Open County Initiative is a programme spearheaded by the Open Institute to promote open government principles to sub-national governments in Kenya. Through this initiative, the Open Institute and its partners work with county governments to publish open data relating to development of the county. In addition, we work to build appetite for open data and empower citizens to use their voice to speak with government.

1. 
Open Data meets Devolution
The Open County Initiative case.

2. BACKGROUND
 Kenya among the most recent countries to effect
devolution (2010)
 Spirit behind devolution
 Ensure equitable sharing of resources
 Better service delivery
 Promote participation of citizens in governance
 More robust citizen engagement
 Bring government closer to the people
 More accountable government

3. The Open County Initiative
 Established by the Open Institute
 Aims to support devolution by:
 Promoting development of Open Government
policies in sub-national governments (entrenching
FOI)
 Build tools to support National and County
governments using Open Data
 Build Appetite for Data and capacity for use among
CSOs, Government, media and citizen groups

4. Some of the activities of OCI (2014)
 Helped organise the first devolution conference with
Council of Governors
 Supported development of Council of Governors website
and structuring of County Government Data
 Built capacity of Governors and senior government
officials to appreciate data in government
 Trained devolution CSOs on data literacy and
visualisation
 Organised roundtables for County governments with
CSOs

5. Stakeholders
• Governor
• Department Secretaries
•Management Level (ICT,
Treasury,
Communications)
• Community media
• Open Government working
group
• Devolution working group
• Transitional
Authority
• COG
• COB
• CIC
• CRA
• Ministry of Devolution &
Planning
• Treasury
•Auditor General
• ICT
National
government
Independent
Constitutional
bodies
47 County
Governments
CSOs & Media

6. The challenge of data
 Devolution came into effect March 2013
 Focus on transferring functions (and budgets and
control) from National Government to County
Governments
 Counties have no capacity to collect and manage
data
 Structure of power and control still major point of
discussion
 Accountability a major concern for citizens
(therefore for governors political considerations)

7. The Open County Dashboard
http://kenya.opencounty.org

8. Intended outcomes
 Improved accountability by county government
 To COB as required by law
 To citizens
 Increase reporting automation
 Therefore reduce time and cost involved in reporting
process
 Improved quality and usability of Open Data
 For public service use
 For public consumption

9. Dashboard
Budgets
Allocated
budget
Release
information
Allocation
(dept)
Projects

10. Dashboard (continued)

11. Success
 1st County Dashboard
 2013 Data liberated for 16 counties (early adopters)
 Capacity development at county level
 12 county governments Data LitCamps
 At least 8 can upload data directly
 Data LitCamps CSOs & Community media at least 12
counties
 2014 data not approved for publication
 Clear appetite for data among community CSOs

12. County Government LitCamps

13. CSO LitCamps

14. The road ahead for dashboard (Kenya)
 Extend the Open County dashboard usage across all
47 counties
 Develop interfaces for Auditor General
 Advocate for dashboard usage as policy
 Increase amount of data in the dashboard
 Include Contracts data in the tracking
 Start trending with 2014 approved data

15. Replicability: Bauchi State, Nigeria

16. http://opencounty.org