In Kenya, Open Contracting Improves Efficiency & Curbs Corruption

September 9, 2020 Open Contracting and Procurement Analytics Charlene Migwe-Kagume
Open Data, Procurement, Program, Subnational

On 31st August 2020, President Uhuru Kenyatta directed the Ministry of Health to come up with a transparent, open method and mechanism through which all tenders and procurement done by Kenya Medical Supplies Agency (KEMSA) will be available online. The directive follows allegations of corruption in the procurement of COVID-19 emergency supplies.

With citizens’ lives on the line and government spending at record highs, ensuring accountability to citizens is imperative to maintaining trust and effectively managing KEMSA’s procurement in response to COVID-19. Open procurement data can help in improving the efficiency of emergency procurement and support civil society groups to detect corruption and monitor the effectiveness of service delivery.

“This level of transparency and through the use of technology will go a very long way in ensuring that we have the confidence of our people that those placed in institutions are able to manage the resources of the Kenyan taxpayer plus our development partners in an open and transparent manner” – President Uhuru Kenyatta

Much can be learned from Makueni County in Kenya, a county that publishes and uses open, accessible, and timely information on government contracting to engage citizens and businesses. The Makueni Open Contracting Portal is an interactive site built by Development Gateway (DG) that provides detailed information on each step of the tender, award, and contract implementation process at the county level. These steps are now recorded within the interactive Makueni Open Contracting Portal – making information available for citizens at each step of the process. The county plans to go a step further to publish all implementation data such as community monitoring reports, also known as PMC reports and supplier payment vouchers.

The goal of the portal is to improve the efficiency of public procurement management and support the delivery of higher-quality goods, works, and services for residents of Makueni County through enhanced citizen feedback.

What We Learned from Makueni County

Lesson 1: Public Data Improves Efficiency

The primary role of the Ministry of Health and KEMSA in Kenya during an emergency situation is to provide citizens timely, affordable, and efficient supplies and services. Digitizing and publishing procurement data will provide the Ministry insights on whether funding and services are reaching intended beneficiaries. 

Publishing procurement data will also encourage better monitoring from relevant state and non-state actors. The Ministry of Health and KEMSA will have the opportunity to aggregate non-state actors’ feedback and state actor insights. This feedback will enable them to make data-driven decisions that will improve service delivery to citizens, promote efficient allocation of resources and ultimately saving costs.

DG has developed interactive M&E dashboards to support analysis currently used by Makueni County. The series of charts and visualizations provide helpful data insights – such as top suppliers that received contracts and the percentage of awards that go toward the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO), which requires tenders to be awarded to women, youth, and people with disabilities.

Since the start of the use of the Makueni open contracting portal in 2019, improved resource utilization and efficiency in procurement has been identified by the County leadership. Governor Kivutha Kibwana cited that the County has saved Kes. 30,000,000 from the Roads department as a result of using the portal.

Lesson 2: Building Trust is Essential to Combating Corruption

The complexity of emergency responses such as COVID-19 requires cooperation between the private sector, national, and county government to ensure timely delivery of supplies. KEMSA publishing data will promote feedback and engagement of business and citizens further building trust and collaboration. Publishing procurement data also equips civil society and citizens with the information needed to help combat corruption. For example, reporting counterfeits, frauds, and scams – which has been a key corruption issue identified globally in COVID-19 response procurement, particularly PPEs.

DG has implemented its corruption risk dashboard in Makueni, which uses high powered analytics and global research to identify risk profiles for potential corruption in procurement. KEMSA can adopt the corruption risk dashboard as a red-flagging tool to assist in identifying procurement activities that merit in-depth auditing of corruption risk – including fraud, collusion, and process rigging – over time. These analytics will allow the organization to address cases of corruption before taxpayer money is lost.

Lastly, publishing Beneficial ownership data can enable governments to quickly perform minimal standards of due diligence on companies they are buying goods and services from. As well as reducing the immediate risk of corruption, beneficial ownership data provides a valuable trail for future audit.

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A top priority at Development Gateway: An IREX Venture (DG) is collaborating closely with partners to ensure our program design and implementation truly align with partners’ needs (i.e., a co-design approach). This co-design approach is especially vital when our goal is to garner consensus across multiple countries of implementation around next steps in a given program, while also balancing individual countries’ political and policy priorities. 

