Open Data for Development (KE0034)

Brief Description of the Commitment

To make available, in machine-readable format and with appropriate licensing, all data on financial resource management, implementation, planning and monitoring of government programs, projects and processes to strengthen accountability and improve evidence-informed decision-making to ensure that we leave none behind.

Problem Definition

Data needed for strengthening accountability, improving transparency, planning and measuring progress of implementation of programs, projects and processes in government is not easily available or usable. This creates an environment for perpetuation of corrupt practices, insufficient evidence to support decision making and inefficient use of human, financial and other resources in the public sector. Ultimately, citizens and the general public are affected due to the failure to implement key infrastructure projects effectively and in many instances failures in service delivery. This commitment therefore aims to address the lack of data for development which makes it difficult to strengthen accountability and ensure that policies/programmes being implemented do not result in some within the society being left behind.

Causes of the problem

Three fundamental challenges persist in the effort to make data available for transparency, accountability, public engagement, and decision-making: a poor enabling environment, limited capacity for data development, and inadequate access to the necessary infrastructure.

Low Capacity: The insufficient availability of critical data for promoting transparency, accountability, public participation, and evidence-based decision-making poses a substantial threat to the successful delivery of services and the implementation of projects and programs. In the 2022 edition of the Global Data Barometer, Kenya's performance in the Capability theme was notably subpar. This theme evaluates the extent to which effective data creation, management, and utilization capacity is in place. These capacities are essential for stakeholders to generate fresh insights based on evidence and rely on factors such as accessibility, skills, infrastructure, institutional support, and intermediaries. Kenya received a score of 30, which fell below the global average of 49. Furthermore, Kenya received a zero rating for subnational capabilities, open data initiatives, and support for data reuse. The country also garnered a very low rating regarding civil service training for data—a critical aspect in ensuring that institutions and their information officers can effectively respond to information access requests and manage data and data portals.

Poor Enabling Environment: Despite efforts that trace back to the inception of the Kenya Open Data Initiative, challenges persist in accessing data related to enacted budgets and their execution. In the 2021 edition of the Open Budget Survey, Kenya's transparency score remained stagnant in the range of 48% to 50% over the past five years. One of the primary recommendations is for the government to enhance the comprehensiveness of the Enacted Budget. The situation could be significantly improved by publishing budget data as a distinct dataset. Regrettably, there is no legal mandate requiring the government to take this step, leading to the unavailability of these datasets unless non-governmental entities extract them from PDF documents and publish them on third-party websites. This approach risks introducing typographical errors during the transcription process and results in a lack of government ownership over these datasets. Consequently, confidence in the accuracy of the datasets is low, and their utility is limited..

Lack of Infrastructure: Possessing data on socio-economic indicators and budget execution, while valuable, does not, on its own, guarantee an inclusive society. In addition to the appropriate disaggregation and statutory requirements, spatial data and information enable planners and other stakeholders to understand the geographical allocation of resources and services concerning the population distribution. The essential remote sensing data and satellite imagery required for this form of planning have remained costly to obtain, store, manage, and use. As a result, this data largely remains beyond the reach of government officers and stakeholders due to a lack of accessible and affordable infrastructure, as well as insufficient skills and financial resources. While the government, through the Kenya Space Agency, has deployed a satellite to make some remote sensing data and imagery accessible, it is vital to ensure that this data is within reach. Nevertheless, without affordable and accessible infrastructure in place, these resources would remain inaccessible for government ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) as well as county governments.

