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.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — March 2024

On January 25, 2024, the governing committee—which includes Ethiopia’s Livestock State Minister Dr. Fikru Regassa—endorsed a comprehensive set of standards to guide the collection, storage, and maintenance of livestock data in Ethiopia (i.e., a data standard) that was developed through the a Livestock Information Vision Ethiopia (aLIVE) program, which the committee advises. The data standard specifically focuses on standardizing data on cattle, sheep, goats, and camels. This is a huge milestone for Ethiopia, a country with the largest livestock population in Africa.

Following 12 months of dedicated work and validation by a wide range of livestock stakeholders, the endorsement of the Livestock Data Standard marks a major milestone for both the program and for data management within Ethiopia’s livestock sector. This milestone was reached thanks to the efforts of team members and leadership at Development Gateway: An IREX Venture (DG) and Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture (MoA); with our partners, including the Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC) and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) as well as at least 19 other partner organizations; and with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Standardization of data collection and management is crucial to enhance the quality, availability, and usability of livestock data across various information systems in the country. Implementing this standardization involves the development of and adherence to common definitions, formats, indicators, and protocols for collecting, processing, storing, and sharing livestock data among stakeholders. One significant advantage of data standardization is the enhanced interoperability of information systems which enables seamless and secure communication and data exchange between different systems. Creating system interoperability is a key component of the aLIVE program. 

Establishing a comprehensive data standard is the first major accomplishment in the aLIVE program’s ultimate goal to build an interoperable platform consolidating livestock data for better data-driven decision-making in Ethiopia. Much of Ethiopia’s livestock data collection and management systems are incomplete and inconsistent, because they have been built and adapted independently of one another. In order to address the problem of fragmentation in Ethiopia’s livestock data, the aLIVE project is enhancing the interoperability of five core livestock data systems: ADNIS, DOVAR II, ETLITS, NLMIS and AADGG.

Ultimately, setting data standards for the livestock sector will better allow for the analysis of livestock data for planning, monitoring, evaluation, and learning purposes—which is vital in a country where agriculture is a critical part of the economy, accounting for about 40% of gross domestic product and 80% of exports. 

Streamlining Ethiopia’s Livestock Data to Advance Agricultural Prosperity

In addition to the benefits to Ethiopians, developing a standardized and interoperable livestock information system in Ethiopia can bring numerous benefits to the livestock sector itself. For instance, animal registration can help establish the identity, ownership, traceability, and health status of individual animals or groups of animals, leading to improved animal health management, disease control, breeding programs, and market access. Market data plays a crucial role in providing valuable insights into the supply, demand, prices, quality, and trends of livestock products and services. By analyzing this data, market efficiency, competitiveness, transparency, and profitability can be enhanced for both producers and traders. Similarly, health data is instrumental in improving animal health monitoring and safeguarding public health from animal-borne diseases. 

Co-Design and Collaboration: How the Livestock Data Standard was Developed

In order to develop the data standards, the aLIVE team held a series of co-design workshops in 2023 with the MoA, the five core livestock data system owners, and key stakeholders in the livestock sector.  

The team also held one-on-one meetings with the system owners to understand starting points and priorities for the data standards. In these meetings, the team gained an understanding of the overall data entry fields and the data collection process. The team was also able to reach preliminary agreements regarding the changes required in each data system in order to implement the new standards. After these meetings, a data standard task force (DSTF) was established comprising owners of the five priority systems, experts working with data on these systems, and staff from the MoA ICT directorate.

The aLIVE team then developed the initial data standard document by adopting international data standards (including standards from the International Committee for Animal Recording and World Organisation for Animal Health) and contextualizing the data standard to fit the data ecosystem of Ethiopia’s livestock sector.

The aLIVE program held its first data standard task force consultation workshop in Adama, Ethiopia in May 2023, during which the team presented the draft data standard document for review and feedback from various key stakeholders from across the livestock sector, including representatives from across the MoA, the Ministry of Trade & Regional Integration, the International Livestock Research Institute, and many other agriculture institutions. This feedback was then incorporated into the document, playing an important role in shaping the focus of the standards to fit stakeholder needs. For example, one key piece of feedback received was that it was important to place equal emphasis on species such as camels, goats, and sheep, in addition to cattle, which previously had been the primary focus. This feedback was particularly valuable as it prompted us to include standards in new areas, including animal grading and body conformation scores across all four species.

The second round of the DSTF workshop was held in July 2023, where the second draft was reviewed and further comments and feedback were collected. The document was then finalized at a validation workshop in November 2023.

Next Steps

The next phase in this process is familiarization and adoption of the Livestock Data Standard throughout Ethiopia’s livestock value chain. To help with this, the team is developing a data standard implementation guideline to serve as a roadmap for successfully implementing the livestock data standard across the five core livestock data systems. By following these guidelines, stakeholders can improve data collection and interoperability across systems, resulting in more efficient analysis and utilization of integrated data.