To help realize this priority in DG’s Data on Youth and Tobacco in Africa (DaYTA) program, we built upon our co-design approach, integrating it into all activities throughout the first year of program implementation. This culminated in a four-day workshop with partners on October 30 – November 2 in Naivasha, Kenya, which was the first time we’ve convened government officials from multiple countries at this scale to engage in co-design along with other non-governmental partners. Reflecting on this workshop and the work preceding it, we’ve identified three insights below on how to co-design with stakeholders representing multiple countries.

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The DaYTA program, which is supported by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to supply sub-Saharan African governments with improved access to country-specific data that will inform better tobacco control policy design and implementation. 

Specifically, DaYTA will design and implement research to address key data gaps with respect to tobacco use among young people aged 10 to 17 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, and Nigeria. This information will be easily accessible in order to meet the needs of government stakeholders, civil society, and academia. 

Because one of DaYTA’s main objectives is to collect data on youth tobacco use in a coordinated manner in order to allow the results to be meaningfully compared across all three countries of implementation, we knew that our partners would need to agree around core content for the research questionnaire and protocol; however, we also knew we needed to be flexible and designate certain content as optional—since not every country will have the same needs.

To achieve this end, we dedicated the first year of program implementation to co-design: collecting inputs at the individual, country, and full consortium levels. To start, we conducted a rapid assessment, which was based on our CALM methodology, followed by country-specific workshops in order to hear from partners themselves so that we might be better able to find a balance between program requirements and country-specific needs. Our co-design process culminated in a four-day workshop on October 30 – November 2 in Naivasha, Kenya attended by partners representing government, academia, and civil society from all three countries of implementation.

“Numbers don’t lie! The ongoing DaYTA project is critical as it will provide data which will inform policymakers on strategic action and decisions to halt the epidemic of tobacco use among children and the youth more so with the proliferation of novel and nicotine products. Protecting future generations requires strong [legislation] coupled with targeted awareness campaigns.”

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Three Insights on a Multi-National, Multi-Partner Co-design Approach

  1. Strive to engage a diversity of partners and tailor engagement based on their expertise, interest, and availability: From government departments and subcontractors to civil society organizations, every partner brings a unique perspective and expertise. Therefore, a successful co-design approach will deeply engage each partner throughout the process to ensure their valuable input is given and reflected in program design and implementation, based on their area of expertise and availability. Outside of meetings with the full consortium of partners, an important step in DG’s co-design approach is understanding individual partner’s communication style and availability in order to understand and address their involvement throughout the rest of the program.

    For example, in the consortium of DaYTA partners, we have many experts—both within and across DaYTA countries—who are working in such sectors as research, academia, public health, tobacco control, media, and youth advocacy, among others. Because tobacco use and youth is so nuanced, we rely on each partners’ insights from their sectors to create programmatic solutions to improve the creation and implementation of tobacco control policy. Therefore, our primary goal in co-designing is ensuring that all partners are engaged throughout the process.
  2. Emphasize equity across co-design partners by creating opportunities for cross-country collaboration as well as country-specific discussions: Each partner brings value to co-design; however, every partner is also working in their own country and in their own context. Therefore, some needs, concerns, or (even) insights might not be appropriate to share across the entire consortium of co-design partners—as a result of anything from time constraints to political or cultural aspects that are unique to one context.

    Prior to the workshop in Naivasha, we facilitated independent country-level workshops in which country teams could dive deep into the concerns, needs, and next steps of their work. Then once convened in Naivasha, we facilitated cross-learning through mixed-country breakout sessions and ensured that a variety of stakeholders had the opportunity to share their insights, findings, concerns, etc. in plenary. Additionally, we continued to provide opportunities for country-specific sessions. Finally, across all sessions, we had English to French (and vice versa) interpretation to ensure all partners were included and each session was accessible.
  3. Create governance structures or mechanisms to engage partners at the country and cross-country levels: One important next step that was identified during the workshop in Naivasha was the need for new governance structures and mechanisms—such as steering committees or advisory councils—in and across the three DaYTA countries. While collaborating across governance structures in three countries in a coordinated manner will be a new opportunity for DG, we’ve seen the benefit these types of structures can have on stakeholder engagement in specific countries. Specifically, in implementing DG’s TCDI program, a technical advisory board was formed in the DRC as part of the illicit trade research. Due to the success of this structure in meaningfully engaging technical stakeholders from government and academia, as well as the fact that governance structures are an industry best practice, we agreed that having similar structures for DaYTA in each country would be the best way to continue the momentum started at this workshop and provide active touchpoints for updates and feedback throughout implementation.

Keep an eye out for more insights as DaYTA moves forward with the co-design process, creating new governing structures, and beginning primary research on adolescent tobacco use!

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