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U.S. Agency for International Development, Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, Center for Water Security, Sanitation and Hygiene (RFS/CWSSH) Request for Information – Support Services for the Inf... U.S. Agency for International Development, Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, Center for Water Security, Sanitation and Hygiene (RFS/CWSSH) Request for Information – Support Services for the Informing Decisions through Evidence and Analytics-Led WSSH (IDEAL WSSH) Activity Issuance Date: February 8, 2022 Response Date: February 22, 2022 at 12:00 PM EST To All Interested Parties, The United States Government, represented by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS), is issuing this Request for Information (RFI) to all interested parties. The RFI is intended to: Obtain feedback for a planned activity, Informing Decisions through Evidence and Analytics-Led WSSH (IDEAL WSSH). The purpose of this activity is to increase the use of the best available evidence in routine decisions by USAID WSSH stakeholders while also strengthening the WSSH data landscape. USAID is conducting market research to determine the most suitable procurement strategy for an anticipated award to provide support for the Informing Decisions through Evidence and Analytics-Led WSSH (IDEAL WSSH) Activity. USAID requests that any interested organizations review the draft summary in Attachment One and provide responses to the questions contained in Attachment Two. This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes. Respondents are solely responsible for all expenses associated with responding to this RFI. Responses to the RFI will not be returned. Respondents will not be notified of the result of the review. All information provided will become the property of USAID, will not be returned, and will not be released publicly. USAID reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for USAID’s own purposes. Proprietary information must not be sent. USAID reserves the right to, or not to, incorporate any, some, or none of the comments received from this RFI into any subsequent solicitations or design documents. Submission Instructions and Response Format: Please provide one (1) electronic copy of your response in Microsoft Word format as a single email attachment to Taylor Boomer at tboomer@usaid.gov Please submit responses via email only by Tuesday, February 22, 2022 at 12:00PM EST. The total length of the RFI submission cannot exceed four (4) pages and must be submitted using 12-point Arial font, 8.5 x 11-inch paper (letter-sized), single line spacing, one-inch margins, no graphics, and pages numbered consecutively. If the submitter has produced relevant reports and/or other written materials or would like to cite other reference materials, then those reports may be included only as embedded links within the page limit. The respondent should include the following information on the first page: Name Title Organization Email DUNS number Business size Responses to this notice are NOT considered offers and CANNOT be accepted by the U.S. Government to form a binding contract. Therefore, USAID is not seeking technical or cost proposals at this time. Please do not submit a full proposal as these will not be reviewed and will be discarded. Thank you for your interest in USAID’s IDEAL WSSH activity. We look forward to receiving your responses. Sincerely, Rachel Baltes Supervisory Contracting Officer M/OAA/RFS Attachments: #1 – IDEAL WSSH Background and Objectives #2 – RFI Questions Attachment 1: IDEAL WSSH Background and Objectives The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme has estimated that achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 targets of universal access to water and sanitation will require quadrupling the rate of progress in providing access to these services. Achieving this ambitious goal will require that investments in Water Security, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WSSH) are appropriately targeted, cost-effective, and rooted in evidence. Improving the use of data in routine decisions throughout USAID’s WSSH portfolio can play a key role in accelerating impact in order to meet global WSSH challenges. Routine use of data can help improve USAID’s targeting of WSSH investments and can measurably increase the impact of those investments.[1],[2] Beyond improving efficiency, improving data use can also advance equity by directing resources to the most vulnerable communities.[3] USAID’s Digital Strategy highlights the opportunity to “improve measurable development… outcomes through the responsible use of digital technology in USAID’s Programming”. The strategy further notes that approaches such as prioritizing investments through geospatial analysis are essential to making development more effective and efficient. The need to increase the use of evidence in USAID’s work has also been recognized by external stakeholders, both for WSSH and in foreign aid more broadly.[4],[5],[6] The potential to enhance the use of data in USAID’s routine decisions and rapidly increase access to WSSH services is greater now than ever before. Over the past decade and a half, the WSSH data landscape has grown dramatically with new monitoring efforts, new data collection approaches, emerging data standards, and more frequent data sharing between institutions.