On 6/2/21 2:59 PM, S.M. Muraya via KICTANet wrote:
(1) What is lacking is rule of law. Access to information will increase public participation and reduce insider theft/trading crippling all our towns and cities.
https://www.ombudsman.go.ke/index.php/access-to-information/publications?dow... <https://www.ombudsman.go.ke/index.php/access-to-information/publications?download=298:ati-regulations-2021-for-pubic-participation-25-05-2021>
https://ombudsman.go.ke/index.php/resource-center/media-center/news-and-even... <https://ombudsman.go.ke/index.php/resource-center/media-center/news-and-events/137-public-participation-and-request-for-comments-on-the-draft-access-to-information-general-regulations-2021>
It will be nice to have more data available to aid in evaluation. The act has quite high requirements for a range of private bodies and seems to have been adapted from similar laws used in other countries, without enough thought about the Kenyan context. It will be interesting to see if existing personnel will be retrained to perform these tasks or replaced. Total government employee wage bills are quite high (even though salaries in general are not). Getting basic information such as expenditure and revenue is already problematic, it seems unlikely that this act can be implemented in the public sector correctly without budget allocations for the required transformation. As an example, most government websites when they exist are in a poor state, almost none are multilingual, in Tanzania almost all official websites are in at least Kiswahili and English. Quality of service guarantees and data on services provided seem to be missing from the act, so there is no way to track whether it will be effective. Perhaps a pilot phase could be done starting with websites for government ministries at national level as well as for county governments. Legislation and paperwork while well intentioned, seems to mostly make Kenya an expensive place to get things done. It would be great if ICT could improve on this. Nevertheless, Kenya does seem to rank relatively well at 56 on the ease of doing business, https://www.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings