Open Data – How Kenya Did It
www.opendata.go.ke
@KenyaOpenData
By
Linet kwamboka
Former Project Coordinator:
Kenya Open Data Initiative
Kenya Open Government Partnership
Blogger at datascience.co.ke
@g33kmate
Linet kwamboka Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 Open Data – How Kenya Did It
Introduction
Open Data has become a very popular phenomenon around the world. With
an army of supporters behind it, the idea has also faced its rounds of
questions and resistance within industry with culture, legislation,
bureaucracy, and other human forces also getting in the way of what
is/should be happening.
Open Data is a more complicated science that is moving towards
understanding how data can be shared on technology platforms to people
who can easily make sense of it so as to influence their processes of
decision-making, resource allocation and accountability
Out of data, data analysis; business intelligence; governance; accountability
etc. can effectively take place. Making this data open, though, gives an
opportunity to many more players within and without the distributing
institutions to benefit from the availability of that data hence the push for
the global effort, Open Data.
The former president of Kenya H.E President Mwai Kibaki launched the
Kenya Open Data Initiative famously known as KODI on the 8th of June 2011.
An initiative that had been attempted once before by the government in
2009 needed and took more of the dedication of a team that came from a
mix of different backgrounds ranging from government, civil society, private
sector, development partners and academia.
Background
Kenya has been an independent and sovereign country since 1963. Up until
the signing in of the new constitution in 2010 that saw Kenya move into a
more devolved system with county governments, Kenya has for a very long
time been guided by a single government institution with the president
being the most powerful symbol of national unity.
The government exists in many government ministries each responsible for
different aspects within government and providing services within the
country.
For a very long time, the government agencies have been charged with the
responsibility of collecting information and doing research all around the
country that is focused on their main agenda within the ministries and this
information lies entirely within those institutions.
There have been two main problems inherent within various ministries:
• Lack of digital systems
Data collection and storage within government has been conducted
through paper-based processes. With the boom in the digital age
within the Kenyan industry, the government has not been very
actively accommodative of the digital age. There are many records
through the years that need digitization but challenges like lack of
1 Linet kwamboka Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 funding, manpower and dedication have become the stumbling
blocks. This, in return has made it very difficult to retrieve and share
historical data in more user-friendly ways for distribution or use.
This challenge also affects the effective enjoyment that comes with
the benefits of using data for better decision-making and resource
allocation.
•
Bureaucracy
Accessing information within government has been faced with a
massive challenge of the bureaucracy of decision making trees that
dictate that decisions are to be made by the most hard to reach
officials. This has effectively ensured the existence of delayed
decision-making and elevation to the power of dissemination of data
to individuals who otherwise should have no business in standing in
the way of data distribution.
Information is power and those that have the knowledge that they
are the gate passes to this information have effectively used this
power to effect the data hugging syndrome that allows only a chosen
few access to information that should rightfully belong to the
majority.
•
Working in Silos
One of the biggest problems within the Kenyan Government and many
other governments throughout the world is the fact that most
ministries work in silos. No information sharing, collaboration or
teamwork of any kind exists. In fact, most work in competition with
each other.
Ministers have been quoted saying that they do not have access to
information within other government ministries/departments, even
when this information should be housed within their ministries.
What the lack of partnership within government has done is to make
it difficult for the top decision makers to have a bigger picture of
how projects should be done to save costs and reduce waste.
If the ministry of agriculture communicated better with the ministry
of environment, they would know what the weather conditions are
like and what kinds of seeds and fertilizers to buy and what kind of
advice to give to farmers.
If the ministry of roads communicated better with the ministry of
energy, we wouldn’t see all the property loss, power blackouts,
internet cuts etc. that happen during road expansions to name but a
few simplistic examples.
Partnerships
The Kenya Open Data Initiative has been a partnership of three major
players:
-The Government of Kenya
-The Private Sector
-The Civil Societies
2 Linet kwamboka Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 Government
The Government of Kenya through the Ministry of Information and
communication working closely through the Kenya ICT board which has been
the driver of the project since its inception worked to bring together
partners who could bring a vast range of knowledge from various sectors to
ensure that KODI covers and takes into consideration all the sectors that
could benefit from the availability of government information.
