Scorecard diagnostic tool for the enabling regulatory environment of faecal sludge management

Expeditious situational analysis of the enabling regulatory environment (ERE) of faecal sludge management (FSM) is vital for strengthening sanitation systems. However, existing diagnostic tools employ broad indicators, neglecting the detailed assessment of the policy, legal and institutional frameworks for each step along the FSM chain. This paper presents a web-based integrated diagnostic tool for evaluating the quality and adequacy of policy in guiding equity, targeting of resources, quality of service, financial considerations and institutional roles and responsibilities. The tool evaluates the legal framework based on laws, standards and regulations emphasizing on means of enforcement. It evaluates the institutional framework based on investors, service providers, regulators and consumers as guided by the literature. Each indicator is assigned a score of 1: green (effective), 0.5: yellow (limited) and 0: red (poor) for the user interface, containment, emptying, transport, treatment, disposal and reuse of faecal sludge. Built on Laravel Framework Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), the tool links the scores into a single index averaged into terciles as 0–0.33 (poor), 0.34–0.66 (limited) and 0.67–1 (effective). This helps to identify areas of priority in a given context. The tool successfully facilitated a participatory pilot study in Kenya based on individual stakeholders' opinion. However, the tool does not provide the specific details leading to a given score. Therefore, its application should precede a detailed evaluation of each indicator in order to generate specific details per indicator per step of FSM.