Data and Information

Principle 7: High quality hydrogeological and borehole construction data for each well is collected in a standard format and submitted to the relevant Government authority.

Sub-principles

The data to be gathered during borehole drilling is specified in the drilling contract and responsibilities for data collection between the contractor and the supervisor are clear.
Information, in the form of a national borehole completion report should be submitted to the appropriate government authority after drilling (even in the case of dry boreholes).
Renewal of drilling licences should be linked to the submission of borehole completion reports.
Each borehole drilled in the country should have its own unique identification number.
Government and other water sector stakeholders should collate data on borehole drilling programmes annually, and make the reports available to the public.

Discussion

Formats for borehole completion records need to include information on the location, drilling operation, casing and well completion, lithology, well development and pumping test and water quality. Annex E provides a recommended format for borehole completion records. It is essential that this information is submitted to the appropriate centralised Government authority within 30 days of well completion, and that each project or programme does not merely hold on to its own data, but shares it with other implementing agencies.

The importance of regulation and licensing of drilling contractors is noted under Principle 1. As a condition of annual drillers licence renewal, it is recommended that it is made obligatory for drillers to submit to the appropriate authority a bound compilation of their completion reports for their annual workload from the preceding year.

Each unique borehole identification number should be stamped onto a metal plate on the hand-pump base and also engraved into the pump platform or well head apron. In order to avoid the unplanned and unmonitored drilling of boreholes, permits to drill should be issued by the appropriate authority.

There should be transparent sharing of key information on drilling programmes by Governments, NGOs and other stakeholders. Reports should be placed in the public domain and thus be readily available to parliament, monitoring units within Government, civil society and other agencies. Key areas to be reported include:

programme outputs (with associated costs) in terms of skills, knowledge and organisational capacity raised as well as the numbers of people trained;
boreholes drilled (i.e. numbers, well depths, and locations with borehole numbers and GPS references);
supervision summary reports;
prices of each well installation, with details on what is included and excluded, (e.g. profit and overheads, siting, mobilisation, drilling, supervision, pumps, power supply, storage and distribution systems, training of the community). Include an explanation of how costs are derived (e.g. cost of package of 10 wells in a particular contract package divided by 10). Information needs to be structured in a way that enables comparisons between regions and /or districts to be carried out;
details of private sector involvement including names of companies, contract summary and amount, date paid for construction and defects liability payment;
findings of monitoring and evaluation missions.