It is no secret that we are passionate about citizen generated data. We believe that active citizens have a lot of power to influence governments to bring about the change they want. We started out in 2015, working with local communities to collect data from every household as a means to understanding their needs and…
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The #RestoreDataRights movement comprises seven partners across Africa; Paradigm Initiative (Nigeria), Africa Digital Rights Hub (Ghana), Tom Moultrie (Professor of Demography, University of Cape Town) (South Africa), Media Rights Agenda (Nigeria), CIPESA (Uganda), Open Institute (Kenya) and Amnesty International (Kenya). It sprang from discussions on how data used as part of the COVID-19 response should…
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The Restore Data Rights initiative was born out of necessity; we realised that personal digital rights were being exploited with the COVID-19 pandemic as a catalyst. We presently comprise of six partners across Africa; Paradigm Initiative (Nigeria), Africa Digital Rights Hub (Ghana), Tom Moultrie (Professor of Demography, University of Cape Town) (South Africa), Media Rights…
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Imagine you are driving from one city to another in your country and a policeman stops you for speeding. The correct process that should be followed is that the policeman would have to take you to the police station and you would have to pay a cash bail of USD 50 and get an appointment…
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We are excited to release Census.ke, a new platform for all of the census 2019 data currently released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, the principal agency of the Kenya Government for collecting, analysing and disseminating statistical data, and the custodian of official statistical information. The Bureau is also responsible for the coordination of…
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The Ministry of ICT issued an invitation to members of the public to comment on the data protection regulations on civil registrations through the press. We submitted our comments, which you can read in detail here. We essentially raised five points of concern with the regulations: issues around the operation of consent under the Regulations,…
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Today I attended a meeting organized at the Ford Foundation offices by the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. The major part of the conversation was to consider the recommendations made by the Friends of the Chair of the UN Statistics Commission on Non-Traditional Data. How do we get Citizen Generated Data to be trusted…
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As the year 2019 comes to a close, we are in a reflective state. This year was for us so transitory, that we intentionally deferred our strategic planning for the next few years. We needed to use it to simply understand what was in flux and that needed time. So we took the year to…
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We at the Open Institute are very excited as just this week we witnessed the launch of Kenya’s first sub-national data desk in Elgeyo Marakwet County (EMC), famously known as the home of Champions. The launch day was a big deal for my co-founder, Jay Bhalla and myself in particular. A data desk is essentially…
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Elgeyo Marakwet County is the first devolved unit in Kenya to establish a Data Desk, which is a government function that will collect, compile, analyze and disseminate the county’s data and in a bid to have devolved governments be more responsive to the needs of its citizens. H.E. Eng. Alex Tolgos, Governor of Elgeyo Marakwet,…
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