[7],[8],[9],[10],[11],[12] Additionally, newly available, high-resolution global datasets on topics such as wealth, population, conflict, and climate provide new opportunities to combine and leverage data for even more powerful and nuanced insights.[13],[14],[15],[16] These datasets are generated at significant cost to the global WSSH sector, but often remain underutilized by USAID and its partners. Generating actionable, data-driven insights is resource intensive. As the WSSH data landscape has grown, so too has its fragmentation and complexity. Using the available evidence to inform decisions requires extensive research to identify available data sources, a wide range of specialized expertise such as data engineering, geospatial information systems analysis, and data visualization, along with large amounts of time to implement the analysis. Too often, each time a decision needs to be made, this work begins from scratch. Moreover, the significant human, financial, and technical resources required to do the analysis are often not available, and decision-makers must proceed in making the decision without the benefits of data-driven insights. Ensuring that data use remains a viable long-term component of USAID’s WSSH programming requires sustained support to the broader WSSH data landscape. The global WSSH sector would benefit from a more complete understanding of the current state of the global WSSH landscape, improved coordination and interoperability, advanced standardization, and innovation around closing data gaps.[17],[18],[19] Progress in these areas will be essential to making the WSSH data landscape more effective for all stakeholders - within USAID and beyond. Draft Concept and Objectives: USAID seeks to transform the best global WSSH data available into actionable insights that can accelerate progress toward the U.S. government Global Water Strategy and USAID’s Water and Development Plan, help decision-makers leverage insights to enhance decisions, and do so in a way that strengthens the global WSSH data ecosystem for all actors. Based on consultations with stakeholders, USAID has identified nine initial common and/or recurring decisions that are critical to USAID WSSH programming. These include: Decisions made by USAID Leadership To what extent should WSSH be prioritized within USAID programming? To what extent should development approaches to WSSH be prioritized in response to specific shocks (i.e. global pandemic, economic shocks, climate hazards, etc.) relative to other development priorities? Decisions made by the Center for Water Security, Sanitation and Hygiene Which countries should be prioritized for High Priority Designation and Water Directive funding (aligned with the Water for the World Act)? Which countries should be targeted by centrally managed mechanisms for support? Decisions Made by Country and Regional Mission WSSH Leads To what extent should the USAID Mission prioritize WSSH? Which WSSH sub-sector(s) should the Mission target with its investments? Which geographical area(s) should the Mission target with its investments? Decisions made by implementers What are the specific locations where WSSH infrastructure investments are needed? Which service provider(s), government agency(ies), or local institution(s) should receive technical assistance and capacity building support? The purpose of IDEAL WSSH is to support USAID stakeholders to make evidence-informed routine WSSH related decisions. To achieve this goal, IDEAL WSSH will have four primary objectives: Objective 1: Compile decision support systems that transform raw data inputs into decision-ready insights for specific USAID or implementing partner decisions. Decision support tools need to be developed or identified for each of the nine key decisions listed above. These tools should aggregate and combine relevant global data sources, facilitate analysis, and provide actionable insights in a form that addresses the needs of the target decision-maker. Objective 2: Support decision-makers in transforming insights into action. The activity will aim to engage decision-makers to understand their needs, generate and then share relevant insights from the decision support systems, and provide the support and context needed to appropriately integrate these insights into decisions. Objective 3: Provide customized data solutions to USAID OUs through buy-ins. Recognizing that some decisions may require more than standardized approaches and global datasets, the activity will provide data support to implement tailored analyses, leverage locally-generated datasets, and support in-country engagement with the global WASH data landscape. Through Mission buy-ins, the activity will provide the opportunity for OUs implementing WSSH programs to access customized data support. Objective 4: Strengthen WSSH data creation, standardization, harmonization, and analysis efforts to fill critical gaps. This activity can only be as successful as the broader WSSH data ecosystem. By improving coordination among existing data efforts, developing best practices for essential aspects of WSSH data such as equity, and investing in transformative data efforts, the activity will strengthen the ecosystem that underpins all WSSH stakeholders’ ability to use data to improve decisions. Attachment 2: RFI Questions Please include the title “RFI – IDEAL WSSH” in the subject line of your email. The respondent should provide the following details (in a Microsoft Word attachment) [4 pages max]: Level of Interest