Public Service Delivery Platform

Problem

In Kenya, public service delivery models are characterized by inefficiencies ,wastefulness and there is no way to ensure accountability.

Solution

We wish to employ an integrated ICT platform featuring four modules which will allow the citizenry to hold public officials to account for their tax money.The modules are:

1. e-Miradi- a tailor made web and mobile app for tracking projects/initiatives
2. e-pfm- a tailor made solution for performance contracting across government
3. e-jadili-a public participation platform where citizens can vote and decide on priority projects in their area
4. arifu -An instagram replica public portal where projects/initiatives progress pictures/snapshots can be shared for the public to comment/like. Arifu will also have a survey module which can be used to measure the impact of projects undertaken by both the county governments and the national government.

Kenya and other developing countries lose billions of dollars of public funds due to poor public financial management. According to the Kenya Anti-Corruption commission, Kenya loses a third of its budget- about $6 billion-to corrupt dealings every year. Despite the existence of robust policies and lessons from the developed world, Kenya, as well as other developing countries are struggling when it comes to accounting for public funds usage. Normally, a wide variety of computer-based systems support PFM. However, these systems are usually implemented as components of separate projects responding to specific needs, with little appreciation of requirements in other areas, and little thought given to critical interrelationships. As a result, the information systems are often disparate and segmented with little or no capacity for sharing data. As a result, people take advantage of these loopholes to loot public funds. This has had great implications on Kenya's development agenda and the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A sound PFM framework and a solid integrated information system would allow for greater transparency and accountability across the public sector saving countries billions of dollars and setting the stage upon which each of these countries can realize their development goals.

We believe technology enabled processes will be the answer to Kenya's development challenges.

Having worked with several counties in the past seeking to understand their processes and the key loopholes that lead to the loss of public funds.In some parts of the country most people are oblivious of the roles of the people they elect hence they are not able to hold them to account for what they do during their tenures.

An integrated ICT platform will ensure public participation in community development and also make the process fun and engaging.

According to the Kenya Bureau of statistics Kenya’s mobile subscriptions were 38.5 million making this an opportune time to leverage technology to drive public service delivery.

We wish to employ an integrated ICT platform featuring four modules which will allow the citizenry to hold public officials to account for their tax money.The modules are:

1. e-Miradi- a tailor made web and mobile app for tracking projects/initiatives.''Miradi" is a swahili word meaning projects 

2. e-pfm- a tailor made solution for performance contracting across government 

3. e-jadili-a public participation platform where citizens can vote and decide on priority projects in their area. "jadili" is a swahili word meaning discuss

4. arifu -An instagram replica public portal where projects/initiatives progress pictures/snapshots can be shared for the public to comment/like.Arifu will also have a survey module which can be used to measure the impact of projects undertaken by both the county governments and the national government."Arifu" is a swahili word meaning inform.

The solution will ensure accountability by providing visibility across government operations. By providing a technology enabled platform where citizens can participate in prioritizing projects in their area, we'll be ensuring that government programmes are tailored to meet the citizens immediate needs. This way, the citizens will be involved in the government planning processes. In addition, the same platform can be used to disseminate crucial civic education material in vernacular languages to ensure maximum reach and impact. The platform will also help get developed plans into action through an integrated project management platform and have the results posted on a public portal with Instagram like functionality for progress dissemination and collection of citizen feedback. The real time nature of the platform will ensure corrective actions are taken early to ensure efficiency. Feedback collected can be used to inform future government programmes and projects. Moreover, the platform will be used to measure the impact of certain programmes on communities where they have been carried out by employing big data analysis technologies on the citizen feedback provided.

The service delivery platform is a new application of existing technologies to solve a hardcore problem in public service delivery.

The solution is a web based system that will be available on both Android and iOS. The Web platform has been developed on Ruby on Rails with a Postgres database. We have utilized Ruby on Rails API to create endpoints for the mobile application. We plan to develop the mobile platform using React Native so that it’s easily available on both Android and iOS.

Currently the system is hosted on Heroku Cloud Service Provider.

Currently only a few citizens are involved in the public participation process.

e-jadili featuring a voting mechanism will allow more citizens to be involved in the public participation process and as a result every project prioritized by the government will go to address immediate citizen needs.

Current project monitoring mechanisms are disjointed manual and do not allow for timely intervention/corrective actions.

e-miradi is lightweight, fun and interconnected, gives county officials and key decision makers a chance to resolve project issues as and when they occur and provides a bird's eye view of all projects programmes and initiatives a county is undertaking.

e-pfm provides an online mechanism where project owners can be evaluated according to their output, the appraisals take account of an individual's performance data obtained from e-miradi (On e-miradi an individual will be assigned certain tasks).

Lastly, e-arifu takes care of dissemination of results and collection of feedback. Currently there aren't any mechanisms to measure impact of initiatives undertaken by government on people's livelihoods. The platform will allow citizens to report on what impact the projects have had and even make general comments on the project execution. We’ll then collate and analyse this feedback seeking to provide information on the outcome of specific projects. e-arifu will empower the citizens to have a say on their government's performance.

