Digitalisation of rural water services and broader rural water management has been a long time coming, and it offers distinct advantages for improving service performance and water security, in particular for making use of Internet Communications Technologies (ICTs) for overcoming the barriers of physical remoteness and poor transport infrastructure. However, because collection, quality control, curation and sharing data is expensive and time-consuming, it needs to be done purposefully to drive decision-making. Data is generally used at one of several levels:

• Political Data: Generally international databases are aggregated to a state or national level to track and highlight progress and shortfalls. The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) and Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and drinking water (GLAAS) data are the most widely used globally, but there are also regional data hubs, assessments and national benchmarking.
• Planning Data: Often, national data sets of population data, services levels, water resources, water quality, climate monitoring, asset and infrastructure locations and conditions – used in planning process for targeting and prioritising investment, e.g. by development bank-financed programmes.
• Operational Data: Data that operators need to run and viable service, and that regulators and civil society/water users need to have an appropriate level of oversight and accountability.
• Research Data: Can take many forms, but is generally collected in a fixed period, needs to be very high quality and very specific to a well-defined research question, which can be fundamental science questions or less novel but equally important.

The Data for Action Theme will focus on relevant aspects of these, including:

• Innovation in data for rural water, including harnessing emerging technologies and trends, such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
• Strengthening how rural water data is used systematically to support decision-making at all levels.
• Identifying and developing guidelines where there is a need.
• Supporting harmonisation of indicators, benchmarking and open data standards (such as the Water Point Data Standard). 

To find out more and to get involved join the Data for Action Community on dgroups.