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Ennova: Policy and implementation innovation challenge

InfoNET Borderless Synergies




Project type Scaling 



Country Kenya 



Support £119,046



In partnership with The Kenya School of Government (KSG)
“Access to Information is the foundation to meaningful public engagement in local governance” — Kenyan Constitution, Article 35

22

billion Kenya shillings were allocated to the Local Authority Transfer Funds (LATF) in 2013/2014

4

of Kenya's 47 counties have enacted legislation on public access to information

Start date
May 2016
End date
May 2017
Period: 12 months

Issue

Following the March 2013 general elections, Kenya adopted a devolution mechanism where significant portion of public finances and responsibility for service delivery in health, agriculture, urban service and local infrastructure have been decentralized to the 47 new county governments. This ambitious devolution shifts some key decision-making from central to county governments, creating a window of opportunity for more ‘bottom-up’ engagement, backed by a Constitution and legal framework that include provisions for government to share information, consult the public and regularly gather citizen feedback.

As Kenya's experience of devolution deepens, the focus is on the role of public participation in promoting accountability and enhancing local service delivery. Whilst there is a strong impetus towards conducting public engagement, there is a gap in the implementation of policy and service delivery, at national and county level, in a number of sectors.

Project

This project, via a series of targeted innovation challenges used before (ideation, hackatons, etc), aims to provide impact and find long-term solutions to the lack of connectivity between national and county government and civil society. The main objectives are to explore innovative ways of communicating, sharing and sourcing data relevant to challenges; and to promote better relationships between policy and data communities at the national and local level.

The project also plans to measure government performance at all levels through relationship management, policy intervention and partner-led conversations with national government representatives.

Partner

InfoNET is a for-profit company founded for the purpose of developing technology-based strategies and solutions to enable citizens to address their everyday challenges. This will be achieved by collaboration between government, private sector, civil society and citizens to improve service delivery, through the strategic use of technology. At the time of their application for funding to Making All Voices Count, InfoNET had a pending application for non-profit status.