Commitment Description

In 2011, Kenya launched the Kenya Open Data Initiative (KODI) as the 2nd such effort by an African country. A key objective was to make data held by the government accessible to the general public under an open license to catalyze innovation and support transparency and accountability. The KODI portal (Opendata.go.ke) however has been offline for the last few years despite efforts to revive the initiative due to lack of a legal framework, lack of clarity on the institution where such an initiative should be domiciled and consequently lack of domestic resources. The passing of the Public Finance Management Act 2012 brought with it a requirement for the government to publish all the documents related to the budget process such as the budget and the budget execution reports. While these are available on the websites of the National Treasury and the Office of the Controller of Budget, they are difficult to extract data from thereby impeding the objective to improve transparency and accountability. Where county data and statistics are concerned, there have been two efforts to enact a County Statistics Act. However, the bill has failed to pass through the Senate leaving county governments with no overarching legal framework for county statistics. In 2022, an effort to address the civil service training gap on data was implemented by the Commissioner for Access to Information and the Kenya School of Government through the development and adoption of a curriculum on Access to Information. This curriculum includes a module on open data, but it does not address issues of standards, interoperability or guidance on infrastructure. A revision to the curriculum is therefore necessary

Proposed Solutions

a. Statutory interventions - Amendment to the public finance management legislation to mandate publication of budget and expenditures data in machinereadable format with a prescribed level of disaggregation and a standard/ harmonized reporting format to enable data interoperability esp. at the subnational level. Enactment of a County Statistics Act to provide a legal framework for county governments to implement statistics units for collection of data and production of statistics to inform policy, programmes and projects. b. Adoption of standards and norms for data production, data portals and data dissemination, particularly to strengthen geospatial and gender data, through development of a guidebook for public sector institutions, including county governments to ensure data is interoperable, appropriately disaggregated (especially by gender, age and administrative units where appropriate) c. Capacity development through institutionalized training for government officers carried out in the context of the Access to Information Act 2016 to ensure officers have the requisite skills and understanding to prepare, license and publish interoperable data disaggregated appropriately. d. Establishment of a Data Governance Council that will champion the development and implementation of a plan to make targeted improvements to human capital, infrastructure and financing for data informed by an assessment e. Implementation of standards compliant and interoperable portals to improve access to remote sensing & satellite data, budget data and administrative data to support accountability and evidence informed decision making.

Desired Results

a. Enhanced capacity of Government officers to process and publish open data for use by other MDAs and the general public thereby increasing access and improving quality of data for decision making.
b. An increase in the amount of data available as open data on resource allocation, utilization, results and planning, including data that enables implementation and monitoring of programmes and processes to ensure they are responsive to the challenges facing women and girls.
c. Enactment of legislation to strengthen the enabling environment for data and statistics as well as the adoption of guidance to improve disaggregation (particularly gender, geography and age) and interoperability of data and data infrastructure.
d. Increased access to affordable and accessible infrastructure within government for collecting, storing, processing and publishing of data on resource allocation and resource use as well as GIS data for spatial planning.
e. Improved transparency and accountability in governance, resource management and public service delivery due to improved availability of data.
f. The emergence of strengthened inclusive and informed participation by the general public in decision making on socio-economic programmes/projects driven by better access to evidence.

Commitment Analysis

1. How will the commitment promote transparency? The requirement for the provision of Open Data in machine readable formats and with an appropriate prescribed minimum level of disaggregation will promote transparency and improve access to data and information on budgets, expenditures and GIS information.

2. How will commitment help foster accountability? That citizens will have increased access to data for interrogation and evidence to track progress on programs, projects and processes. The public will be able to have access to the information on progress and have a basis for reference and questioning of the utilization of public funds.

3. How will commitment improve citizen participation in defining, implementing, and monitoring solutions? When citizens can readily access data and information as needed, it will promote well-informed public engagement and empower individuals, fostering a greater sense of agency. This is especially vital for enabling evidence-based contributions throughout the policy development process and assisting them in comprehending the status of budget execution, program implementation, and project progress.

