Why Frontline Workers Don't Comply: Insights from a Water Utility App and the Valvemen in India Who Stopped Collecting Data

Abstract:

Bangalore, as in many cities of low- and middle-income regions, supplies piped water intermittently—only a few times a week for a couple hours per day. Valvemen are charged with turning water on and off in assigned neighborhoods. Many households cannot predict when their water supply will arrive, and valvemen are often the only ones who know when water will reach them and why supply may be delayed or cancelled. We examined the extent to which valvemen collected these data for a social enterprise, NextDrop, which sent notifications about expected water arrival times to households. The valvemen acted as “human sensors” for NextDrop’s system. The more “compliant” valvemen sent in data more regularly. Why did compliance vary across valvemen, and why did workers exhibit modest rates of compliance overall? Based on a rich ethnographic study and an original data set, we find that variation in workers’ family responsibilities and financial circumstances largely explain variation in compliance. Furthermore, workers often prioritize long-standing responsibilities over new tasks seen as add-ons, leading to modest rates of compliance overall. Our study also shows how valvemen share their water knowledge. As the engineers of NextDrop attempted to collect water supply data from the valvemen, these “human sensors” resisted. Valvemen often felt irreplaceable, since their tacit knowledge of the local water system surpassed that of their supervisors. Instead of complying to NextDrop, they chose to convey their knowledge and “comply” to a different social group—the public.