The Kenya ICT Board put together a group of task force members who were
charged with the responsibility of making the main decisions for open data
and popularizing KODI among the major stakeholders.
Within the government there exists the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics
(KNBS), which is a main organization responsible for collecting statistics in
the country for and from various ministries and making them available.
Traditionally, KNBS has been collection information and selling it to cover
its financial obligation from the government through the statistical abstract
with is a coarse grained provision of the statistics in the most high level
form with very little detail of the data in the effort to make the abstract
less bulky.
The statistical abstract is the source of al major statistics by the
government on all the numeric and tabular statistics the social, political,
and economic indicators of the country. The most unbelievable thing,
however, is the fact that this report is only available in its paperback
version and no digital version exists or is distributed out of the bureau.
3 Linet kwamboka Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 Unlike counterparts in the Rwandese government (National Institute of
Statistics of Rwanda (NISR)) who are now using Africa’s technology
stronghold system of SMS to collect and disseminate national statistics KNBS
still has a bit of way to go in this fronts.
The World Bank Kenya office as a key development partner to the
government was and still is very instrumental in making KODI happen. With
a team of economists and data curators, the Government of Kenya received
an enormous amount of help not just financially but through a dedicated
source of manpower and knowledge sharing. Through the bank, KODI got
international acclamation and recognition and also through the support of
various activities around KODI through external partners in the application
development space.
Out of the government, the World Bank has invested in Ideas that have seen
the growing use of KODI within the Kenyan technology ecosystem and a push
as well to have more digital systems that enable easy and free access of the
information, visuals and analytics that come out of the initiative.
Many other government departments have been cooperative in terms of
providing data and guidance on how the KODI team would be able to
effectively be a point of dissemination for the various statistics that are
available.
The government and its development partners play a key role in ensuring
constant supply of data in formats that are easily accessible to the common
people who want to use this data directly or indirectly to benefit their way
of life.
Private Sector
Google played a very key role during the inception of the idea of a possible
government portal that hosted data. Providing a team of managers and
visualization tools that helped in the representation of the available data in
more human readable formats. A range of training activities was also
conducted to bring people up to speed on the use and manipulation of the
available data for economic and social gain and here Google played a lead
role of organizing activities that enhanced knowledge sharing, acceptance
and great positive uptake of the initiative.
Over the months, private sector organizations like Microsoft have also come
in to sponsor the training and development of tools around the KODI
initiative. Through the Innovate for Good price challenge, Microsoft Kenya is
geared to start a challenge for application developers to get involved and
engaged in the open data initiative through a training program, mentorship
and application development.
The media has been a key catalyst of the propagation to popularity of the
initiative. With both positive and negative stories running in the various
media channels, Kenyans have been informed of the progress of the
initiative just as they have on the stumbling blocks of the same. No publicity
4 Linet kwamboka Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 is bad publicity and the media has been a very important partner as they
have the greatest reach to citizens of all walks of life in the country.
The ripple effect of the involvement of the private sector in KODI has not
only been its great uptake within the Kenyan business and technology
industry but the bigger picture of what is easily becoming the most talked
about topic around the world today. Big Data. Through the availability of
this subset of what could be a bigger picture of the data available, people in
industry have a chance to start experiencing the benefits of data-based
decision making, projection and predictive modeling.
Many other private sector organizations have been involved and benefitted
directly or indirectly from the initiative.
Private sector plays a key role in open data when it comes to giving a
commercialization angle of how to make monetary gains through the use of
freely available data. This data can be used for effective business modeling,
marketing, understanding demographics of potential business opportunities
and predictive modeling.
Civil Society
During the launch of the KODI portal in 2011, President Mwai Kibaki, in his
speech said, “Data is the foundation of improving accountability and
governance.”
There is need for someone within the initiative who has full contact with
the interests of the common citizen and a full understanding of how
information flow should work within the society and what its potential gain
could be. This person is called the Civil Society.