and Organizational Capabilities relative to IDEAL-WSSH: Level of Interest: Please provide the level of interest your organization has in participating in IDEAL WSSH and indicate your organization type (e.g. U.S, Non-U.S, designated US small business). Please indicate what, if any, agency IDIQ or GSA/MAS/OASIS your organization holds as either a prime holder or team member. The information collected from this RFI will be used to help make planning decisions and will not be released publicly. Organizational Capabilities: Please provide a summary of your relevant organizational capabilities relative to the draft objectives included in Attachment 1. Respondents may include organizational information such as: past experience developing web tools, supporting the use of evidence in routine decision-making, or supporting data ecosystems, along with any other information relevant to an organization’s ability to successfully achieve the objectives outlined in this RFI. Additionally, please provide any experience you have partnering with a wide range of organizations, including local organizations and smaller organizations with niche expertise and on-the-ground perspectives. In response to the following questions, please share information on how USAID can best provide the support needed to strengthen use of the best available evidence in routine decisions by USAID WSSH stakeholders while also strengthening the WSSH data landscape. In your responses, please consider the background, problem statement and draft objectives (Attachment 1). Respondents are free to answer any or all of the questions below. In your responses, please provide any relevant sources for the information, including peer-reviewed or grey literature, expert opinion, project evaluation reports, and other documents. What feedback or information do you have that could inform the design of the activity and its objectives? Please note whether there are any objectives that you recommend removing, adding, or revising. How could this activity best prioritize equity, data ethics, data sovereignty, and responsible data use? Respondents should note that the work of this activity will not include primary data collection, but rather accessing existing public data and providing broad support to initiatives that may be collecting primary data. What types of software solutions, development processes, data sources, and other approaches would most effectively transform disparate raw data inputs into actionable insights? Respondents should feel free to include examples of recommended tools or data sources within the WSSH sector or beyond. Respondents may also share perspectives on whether open-source technologies or proprietary software would be more effective at addressing the proposed objectives. What are the main challenges you face in using existing data tools available to the WSSH sector, including considerations around topics covered, data limitations, specificity, usability challenges, or other barriers to routine usage? What strategies and approaches can increase the use of data in routine decisions, especially for decision-makers that do not have data science expertise? Given your organization’s experience with remote approaches to working, to what extent could the engagement needed for these objectives be completed virtually? Aside from the common decision support systems identified in the scope, what other types of data-related support services could help USAID stakeholders to improve decisions related to WSSH services or engage with the global WSSH data landscape? In what ways could the WSSH data landscape be improved to expand the use of data in routine decisions? What types of activities should be prioritized to improve the coordination and maturity of the overall WSSH data landscape? Aside from funding, what other types of support would be most impactful in advancing the work of critical emerging data efforts in the sector - especially efforts by NGOs and academic institutions to collect, standardize, model, and aggregate globally-relevant data? [1] PwC. (2017). Evaluation Akvo PPP Phase 3 [2] WPdx. (2019). How WPDx is Transforming Water Access in Sierra Leone [3] World Vision. (2021). The Geography of Clean Water for All [4] InterAction. (2020). Water Security & Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Recommendations for the Biden-Harris Administration [5] Center for Global Development. (2020). Establishing USAID as a Leader in Evidence-Based Foreign Aid [6] Center for Strategic and International Studies. (2022). Innovative Data Collection Methods for International Development [7] SIASAR. Rural Water and Sanitation Information System [8] UN-Water. Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) Archives [9] Thomson, P. (2020). Remote monitoring of rural water systems: A pathway to improved performance and sustainability? [10] Centre for Sanitation Analytics [11] WPdx. The WPdx Data Standard [12] Toilet Board Coalition. (2020). Star Rated Public Toilets: TBC Guidelines [13] Chi, G., et al. (2022). Microestimates of wealth for all low- and middle-income countries [14] POPGRID [15] ACLED [16] Center for Strategic and International Studies. (2022) [17] World Bank. (2020). Testing, Piloting, and Validation of the Rural Water Indicator Global Framework in the African Context [18] AGUASAN. (2018). Leveraging the data revolution: Informed decision-making for better water and sanitation management [19] UN-Water. (n.d.). Data gaps