ABSTRACT
Any government agency intent on improving or extending provision for water and sanitation needs to know the scale and nature of the deficiencies in provision. The same is true for any international agency that wishes to support this. Different water and sanitation service providers (whether they are government, private sector, NGOs or community organizations) also need information on this. But different agencies have very different information needs and it is important that the information needs of these different agencies are not confused. In addition, the information needed for measuring and monitoring provision is not necessarily the same as the information needed to generate action or to inform action.
