Yes - but only if it is ...

Yes - but only if it is recognized that technology is not the solution in itself. Nearly all the problems around safe water access are human ones, around education, management, wealth, power relations and political economy, societal and cultural values and norms.  Trust is the biggest issue: countries like Switzerland work so well because they are high trust societies where explicit regulation and enforcement is rarely needed; people can rely on services to work when they need them and there is a great degree of predictability.  In fragile countries, particularly in conflict or post-conflict situations, levels of interpersonal trust, and trust in services and institutions is very low and this leads to multiple problems - for example, during the Ebola crisis in West Africa, many people did not trust that the government was telling the truth, even when friends and family were dying in their hundreds and thousands.  If ICT can be part of building trust then it has a role to play - however, what is clear in the current political turmoil in the US, in the UK and in much of Europe is that social media and ICTs can destroy trust; it allows people to retreat into little online groups that mutually reinforce their beliefs and closes their ears and eyes to other opinions and value systems.