Commitment Planning (Milestones | Expected Outputs | Expected Completion Date)

1. Amendment of regulations on public finance management that mandate the publishing of budget data, including geocoded information and satellite imagery on capital expenditures, in machine readable formats with an appropriate open license. | Revised regulations | April 2027

2.Implementation of a standards compliant data portal for the continuous publishing of budget and budget execution data, including geocoded information and satellite imagery on capital expenditures, to strengthen accountability, transparency and participation in resource allocation and use. | Budget Data portal | July 2025

3. Publish a guidebook on the publishing of open data by the public sector to support standardization of data in regard to gender, age, location and disability including use of appropriate data formats and interoperability of data infrastructure. | Published Open Data Guidebook for Government | 2025

4. Establishment of a Data Governance Council and the development and implementation a data capacity improvement roadmap informed by a comprehensive data capacity assessment to ensure the government has the capacity to collect, use and share data according to the established guidelines. | 1.Data Governance Council constituted Data Capacity Assessment Report Data Capacity Improvement Roadmap | December 2025

5. Enactment of the County Statistics Act to provide a legal framework to ensure data for evidenceinformed county planning, measurement of progress towards leaving no one behind and ring fencing of public sector funds for development and improvement of data and statistics is possible. | County Statistics Act | July 2027

6. Publishing of government satellite data for use in planning, monitoring and innovation as open data to support climate change initiatives, planning, innovation and service delivery. | Online Portal | May 2025

7. Revision of the Access to Information course at the Kenya School of Government to include an expanded chapter on standardization, licensing, publication and use of open data particularly for those officers designated as Information Officers under the Access to Information Act 2016 | Revised Access to Information Course at the Kenya School of Government | December 2024

8. Operationalization of shared GIS lab infrastructure at a government data center as a proof of concept for MDAs and subnational governments using remote sensing data in conjunction with budget data for planning, monitoring and transparency. | Sandbox environment at the Konza Data Center | 2026

Action Plan Review

Commitment 3. Improving Availability of Data for Development

Commitment 3: Improving Availability of Data for Development
[Kenya Space Agency, Local Development Research Institute.]

For a complete description, see Commitment 3 in Kenya’s 2023–2027 Action Plan.

Context and objectives

Kenya has pursued open data across previous action plans, including the launch of a national open data portal in 2011. ^[55] Reformers have sought to increase access to timely, up-to-to date, and accurate data to reduce inequality and improve evidence-based decision making for enhanced service delivery. ^[56] However, legal, technical, and capacity challenges led to inconsistent publication and unavailability of the portal in recent years.

This commitment seeks to strengthen the publication of government expenditure and geospatial data. This commitment focuses on strengthening the legal, technical, and human infrastructure needed for systematic budget data disclosure. It aims to enable the publication of disaggregated, accessible, and interoperable data at the national and county levels. Ultimately, this reform seeks to facilitate evidence-informed debate and decision-making as well as public accountability of government spending.

Political and social upheaval around the Public Finance Bill in 2024 underscored public desire for greater accountability of government spending as well as a lack of data to support evidence-informed discussion. [57] Implementation presents an opportunity for the government to build public trust through greater transparency of budget and expenditure data. Consolidating formal mechanisms can also channel public concerns into productive collaboration that strengthens public finance accountability and facilitate informed public debate. [58]

Potential for results: Modest

Kenya has sought to advance open data over more than a decade. This commitment seeks to establish the necessary legal and technical framework to make government data available to the public through reform aimed at tackling low data management capacity as well as a lack of legal framework and technical infrastructure. It includes ambitious elements such as amending law to require publication of budget data, although the anticipated political and financial challenges during implementation contribute to this commitment having a modest potential for results.

This commitment aims to strengthen the open data legal framework at the national and county levels. It proposes amending public finance management legislation (Milestone 1) to mandate the publication of budget and expenditures data. The amendments will call for publication in machine-readable formats with a prescribed level of disaggregation and a harmonised reporting format to enable data interoperability, especially at the subnational level. Kenya’s 2012 Public Financial Management Act requires the publication of budget documents, [59] but there is no legal mandate to publish budget data. Currently, budget data is extracted from a portable document format (PDF) [60] published informally by non-government organisations. Establishing a legal requirement would aid the regular publication of accurate and detailed budget data with geocoded information and satellite imagery on capital expenditures. A civil society representative noted that amending the Public Financial Management Act would likely be difficult, but advancing budget transparency is a key opportunity for the government to respond to public concerns. [61]

