Operation and Maintenance (O&M) has often been the Achilles' heel of urban service delivery systems and wastewater management is no exception. Collecting and analysing high-quality data on system performance could help urban local bodies (ULB) identify, diagnose, and solve issues early. Faecal Sludge Management Systems (FSM-S) – characterised by the collaboration of multiple actors across a segmented service chain - especially necessitates integrated oversight for effective and sustainable operations. FSM-S continually generate diverse types of data (including, inter alia, invoices, vehicle logs, and treatment quality reports) that are useful for diagnosing performance but are typically stored in silos.  Responding to the challenge, we developed a Microsoft Excel-based tool to help local governments track the performance of FSM-S. The tool allows the user to collect standardised data on the operational and financial performance of the entire FSM-S and visualise insights through thematic dashboards. Its simplicity of design, execution in Excel, and automatically-updating dashboards make the tool suitable for deployment in resource-and capacity-constrained settings.

The tool was presented to the community of practice in a Masterclass on FSM Monitoring held in September 2020. More information about the session, including video recording, can be accessed here.

Access the Excel-based tool for monitoring Faecal Sludge Management Systems here: