In Kenya, Open Contracting Improves Efficiency & Curbs Corruption

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.

IREX and Development Gateway: An IREX Venture (DG) are pleased to announce their collaborative work on the USAID-funded Early Grade Education Activity (ASAS) program. The ASAS program, which launched in August 2023 and will run through July 2028, empowers stakeholders within Jordan’s Ministry of Education (MoE) and throughout the country to deliver inclusive and holistic early-grade (EG) education. The project is designed to improve numeracy and literacy skills for Jordanian students from kindergarten to grade three. 

Throughout the program’s implementation, IREX, which is spearheading the project, will improve early grade preservice education and in-service professional development for teachers, while DG will provide technical expertise and in-country field assistance to improve several education data systems. The program will facilitate improved access to timely, relevant, and high-quality data to inform strategic and meaningful education policies, practices, and reforms. This data is critical for EG education planning and will be used to evaluate core areas like school performance, student learning, teacher distribution, resource allocation, and training initiatives. It will also allow decision-makers to plan effective and practical interventions that will support student learning and development across Jordan, especially for underserved areas. Overall, the program will strengthen Jordan’s EG education data ecosystem and improve outcomes for public school students and teachers across the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Other partners supporting the ASAS program include School-to-School International, Queen Rania Teacher Academy, the International Rescue Committee, and the Change Agent for Arab Development and Education Reform.

Increasing educational data system effectiveness

The ASAS program is necessary for enhancing how education sector data is used and improving interoperability between data and digital tools. Having accurate and easier-to-use data empowers stakeholders to advance data-driven practices that meet the needs of students, parents, and teachers. 

Stakeholders working in technical and coordination capacities within the MoE encounter frequent challenges relating to data access, quality, and scalability. Currently, the MoE uses three major education data systems to collect data on learning outcomes: school attendance, classroom assessments, and e-training for teachers and administrators. Making these three essential education data systems compatible with each other will address persistent problems related to data governance, sharing, management, and analysis. Addressing these issues will ultimately improve stakeholder coordination, prevent duplication in effort and other redundancies, and facilitate data-supported decision-making across the whole of the education sector.

ASAS moving forward

In the initial stage of the ASAS program, DG worked closely with stakeholders in Amman, Jordan to conduct a data landscape assessment of the existing education data to establish a comprehensive roadmap of stakeholder needs and priorities. 

Following this assessment, the ASAS program will:

• Launch a new early grades undergraduate program at three public universities that is aligned with international standards and in-service teacher training;
• Institutionalize EG data quality assurance processes and assessments;
• Review and rationalize diagnostic assessment tools to cover holistic childhood development;
• Analyze the cost-effectiveness of teacher professional development; and
• Strengthen data systems utilized by the MoE and learning capabilities.