We are currently at the incubation stage of the project. We have approached several county governments in order to  pilot with them. However the solution is not currently active.

In the short term we expect to pilot the solution in at least one county in order to have the opportunity to refine it even further.

In the next five years, we expect to have rolled out the solution across the 47 counties in Kenya and looking to expand into other countries in East Africa.

Currently we have financial constraints to be able to market the solution to various government entities, by committing resources for the pilot programme.

Moreover we need a strong partner that is able to lobby government entities to employ the solution given it's capabilities to improve transparency and accountability across government and help improve service delivery.

We intend to secure strategic partners with similar goals in order to drive civic participation and enhance public service delivery.

Moreover we are actively sourcing for funds to augment our marketing efforts.

N/A

We have 2 people working on this solution.They both work full time.

We are a multi-competency team each with a unique blend of skills that is capable of delivering this solution.We are a team of 3, two techies and one business development lead. Here is a snapshot of the profiles.

Denis

Denis is an experienced program manager, software developer and licensed Ethical(White) Hacker; a strong IT professional with a Bachelor’s Degree focused on BSc. Informatics and Computer Science from Strathmore University. He's able to successfully direct information technology, security and operational support services.

Link to profile: https://deniswambua.com

Martin

Martin is a skilled Web & Mobile Applications Developer with a brilliant experience working on corporate solutions ranging from financial systems, analytics platforms, web-systems, e-commerce solutions, mobile apps and USSD/SMS Solutions. Previously engaged on projects including Payments platforms, Data Analytics Platforms, Travel Ticketing solutions, Intranet Platforms, Financial Solutions , Mobile Apps & E-learning Products. 

Link to profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinmuriithi/

Tonny

Talented and focused information technology executive with proven ability to successfully direct information technology, security and operational support services. Expertise in overseeing technology implementations, security reviews and aligning technology to business and organizational goals. Experience in leading enterprise wide, multi country implementations. Previous background in consulting, information security, service desk management and business development. Link to profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonnymwendwa/

We are in the process of acquiring a strategic partner.We have recently demonstrated the solution to the Agile Harmonized Assistance for Devolved Institutions in Kenya, AHADI

Our solution targets to address transparency and accountability issues tied to use of public funds.

The key customers will be county governments.

The beneficiaries of this platform will be citizens and civil servants.

The key services are an integrated ICT Solution, data management,analytics and reporting.

We'll also make data available to key government agencies for their decision making processes

On e-jadili and e-arifu, we intend to make money through product advertisements from interested corporate entities.

We'll charge a flat rate of $5 per advert a day.

As for e-miradi and e-pfm, we''ll employ a subscriber based model where we'll have a base cost of $500 for 10 users and $20 for each additional user

We also hope to partner with like minded institutions and donor funding agencies such as The Agile Harmonized Assistance for devolved institutions (AHADI), USAID, WorldBank and DFID.

We'll benefit immensely from your support including funding, mentorship, media and conference exposure, business and entrepreneurship training.

We need help in lobbying governments to adopt our product and we believe partnership with Solve and it's extensive network will ensure we obtain credibility and that governments will be comfortable taking up our services.

N/A

We'd like to partner with:

1.AHADI(Agile Harmonized Assistance For Devolved Institutions)

The AHADI programme sponsored by the USAID supports Kenya’s devolution agenda by partnering with Kenyan institutions to promote transparent, accountable, effective service delivery and responsive governance systems.

AHADI will provide an enabling environment where our solution can be adopted.Given the work they have done with county government to date, including but not limited to :

1. Institutional capacity building and on the job training of public officials
2. Fostered development of 79intergovernmental mechanisms such as the alternative dispute resolution regulations.
3. Embedded resident expertise for six national and intergovernmental institutions including the Council of Governors, Ministry of Devolution and Planning, the Intergovernmental Relations and Technical Committee, and the Senate.

AHADI continues to provide an environment upon which our integrated solution can be easily adopted and operationalized.

We envision that AI will be useful in helping predict various operational challenges in the implementation of projects.Since project implementation data will be available in our databases, we can use this data to power an AI engine that will be able to predict project risks and issues as well as provide mitigation options before hand.

Our solution modules e-jadili and e-arifu employ social media technologies to allow for public participation in creating a country's development agenda.

We are seeking to be included in this prize category since we'll need funding to to hire translators to help us translate the system to accommodate various vernacular languages.We'll do this in order to make the solution usable by marginalized communities in the various countries where we wish to have a presence.

We'll use the money received from the Morgridge Family Foundation Community to improve the usability of our platforms by employing advance UI/UX techniques, big data analytics and even artificial intelligence networks.

We'll also use these funds to secure a powerful hosting centre such that our apps are scalable and are able to support millions of users at any given time.