Is Open Data Making an Impact?

[Use the link to access the infographic explaining the Kenya Open Data Pre-Incubator Plan.] “In this article here, I outline briefly, the current state of Open Data in Kenya. It emerges that the open data has not had as much impact as we would like it to... Being novel, there is quite some hype about open data platform but we would like to see greater impact as a result of releasing the open data in the areas of development, transparency, accountability and service delivery. To this end, a consortium consisting of AMI, the Open Institute, @iLab Africa, iHub Research, the World Bank and the Kenya ICT Board, has come together to conduct an experiment over a period of 6 months, The Kenya Open Data Pre-Incubator. The aim of this experiment is to test out a model that aids in accelerating the ability for the public to make sense and consume open data as well as to galvanize the public’s engagement around critical issues affecting them. Should the model prove successful, it will be put to use in a broader two-year incubator effort, endorsed and supported by the highest levels of government and the technological community. What is the big idea behind this pre-incubator? We attempt to demystify this experiment in previous posts here and here... ‘Looking at the open data ecosystem then, the largest percentage of the population, those we call, in huge quotation marks, ‘the uneducated citizens’, has barely interacted with the platform. These are people who are not experts in reading data and deriving knowledge from data. We need then, the ‘educated citizens’ and the ‘developers’, to step in and team up to effectively manipulate this data into useful information that generates knowledge for the masses. That, I believe, is the only way we can promote transparency, accountability, citizen engagement and proper service delivery from our government using open data.’ Essentially, in the Open Data Pre-Incubation, four media and civil society organizations will build an application or service or platform using open data as a base, around key thematic issues: water, education, health and cross cutting issues at the counties level. These host organizations from media and civil society will have highly qualified Open Data fellows and developers (referred to as Code 4 Kenya) embedded in them throughout the duration of the experiment. Together they (hosts and fellows) will conduct a close consultation process with issue expert working groups who will provide insight into specific use cases and technical insight into available open data resources. Using a Design Thinking approach, the fellows will then amalgamate these insights together with extensive end-user research, that they are expected to carry out, and their technical expertise to create applications that will try and solve the issues raised. Specifically, these applications, services or platforms should be used at scale across Kenyan society and drastically increases the use of open data.”