In Kenya, county planning and development, including statistical powers and functions, are conferred to the county government. ^[62] Milestone 5 of the commitment proposes enactment of a County Statistics Act to provide a legal framework for county governments to mandate statistics units to produce statistics to inform policy, programmes, and projects. The act is aimed at ensuring standards in the collection, analysis, and dissemination of statistical data that address the issue of quality, credibility, and uniformity of official statistics generated at the county level. Despite previous unsuccessful efforts, government and civil society implementers agreed that the context was now more favourable for its passage. At the time of writing, a draft County Statistics Act was ready and expected to be passed by the Senate, [63] having been brought to the parliament and made partially available for public comment. [64] The Council of Governors is engaged in the process, but there remains opportunity to engage county governments.

This reform seeks to inform civil servants on their data publication obligations following amendment to the Public Financial Management Act. In 2022, Kenya’s School of Government introduced an access to information (ATI) curriculum for civil servants that includes an open data module which will be expanded to include information on open data standards, interoperability, and guidance on infrastructure (Milestone 7) to strengthen Information Officers’ data management capacity. The curriculum has enabled information officers to fulfil their duties to respond to ATI requests. [65] This milestone therefore extends a programme with proven effectiveness to also support data publication. The government has also committed to developing a guidebook for publishing open government data (Milestone 3) to support standardisation in the disaggregation, format, and interoperability. It aims to help civil servants balance their legal obligations regarding ATI and data privacy. [66]

Relevant government agencies also committed to establishing a Data Governance Council (Milestone 4), which will conduct a data capacity assessment report and develop an improvement roadmap. The roadmap will identify steps to improving civil servant capacity, infrastructure, and financing to support open data objectives. However, a lack of budget allocation and the council’s statutory underpinning could inhibit its establishment amid competing government priorities.

Under Milestone 2, the National Treasury has committed to creating a budget data portal intended to enable continuous publication of budget data and geocoded information of capital expenditure. Publication of government expenditure, including at the county level, as well as open contracting data would support a strong accountability system for public financial management. [67] However, the absence of government funding for the portal could inhibit its establishment and maintenance. As demonstrated by other similar initiatives, ongoing financial and technical support are necessary for continuous functioning. [68] The Director of Space Systems and Infrastructure at the Kenya Space Agency notes that there was an intention to have a feedback mechanism embedded into the portal, but this has not been included expressly in the commitment. He noted the importance of having such feature integrated within the platform. ^[69]

Kenya has made some progress in publishing geospatial data under previous action plans. Under Milestone 6, the Kenya Space Agency commits to continuing efforts to publish satellite data for use in the planning, monitoring, and innovation of climate change initiatives and service delivery. In July 2020, the Monitoring for Information and Decisions using Space Technology (MIDST) project was launched to support public-private sharing of geospatial data. The government developed draft geospatial guidelines and standards and a geospatial data platform. ^[70] The Kenya Space Agency also aims to work with partners to create a geographic information system (GIS) lab infrastructure within a government data centre (Milestone 8) which will offer a proof of concept for MDAs and county governments on how to pair remote sensing and budget data for planning and monitoring the transparency of government projects. Under past action plans, approximately 20 out of 47 county governments have established functional GIS laboratories within an enabling legal environment, which will eventually facilitate the utilisation of GIS information to streamline operations. While some counties implemented county spatial plans, ^[71] a lack of supporting legislation and budget constraints previously limited implementation.

Opportunities, challenges, and recommendations during implementation

High-level government turnover and reduced government budget could detract the executive and legislative attention as well as resources from this reform. [72] Implementation is an opportunity to address public demands for greater transparency and accountability of government budget and expenditure highlighted in the 2024 protests. If prioritised, this reform could foster data-driven debate and public trust in government. High-level political commitment, adequate funding, and technical support will be key to successful implementation. Implementers hope to get financial and technical support from partners such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). [73]