To reduce the number of slums in Tangerang district, the Housing, Settlements, and Cemetery Office (Dinas Perkim) of Tangerang district manages the Joint Community Movements to Overcome Densely Populated, Slum, and Poor Areas (GEBRAK PAKUMIS) program. This district government grant program, which was launched in 2013, aims to rehabilitate at least 1,000 uninhabitable houses (RTLH) annually.
For beneficiaries selection, Dinas Perkim has to verify RTLH data sent by the GEBRAK PAKUMIS implementing units at the sub-district level. Until mid 2017, the RTLH verification survey was conducted manually using paper notes, and all information was stored physically on paper.
The manual RTLH verification survey can complicate the beneficiary selection process. Heru Herdiansyah, the Head of Settlements Quality Improvement Section of Dinas Perkim in Tangerang district, said that the manual survey results were often not completed with the RTLH pictures. In fact, these pictures are very important to determine whether a house meets the GEBRAK PAKUMIS criteria, such as having a broken roof that potentially harms the occupants and whether there is a toilet in the house. Furthermore, Heru said that reviewing the data stored in hard copy one by one is troublesome.
To address this issue, Dinas Perkim took the initiative to use mWater to verify 1,000 RTLH in 2018. Dinas Perkim and USAID IUWASH PLUS used this application at the end of 2017 to map the location of GEBRAK PAKUMIS beneficiaries in 2017 and microfinance institution customers who received a sanitation loan. This mapping was conducted to support the USAID IUWASH PLUS water and sanitation micro-finance programs in Tangerang district.
mWater is an android-based survey application which was developed to, among others, map and monitor the water and sanitation access in an area. The application can be used for free by any organizations working in data management. This mWater application can show real time data of the surveyed water and sanitation access, such as the types of water and sanitation facilities owned by the respondents and their location coordinates. In addition, the data generated from mWater can be integrated into the existing database.
Supporting Dinas Perkim to use mWater use for GEBRAK PAKUMIS program, at the end of April 2018 USAID IUWASH PLUS trained the Dinas staff assigned as the GEBRAK PAKUMIS operators on how to operate the mWater application and make survey questionnaires so that Dinas Perkim is able to develop valid questionnaires in the future.
After participating in the training, the operators trained the GEBRAK PAKUMIS enumerators on how to collect and send data using the mWater application, including how to take GPS coordinates of the surveyed RTLH. The operators are also responsible for editing and managing the mWater database using the data from the enumerators.
The enumerators did not need much time to understand how to use mWater. In early May 2018 they conducted a verification survey to 1,000 RTLH using mWater application that had been installed on their smartphones to collect information on the RTLHs condition and their GPS coordinates. Then, the enumerators sent their survey results to GEBRAK PAKUMIS operators using the application, and the operators managed and published the data on Dinas Perkim’s Slum Identification Application System (ASIK) website. Dinas Perkim has submitted the verified data of the 1,000 RTLH to the Regent as the proposed 2018 GEBRAK PAKUMIS beneficiary candidates.
“mWater application really helps Dinas Perkim to collect complete and accurate data on RTLH. This kind of data is very crucial to solve slum problems,” Heru Herdiansyah explained.
Similar to Heru, Adhi, one of the Dinas Perkim enumerators, said that mWater makes the data collection process and survey results review easier because the data is stored digitally not physically on paper.
Dinas Perkim’s effort to collect and store the data on the potential GEBRAK PAKUMIS beneficiaries using mWater was selected by the Human Resources Development Agency (BPSDM) in Tangerang district as one of the Top Four Change Initiatives carried out by the Local Government Implementing Units (OPD) in 2018.
At the end of 2018, Dinas Perkim will verify another 1,000 RTLHs as the GEBRAK PAKUMIS beneficiaries in 2019.
-Suhaemi Abbas-
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