Yesterday marked a great milestone in our Open County programme as we signed an MOU with Nandi County, committing ourselves to establishing a Data Desk in the county. This would make Nandi County the second county to formally establish the facility that has a dedicated team from every department that collects, curates, analyzes and publishes…
We are very excited that the Data Leaders’ Fellowship Programme is now underway, as 10 Chief Officers in charge of Economic Planning got together in the inaugural workshop last week. We established this 8-week fellowship Programme to build the capacity of Chief Officers in charge of Planning and Economic Development Nairobi, Makueni, Isiolo, Mandera, West…
When undertaking any project, it is important to note that it will usually involve multiple stakeholders; and each one potentially has the ability to speed up, slow down or completely obstruct the project’s progress. Most importantly, stakeholders play a role in ensuring steady progress, focusing on goals and improvement of the general quality of project…
In our work in citizen-generated data, we have had experiences that have demonstrated that the results of our projects are usually high-impact and long-lasting. This inspires us to keep working with citizens empowering them to use data to drive change within their communities. When citizens understand the power of data, they turn into data champions…
It is no secret that we are passionate about citizen generated data. We believe that active citizens have a lot of power to influence governments to bring about the change they want. We started out in 2015, working with local communities to collect data from every household as a means to understanding their needs and…
We at the Open Institute are very excited as just this week we witnessed the launch of Kenya’s first sub-national data desk in Elgeyo Marakwet County (EMC), famously known as the home of Champions. The launch day was a big deal for my co-founder, Jay Bhalla and myself in particular. A data desk is essentially…
Since 2013, we have been working together with counties and the World Bank in Kenya to develop systems to be transparent and engage citizens. The Open County Initiative provides a framework through which county-level engagement between county government, private sector and civil society is initiated and sustained. The programme also promotes an environment where citizens…
The Devolution Tweetchat 7 June 2016, 1pm – 3pm #WBGOpenDay #Devolution The World Bank Kenya Office has organised an Open Day on 7th June 2016 to bring the various organisations it partners with to showcase their various activities. The partners include the Kenya ICT Authority, Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and various other government agencies.…
Yesterday at the World Bank in Washington DC, I had the pleasure to spend lunch hour reflecting with colleagues there about the progress that Kenya is making with bringing government closer to citizens – especially using devolution. In my reflections, I also discussed not just the practical gaps that exist in making devolution work, but…
