A major weakness in the water and sanitation sector is the absence of reliable data – data which can help our understanding of service provision for the poor, especially in urban areas, and provide information to enable consumers, service providers, policy makers and donors to act more decisively and to monitor the impact of their interventions.
UN-Habitat, with support from Google.org, is leading an exciting initiative – called the h2.O Monitoring Services to Inform and Empower Initiative – which tests innovations in sector monitoring and seeks to help put in place powerful and effective monitoring systems of the urban environment in place on a global scale.