Through civil society, KODI stopped becoming a technology platform that
disseminates information to citizen to a government platform that allows
citizens to hold the government into account of its past activities and
engagements through the data provided.
Working with groups like AFRICOG, Development Initiatives, Twaweza, ICJ,
SODNET, Article19; KODI is able to realize its full potential of a drive
towards a more open government that upholds the key messages of reducing
challenges of open governance that include:
• Improving public service
• Increasing public integrity
• More effectively managing public resources
Through work with the civil society, Kenya successfully signed up as a
member of the Open Government movement that saw the drafting of
challenges and commitments that the government could make towards
becoming more transparent, accountable and involving to its citizens I the
processes of decision making and resource allocation.
5 Linet kwamboka Private Sector Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 Civil Society Citizens Government “When information which properly belongs to the public is systematically
withheld by those in power, the people soon become ignorant of their own
affairs, distrustful of those who manage them, and eventually-incapable of
determining their destinies." President Richard Nixon 1972
Legislation
In the Kenyan constitution, Article 35 has a section on Access to
information that states:
35.
(1) Every citizen has the right of access to —
(a) information held by the State; and
(b) information held by another person and required for the
exercise or protection of any right or fundamental freedom.
(2) Every person has the right to the correction or deletion of
untrue or misleading information that affects the person.
(3) The State shall publish and publicize any important
information affecting the nation.
6 Linet kwamboka Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 While this section of the constitution is very key to ensuring that every
Kenyan citizen should enjoy and exercise the right to information; most
Kenyan citizens do not have a clue about the availability of this section of
the constitution in what is their fundamental rights.
There have been arguments that the Kenyan citizen has no business being
involved in matters of information and data as the great misconception is
that access to information can only rely on access to technology and
internet. Access to information is available in many other forms that include
channels like the media and civil society.
It is very essential for every Kenyan citizen to have access to information
especially from the government, as this is a great source of information that
helps in effective decision-making especially in agriculture, health,
education, and business.
The main challenge with the push towards access to information has been
the lack of a Freedom of Information law that would enhance the existing
smaller section of the constitution that makes a mention of the same.
Government legislators have been working on developing these laws but to
date, they only exist in draft format.
Many other African Countries have these bills affecting the freedom of
information in place but not many of these have made a move towards the
existence of open data projects that allow free and easy access to
government information.
This goes to prove what might be the notion that for an effective open data
movement, what you need might not be necessary or only great laws that
make mention of these rights but in fact an engaged and organized
community of dedicated individuals who would go over and beyond to
ensure that the common citizen has access to information that will help
them make more informed decisions regarding their lives for a better
generation.
All this notwithstanding, all the responsible bodies within government
involved in legislation of these laws need to move with haste to ensure that
the laws affecting the freedom of individuals in regards to accessing
information are put well in place and prevent the consequences of the lack
of it.
Finances
Unlike most government projects, Open Data is one of the least cost
demanding projects I have come across.
Open Data is about developing a portal that holds information, gathering
information that is to be stored on this portal, developing a community
around this information and managing activities around the working and
output of the available data.
The portal
The KODI platform lies on a portal provided by Socrata, which is a USA,
based technology company that provides open data and big data solutions
7 Linet kwamboka Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 for companies and governments around the world. This portal is available on
a commercial contract basis entered by the Government of Kenya and the
technology company.
There have been many questions raised as to why an open source solution or
a Kenyan based solution was not used.
Open Source – There are a few open source products that exist for open
data out there and as most open source projects, they require someone to
understand the platform and to customize them to fit the needs of what was
then KODI. This is not to say that no one could, but there had not been a
proven record of these platforms handling data of this magnitude and given
that this is a government project, trial and error is not a clear option of
what should happen.
Kenyan Solution – What a lot of people might not know is that this project
was very much done in less than 5 months, from the time it was Okayed to
go ahead to possibly launch in June 2011.
For any great software engineer out there, given the magnitude of the
project, 5 months might not have been enough time to do all the necessary
steps that are involved in effective software development taking into
consideration the software development methods that also involve taking
into account security, effective software testing, requirement elicitation,
installation, training, government procurement; and all other process that
would have made a successful portal.
The community
Financial requirements for developing a community around the Open Data
movement lie mainly in training and user gatherings.
The main communities that should be building around Open Data are:
-industry players
-students
-citizens
-application developers.
These gatherings may be as much as an informal training session of how to
use the platform both for download or upload of the data to the
visualization of the data for better understanding and decision making.
This can also involve breakfast meetings to discuss the progress and policies
that need to be included within the running of the project.
Project Management.
Open Data being a more public engaging project needs management at
various levels:
1. Project Coordinator/Manager – this is an individual that has an overall
outlook of the entire project and its elements. This kind of individual should
have both technical and project/social management skills at a high level.
2. Technical person – Given that the technicality of the portal is already
managed by Socrata in a binding contract, the technical person’s main
mandate is to carry out requirements on the design of the portal and
8 Linet kwamboka Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 functionalities that need to be added in order to translate these in
coordination with Socrata into new features of the portal.
This person should also have analytical and GIS capabilities in order to
visualize the available data into formats that are easily understandable by
the community.
3. Data evangelist – This is the communications person. The idea of Open
Data might be known among the elite who have access to channels that
allow access but there is a mass of citizens who should have access to this
information but don’t. The data evangelist works with partners like the
media, both social and traditional media like newspapers, radio and TV to
ensure a widespread message of the existence of this portal for all citizens.
The data evangelist is also responsible for connecting the communities
around open data with events and putting out messages of communication.
4. The taskforce – This is a group of a good mix of industry players from
private sector, civil society and government. A selection of up to six
individuals who are charged with the responsibility of developing the
policies around Open Data, popularizing the initiative within their various
strongholds as well as keeping the team that works on the day to day
running of the initiative in check.
The technology
Data repository Web frontend Graphical representation
s Tabular representation 9 GIS representation Linet kwamboka Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 Data repository – this is a database that contains all the datasets that have
been uploaded. This data should always be available for all requests that
are made through the frontend. This means that images of this database
should be available just incase one fails; requests can be propagated to
another. Active communication to the database should be through the
frontend by authorized administrators.
Frontend – This is the web page that comes up when a user types in
www.opendata.go.ke through the frontend, users are able to view the data
available in graphical, tabular or GIS formats. This also allows users to make
data requests or comments.
The frontend is also the page available for the administrators to make
changes to the available data, make comments, upload or bring down
datasets.
Representation - The data can be represented in three main formats:
- Graphical – allows for graphical representations of the distribution
of the data.
-Tabular – this is the traditional row/column representation of data
that may be hundreds of various indicators used during data
collection.
-GIS – Some of the data available is location based. Schools, hospitals,
development projects etc. all have location data to the latitude and
longitude and hence can be represented on maps which is a great
visual tool especially when trying to relay messages to show
locational disparities in development or resource allocation.
Challenges
Lack complete of legislation.
With this kind of legislation in place, it would be illegal for government
institutions to hide information from citizens, as is the case right now.
Matters like access to information should be inborn within people so that
they know the importance of releasing information without any legal
bounds. But due to the lack of this, there is a proposed FOI bill but since
this is not law, there is nothing that binds any civil servant to freely and
actively provide information. Article 35 of the Kenyan Constitution states
that every Kenyan citizen has a right to information but the process of
getting that information is still long, painful and costly.
Lack of an informed citizenry
According to the Bible, Hosea 4: 6 “My people perish from a lack of
knowledge.”
10 Linet kwamboka Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 The average Kenyan citizen in general is less informed about their right of
information. Someone would argue that the average Kenyan is more
concerned about matters of food, education for their children, rent and
livelihood to care about their right to have access to information.
People tend to forget that it is from this information that people would
better make decisions about their life and income and development. For a
very long time we have operated our lives according to the status quo and
not on actual facts and figures. For this reason, it has made it extremely
difficult for the team at KODI to state a case when requesting for data
because the supply questions the demand side of that data. Its great that a
few #KenyansOnTwitter are talking about open data, big data, analytics etc.
but the majority of people on the ground have no idea.
The myth that the available information is useless
Very often when trying to convince developers and private sector to use
information available on www.opendata.go.ke they state that the data is
too out of date and that they want breaking news. One thing that people do
not understand is the process of carrying out government statistics, from
data collection to verification, to validation to actual dissemination. Most of
the data that is up on the portal is the most up to date data from particular
government agencies for example. Some of the data collection processes to
release take months or even years.
Its always amusing see researchers abroad using KODI to do their research,
write their thesis and get actual benefits like getting funding to study more
of open governance and transparency in Africa while our own people only
keep complaining about the idea of open data.
The money is not clear. Where is the money?
Open Data, just like technology are value adding services and that on their
own; they might not make much sense.
This has become one of the biggest problems in regards to KODI when trying
to convince people to use the data. The smaller players are having a hard
time making money out of open data inventions because they plainly use the
data on KODI as the single source of ideas while bigger players have found a
way of mashing up data from KODI with other sources to create a better
resource and are able to get enormous gains out of the use of KODI as a
value adding service.
Lack of efficient structures within government
The Kenyan government is still very paper-based in its operations but so are
many other governments around the world. Walk into most of the offices
and you will realize a lot of people have computers but are still hard at
work on their black cover books and paper forms. Most of this information is
never digitized and if it is, it’s at a very slow rate. Examples include the
11 Linet kwamboka Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 Kenyatta National hospital still being so digitally paralyzed that they destroy
medical records every five years. This is the case in most Government of
Kenya departments. The slow digitizing rates mean that:
•
•
•
It is very hard to get very up to date information
It is very difficult to access any information at all
It is increasingly impossible to draw any relationships within the
existing data in the different agencies.
These are but a few of the reasons why the Kenya Open Data Initiative has
takes so long to become a very successful project, although this does not
mean that nothing at all is happening. Kenya Open Data might be facing
these difficulties but by the fact that a lot of people are now talking about
the idea, considering the idea, supporting the idea or even criticizing the
idea means that there is a clear view of the importance of this initiative.
Conclusion
The Open Data Initiative is not a perfect solution but work in progress, no
matter where you are that without support from:
1. public sector
2. private sector
3. civil society
Without effective support of all the key players, this initiative will not
manage to fulfill its main objective of reaching all citizens and allowing
them to gain from the benefits of information.
Open Data needs a lot of crowdsourcing from the efforts to make it happen
to the data to make it relevant. Technology has made it much easier to
carry out effective crowdsourcing but this also means allowing for effective
verification before dissemination.
Open Data is a culture. There has to be a community built around the
initiative that can go above and beyond to integrate Open Data in its
activities without waiting for a legal go ahead or contract to start using it.
Open Data is free and open, there should not be an excuse for lack of use or
contribution to the initiative.
12 Linet kwamboka Kenya Open Data Initiative 2013 About the Author
Linet is a Software Engineer at Carnegie Mellon University, working in a
team developing the Software Developer Certification (SDC).
She is the author of datascience.co.ke a blog that is dedicated at bringing to
light the data efforts in the African continent, its challenges and
achievements as well as lessons that can be used for knowledge exchange
around the world.
She has been on the forefront of coordinating the Kenya Open Data Initiative
and the Open Government Partnership at the Kenya ICT Board.
She is a GIS and software technology consultant who has consulted for
multiple companies both locally and internationally including the World
Bank, the One Acre Fund, Innovations for Poverty Action, the TIST
program, Upande LTD, Maker Faire Africa among others.
Linet has an under-graduate degree in Computer Science from the University
of Nairobi among other self taught qualifications especially in GIS and data
analysis and mining tools within the MIT Open Course Ware program, with a
keen focus on the awareness of using data for business intelligence, decision
making and resource allocation.
She is a recognized unsung hero by the former US ambassador to Kenya in
her efforts to encourage more women into the technology and computing
space
Linet is committed to ensuring the spread of digital literacy in Africa with a
keen focus on ensuring quality delivery, development, accurate research
and product development.
13