State bets on accurate and timely data to boost services

Deputy President William Ruto (left) with Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya and Enviroment Cabinet Secretary Judie Wakhungu at the Laico Regency Hotel in Nairobi during a forum on data on August 28, 2015. PHOTO | DPPS 

In Summary

• Governors back new plan in bid to improve revenue sharing.
• Ruto says dearth of reliable info makes it hard to plan and share resources.

By VINCENT ACHUKA
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With just weeks left to the signing of the new United Nations development goals, Kenya is coming up with new data collection and dissemination systems that could prove critical in the attainment of Vision 2030.

The data revolution which is being spearheaded by the Office of the Deputy President, will enable real time harnessing and open sharing of data to enable government to track development and enhance planning.

On Friday, Deputy President William Ruto opened a forum on harnessing data revolution for sustainable development in Nairobi. 

The country currently relies on the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics whose data is partly available on government-run website opendata.go.ke. However, the information contained on the website is often too old or not updated.

In the new plan, an alliance bringing together producers of data, citizens, businesses, non-governmental organisations, education and financial institutions will spearhead data collection.

“The UN Secretary General, Mr Ban Ki-moon, last year, emphasised on the need for a data revolution as a critical aspect of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). This agenda is borne of the realisation that unlike in 2000 when MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) were ushered in, the world today is witnessing incredible increase in the scale and volume of data production,” said Mr Ruto.

Kenya is the only country in Africa where this revolution is taking place, the conference heard.

“Accurate, timely, disaggregated and accessible data are essential for governments to deliver services efficiently, fairly and transparently,” the deputy president said.

He added that even though Kenya had made progress in Information and Communications Technology, especially with programmes such as the Open Government Platform launched three years ago, a lot still needed to be done.

“Basic data like births and deaths, the size of the labour force, and the number of children in school, all fundamental to governments’ ability to serve our people to the fullest are still not readily available,” he said.

County governments too will be allowed to generate their own data, including their own individual gross domestic product, a move that will dramatically change how resources are shared between national and county governments.

Currently, devolved units receive resources from the National Treasury based on a formula designed by national government that considers their physical sizes, population and poverty index. This formula has constantly created conflicts between the two levels of government.

It is such conflicts that this data revolution, which has the support of governors, hopes to prevent.

“With devolution taking root in our country, it will be important to engender this shift, if we are to successfully drive social, economic and structural transformation,” Kakamega governor Wycliffe Oparanya said.

He added: “For instance, the data revolution will be critical in ensuring that division of revenue is based on evidence, that our agricultural practices are smart and adapt to the ever-changing climatic conditions, that our healthcare meets the needs of our population and that planning is based on accurate data from sources such as civil registration and vital statistics.”