# **3.2 Comparing service quality across sectors**

As we have discussed, effective access provides useful insights into the level of functional service coverage, and whether investments are yielding effective outcomes. Yet, even this more rigorous standard fails to provide much information on service quality.<sup>6</sup> While a private piped connection may serve as a household’s primary source, its value to users can be diminished if water supply is intermittent and/or not potable. Information on the quality of service is important for refining investment priorities.

The baseline survey included questions on service quality for most sectors. We used these responses to develop a ‘quality-adjusted’ access variable that records what we deem is the minimum ‘desirable’ level of service in each sector. Notably this includes a 24-hour service requirement for the water and electricity sectors. Though this is a reasonable expectation in most contexts, it may be unrealistic where resources are highly constrained. Because quality is a subjective measure and requires trade-offs with affordability, the desirable threshold for each indicator in any particular setting will need to be determined in consultation with local groups, neighborhoods and context. Table 3.1 above records the threshold indicators we developed across five services - electricity, water, toilets, sewage disposal, and access roads. For the purposes of this analysis, we have defined indicators for quality-adjusted access as follows: _Quality-adjusted access indicators:_

- Electricity: %HH with in-house electricity who also use it as a primary source of lighting, and 24hour supply and rare outages

- Water: %HH with in-dwelling or in-compound (shared or private) piped water who use it as their primary source and have 24/7 supply

- Toilet: %HH with non-public toilet facility (shared or not), but shared with fewer than 10 people

- Sewage Disposal: %HH with connection to public sewer or septic/soak pit that is emptied by truck (non-manual)

- Access Roads: %HH with ‘surfaced’ access roads, and road is in good condition during the most recent dry season and usable last rainy season (i.e. proxy for all-weather access).

A graphic presentation of these data is provided in Figure 3.2 – showing the relative proportion of households with access to quality-adjusted service standards across sectors, and how this compares with nominal and effective service levels within sectors.

For the most part, the new quality-adjusted variable follows similar patterns across sectors to measures of both nominal and effective access. In relative terms, the electricity sector performs the best with almost half (46%) of the households achieving this standard (i.e. in-house electricity that is used as a primary source of lighting, offers 24-hour supply and outages are rare). Access roads performs the worst, with under a quarter (24%) of households reporting quality-adjusted levels of service.<sup>7</sup> There are however some noticeable deviations in the relative rates of access across these three variables. For example, in the electricity sector both nominal and effective access is relatively high at 76% and 75% respectively, but quality-adjusted access is only 46%. While there is very little difference between nominal and effective access rates for electricity, there is a noticeable decline in coverage when we consider only quality-adjusted levels of electricity service. This hints at problems with electricity supply –

> 6 As discussed in section 3.1, access indicators include an implicit measure of quality that is captured by its usage and functional dimensions to determine an ‘acceptable’ level of service.   However, many dimensions of service quality are omitted from this variable.  We argue that a separate variable is warranted that defines a ‘desirable’ level of service.

> 7 Defined as a ‘surfaced’ access road that is in good condition during the most recent dry season and usable during the last rainy season.

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