Billions of the world’s poor still lack access to basic water and sanitation services, but mobile devices are common even in areas without these services. Mobile phone technology facilitates information access, spurring the demand for transparency and increased access to information. Technology also makes communication between stakeholders more immediate, enabling communities to coalesce around issues of concern.

Water and sanitation practitioners have begun to tap the potential of mobile phones as tools to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services. In this report, the Pacific Institute, in partnership with Nexleaf Analytics, assesses how these mobile WASH (“mWASH”) solutions can amass and disseminate information quickly and thoroughly, directly to or from underserved populations most in need of service from water providers.