Tanzania: Improving WASH Evidence-Based Decision-Making (IWED) Program

Improving WASH Evidence-Based Decision-Making (IWED) is a program under Water for Africa through Leadership and Institutional Support (WALIS) that supports demand-driven initiatives identified by selected national WASH focal agencies in sub-Saharan Africa to foster better WASH policies, strategies, and decision-making.

The IWED Tanzania program worked with Tanzania’s Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender Elderly and Children (MoHCDGEC) to roll out the National Sanitation Management Information System (NSMIS) and National WASH Web portal. NSMIS is a information system containing data on water and sanitation access throughout the country that is collected at the local level using standardized paper surveys. Previously, NSMIS data access was restricted to MoHCDGEC staff and it required specific software skills to navigate the system. Under the project, the National WASH Web Portal was created to pull data from the internal system into a publicly available one to facilitate greater information sharing and use, as well as increased government accountability.