High energy, high engagement and many ideas characterised this year’s edition of Open Data Day in Kenya.
Open Institute hosted the event in 3 cities in Kenya: Mombasa in partnership with Mombasa Tech Community, Kisumu in partnership with LakeHub, and in Nairobi with help from PAWA254.
The objective was to help spread open data by making it relevant to other communities in other Kenyan counties other than Nairobi. The concept of open data is an established one in Nairobi. The market has had at least 2 years of exposure to open data and open datasets, and has pushed for things such as open data portals to be set up.
In Kisumu and Mombasa, the concept is altogether very new to the technology community. Open Data Day was a great start to have market awareness in Kisumu and Mombasa to get people to think on and developers and creatives to develop solutions around “open data”. We envision great initiatives from these two communities in addition to what the Nairobi tech community has ben doing.
For a while now Open Institute has been very keen to develop open data and open government initiatives in Kenya’s devolved units – Open Data Day is just the beginning.
The event was attended by approximately 200 people who worked on a total of 16 projects, all of which are summarized below:
| Location | Project Title | Synopsis | Developer(s) |
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Nairobi
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Form One Trends | – Get secondary school selections – Get private public allocations by county / district – Map out student allocations (students diversification by moving to another county) (student movement: from which primary to which secondary) – Range of marks for any given national school, based on county and/or district of origin, as well as public/private primary school – Trend per county/district for private/public allocations – Trends in student movement (primary to secondary) |
– Patrick Kirembu – Micheal Mwangi – Roselyn Mburu – Matt Gathu – Stephanie Tung – Njeri Kagera – Reyes Mauricio |
| Traffic Analysis System | – Making Nairobi trafiic data available in JSON format that can be mapped. – Visualizing Nairobi Traffic |
– Terry Gichuhi – Peterson Kamiri – Elvis Nyamolo – Leo Mutuku – James Leech |
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| Devolution Data | – Making county information available – Building a platform to access the data |
– Shitemi Khamadi – Ramson Chebosi – Alloys Mila |
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| Health Trends | – Platform to access health data across counties – Map health centers and medical labarotiries |
– Margret kore – Keith Kibanya – Geoffrey Gathatwa – Henricus Kokonya – Simon Kisingoa – Kenedey Rotich |
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Kisumu
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Health Data – post-natal care | – A ranking system for hospitals. A portal for understanding relative quality of services at different hospitals | – Sidney Ochieng – Maxwell Fundi – Diana Kwamboka – Newton Mawira – Stephen Koyo |
| Cage Security Portal | – Security profiles of neighborhoods on how hospitible to business/living each area is. Anonymized, aggregated, individual crime records, categories of crime. Real-time Security feeds. Ranking areas within and across counties. | ||
| Electronic Health Data | – System with locational models of disease. R-Console enables extraction of statistical data – Modules: Graphical, prevlance, Location, Networking |
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| Ukulima | – Matching the soil type and associated requirements for farmers/agricultural businesses. Uses government data / meterological information. – Modules: Crops, Soil, Season, Pests, Location, Payment |
– Peter Kiprotech – Michael Ochieng – Muthengi Benjamin – Yaymond Kiri – Stephen Waweru – Peter Mbugwa |
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| Improving Learning Institutions | – Management system for institutions of higher learning. Similar to HELB, but allows instant user feedback through online chat and Q&A – provide service/assistants to applicants seeking clarity on their applications/admissions status. Standardize across universities. | – Denis Omondi Oketch – Paul Okaka – Hillary Kavagi – Philip Kahuho – Reenie Ita – Domnic Mutai – James Mwangi |
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| M-Pona | – Health Idea (mobile, hospital, pharmacy) Health Calendar, with reminders – immuniziations, recurring conditions, presciption refills, delivered through patient targetted mobile app. Pharmacy can mass send messages on regular schedule. Secondary uses – government distribution of drugs in times of need – planning tool. | ||
| Hydrasec | – Security information collection, analyzing, and mapping system. Service for securit agencies and private investigators, requires user authentication. | ||
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Mombasa
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Transport and Infrastructure | – An Open Data system using modified or customized versions of GIS systems to keep track of transport infrastructure issues. | – Fatah Nur – Wanjohi Anthony – Mathia Brian – Nyakundi Joshua – Hangington Mwikya |
| Professional Datasets | – This group aimed to create a dataset that would be publicly accessible about demographic data of professionals in the field. This data would be exposed for people willing to understand feasibility of a variety of projects or setting up various institutions in regards to what the professional atmosphere is in a specific region, etc. and do a number of comparisons on a number of different parameters. | – Ahmed Maawy – Brighton Mwasaru – Ruth Kaveke – Opportuna Morara – Jeoffrey Kyalo – Magambo Gatobu – Mwatsahu Mohamed – Mary Maina – Collins Kimathi – Manal Ahmed |
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| Land issues | – With the ever emerging conflicts coming from Land allocations, this team is seeking to find ways to help put this data to the public to facilitate the public to understand what land issues there on (on a map and on other systems), as well as provide news and datasets tagged to pieces of land. Even though they had no prototype, they did proper research and were convinced about taking the concept even further in the future. | – Rahma Abdallah – Morris Njorogo – Oliver Vernin – Yasir Karama – Nabila Yasser |
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| Education | – This team seeks to match donor and those in need, by availing to the public data on funding as well as prospective students and facilities to help fund in a variety of parameters. For instance identifying needy students or educational facilities and funding history. | – Alosa Edmond – Brian Rono – Nelson Rop – Janice Munaine – Diana Claris – Swaleh Abubakar – Gilbert Kulali – Murad Swaleh |
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| Marketplace | – Take the yellow pages concept and instead of sticking data onto a website, instead make it a public dataset accessible via APIs, etc. | – Brian Opiyo – Joel Mwas – Aisha Abubakar – Elizabeth Nzola – Elijah Mutua – Nelson Tambo – Jane Righa |
In addition to these projects, a number of participants learnt new skills including how to scrape and clean data, data visualization basics and how to use new tools that make these processes easier.
Open Institute would like to thank the World Bank Kenya Office for sponsoring the catering for the events in the 3 cities and Angani Ltd for providing cloud infrastructure for the participants, the many volunteers that jumped on the opportunity to help the events run smoothly, and all the participants that took part.
For coverage of the event, follow the #ODDKenya hashtag on Twitter.
