMIS to life

Updating the Ugandan Water Atlas

Digital real-time data that’s instantly accessible and shareable is a vital part of a modern MIS.

To achieve this, mWater initiated an update of the Ugandan Water Atlas. Mapping water systems and their assets is an essential step towards improved water asset management and planning.

Enumerators in Luwero, Lira, and Pader remapped all the water points and water assets in each district. Once this was done, a management process was begun to make sure this data would be updated on an ongoing basis.

Working with partner organizations

This first generation of RUMIS was built with the support of the Ugandan Water Project, its sister company Red Rhino Development, and the Global Forum for Development (GLOFORD). Red Rhino Development is our partner in supporting the roll-out of RUMIS and its ongoing use. This includes training local technology professionals to provide platform support after mWater’s direct involvement has ended.

The work was funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

The value of RUMIS

Making life easier

The Ugandan civil service cares deeply about providing safe water to the population. They also have many tasks and priorities every day. For RUMIS to be widely adopted, it needed to meet our success metrics:

makes someone’s job easier than the process it replaced
works in front of the users eyes
achieves something that’s part of the users job description

Before RUMIS, workers were struggling to keep 15 different government WASH databases updated. Paper forms and manual data collection made data updating and analysis time consuming and prone to errors. But with RUMIS’s front line management app, gathering the data and inserting it into the database is no longer a separate activity. Instead the enumerator simply gathers the data and updates it all in one action as part of their routine tasks.

We hope that RUMIS will become a front end data management tool, generating accurate and up-to-date data to all of the other 15 databases and ensuring the MWE has relevant and useful data for decision making.

Making data accessible at all levels of government

The data collected by enumerators can be accessed in RUMIS at any time, by all levels of government. Workers at the local, district, and national level all see the same real-time information.

Improving collaboration between government and NGOs

Most of the NGOs across the country are already using mWater to manage their services. In some cases, that meant that those partners had different data than the government did. RUMIS will help align the data, making sure that all of the NGOs have the exact same data as the government. Nobody has competing revisions or versioning crises, which can really disempower governments.

With RUMIS, mWater is introducing a new feature that allows NGOs and other local organizations to automatically share their water point data with the Government of Uganda. RUMIS administrators in the MWE can invite NGOs who are already using mWater to share their data. This allows NGOs to help contribute their expertise and labor toward the shared goal of a national monitoring system.

Increasing youth employment opportunities

Youth unemployment in Uganda is a big issue. Over 400,000 young people graduate each year from Ugandan universities, but finding work can be difficult. According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, 41% of youth adults are neither employed nor engaged in education or training.. Updating the Ugandan water atlas at the start of the RUMIS project provided job training for over 200 recent graduates and employment for 60 young peoples. We share their stories in an earlier blog post:

https://www.mwater.co/blog/the-pader-project

Providing a quality service in a time of flux

Uganda is currently dealing with a number of difficult issues that impact the WASH sector. These include:

Massive population shift from rural to urban areas. Uganda also accepts more refugees than any other country per capita. The MWE is having to work very hard to keep up with these shifts and increases in population.
Climate change. Drought and declining groundwater levels brought about by climate change are seriously impacting the WASH situation in Uganda.

The data-driven RUMIS system is enabling the MWE to modernize and professionalize management of the Ugandan water sector, so they can provide services at a higher level. The technology isn’t a magic ingredient; if there was one it would be MWE’s wonderful professional core of water managers. However, RUMIS will help people work more efficiently and effectively, making change and progress possible.

Looking to the future

At mWater we’re excited to bring this service to other governments who would like a data-driven WASH management information system that’s accessible across the government. We want everyone to have access to the same high quality data, and can use our software platform to provide it.

Tools we have specifically designed for utilities and water providers include: