The COVID-19 pandemic has had a great impact on the way the world is functioning. “New normal” has become a phrase that describes the emerging practices and ways of life.
The truth that continues to endure is that citizens own their countries and should continue to be in a position to control what happens in their communities and societies.
Governments must continue to be responsive to citizens’ needs and citizens must continue to exercise their voices.
We envision a future with an open society that is managed by informed, fact-driven citizens.
This society features a responsive and accountable government that delivers the services its citizens need at the level of service they deserve.
It includes active non-state actors who play an active role in educating citizens on their role as responsible and active citizens safeguarding democracy and development.Our Mission is to collaborate with governments, citizens, civil society organisations and other players to develop policies, tools and knowledge that strengthen citizens’ voices in the governance and development in their societies.
We work to build citizen capacity to use data for better engagement with government and other stakeholders for better resource allocation and development outcomes, and achievement of global and national goals.
We work with subnational governments to build their statistical capacity for better transparency and accountability, while providing technical support to establish structures to better listen to and engage with citizens.
The Ability Project aims to gather data around the Nairobi Central Business District and clearly mark out how accessible these every day environments really are, by using the globally recognized concept of Universal Design as our compass.
We work to improve the working environment for artisanal small scale miners as well as to build on the body of knowledge for the achievement of Kenya’s policy goals in the mining industry. We recognise artisanal small scale mining potential and the need to create a conducive ecosystem to foster its development.
The #RestoreDataRights movement aims to work with governments and other stakeholders towards realising a transparent, inclusive and accountable COVID-19 response in Africa and beyond by working to foster trust in the handling of people’s sensitive personal data.
To monitor the COVID-19 pandemic, we created Nuru as a tool to crowdsource observations about how citizens are coping in the exceptionally difficult circumstances brought on by the virus, with the aim of inspiring engagement with civil society, governments and other stakeholders to take action and effect change in their communities.
Follow our latest updates featuring highlights of our work
Our approach is defined by our belief that citizens own governments and therefore they should have the agency and confidence to speak up and use their voice to direct public projects.
We give the analogy of a shop. If you establish a shop and you employ me to keep the shop, you would frequently track inventory and look at the books in detail. So too must citizens look at public records.
In turn, governments at all levels must be open and allow citizens to review its records.
Executive Director
Communications Officer
Trustee, Finance Director
Programme Manager, Ability
Finance Manager
Executive Assistant
Technology Director
While we will continue to focus on promoting transparency, accountability and citizen engagement globally, our focus is on finding and building bridges between citizens and governments in sub-saharan Africa – particularly at sub-national level.
In our experience, there has been a strong temptation to have shiny projects that have limited impact because of funding and other needs for support. We recognise this as a reality in our business. From experience we have learnt that in fact many meaningful activities around involve slow and progressive change. To this end, we commit to going through the process that will yield meaningful impact, even when we have to operate within financial and other constraints.
What this means for us is that we will seek to form partnerships with other like minded organisations in government, private sector and other players in society for our projects. We care that solutions are built in a way that they can scale easily and can easily be replicated in other countries and sectors.
We acknowledge that there is a role that is played by civil society organisations to aggressively call out governments for areas where they are not performing well, we recognise that the area of transparency, accountability and citizen engagement is relatively emerging and in its early stages in sub-Saharan Africa and therefore we elect to work alongside governments to develop policies and structures for openness and citizen engagement.
We are committed to take care to work together with minority groups in every sphere that we work. We shall be decidedly nonpartisan and work with governments as well as other political and civil groups in a way that ensures that efforts towards transparency are sustainable. (See our DEI Policy)
It is our view that everyone has something to offer in the work towards building an equitable, fair, democratic and open society. We see differences in opinion and approach as good and valuable, when discussed openly and respectfully and we shall use such debates to fuel our creative impetus to have impact.
We shall work openly as much as possible and all our tools and materials shall be released openly. Given that we are a collaborative organisation, we shall also be cognisant that openness in some of the actual work we do shall conflict with our partners views and policies and we shall respect their needs as we continue to advocate for them to be open. We choose to ensure positive impact on our work. In other words, while we are committed to be open, we recognise that others may not see things our way and we shall seek to work with them to find acceptable avenues to strengthening transparency and accountability. We shall appreciate that there is process and we shall go through it painstakingly.
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SPEECH BY MS. ANNE WAIGURU, OGW, CABINET SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF DEVOLUTION AND PLANNING, DURING THE BUNTWANI CONFERENCE ON 7TH OCTOBER 2014 AT THE KENYA SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, NAIROBI. Vice President,…
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It has been just over a year since Kenya formed a decentralised form of government, devolving into 47 county governments accompanied by central government. The rationale behind devolution was to…
The Council of Governors (CoG) hosted to a two-day inaugural Devolution Conference held on 3rd and 4th April in Kwale County. The conference, titled “One Year into Devolution: Celebrating the…
GUEST BLOGGER: MICHAEL MURUNGI, CEO, KENYA LAW Leafing through a print edition of the Kenya Gazette has always been more like looking for a morsel of information in an encyclopaedia…
I recently had the honour of participating in the Dialogue on Data for accountability within the post-2015 agenda framework earlier this year in New York. Organised by the UNDP, it…
The open data movement has grown exponentially in a relatively short period of time. Many countries and cities have been rolling out initiatives and embracing the potential value that comes…
This is a cross-post from Global Integrity Submitted by Nathaniel Heller on 21 February , 2014 – 12:53 PM – Open Duka, Tech for Transparency, and Learning Kung-Fu The great…
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…
This is a cross-post by Julia Keserü from the Sunlight Foundation, taken from the Global Open Data Initiative blog. A few months back, the Global Open Data Initiative (GODI) sought input from the transparency…
The International Open Data Day is a gathering of citizens in cities around the world to develop applications, liberate data, create visualisations and publish analyses using open public data to show support…
Recently in the Kenyan press, it emerged that there was ambiguity as to the company that may have been awarded the controversial Kshs 327 billion contract to build the Standard…
The Open Institute is pleased to announce the launch of the Open Duka platform. Open Duka was conceptualised as a catalytic tool for transparency, accountability and governance. As a tool, Open…
THIS WEEK I MEET MS. CHRISTINE LAGARDE, MD, IMF. This week, the 11th Managing Director of the IMF, Ms. Christine Lagarde is in Nairobi, at the end of a three…
The Africa Freedom of Information Centre, AFIC has been invited to attend African Union consultation on the continent’s strategy for the next 50 years- AU Agenda 2063. We have informed…
Two weeks ago London was host to the Open Government Partnership Summit in which government representatives and civil society from over 60 countries convened over three days to discuss among…
This is a cross-post by Julia Keserü from the Sunlight Foundation, taken from both the Global Open Data Initiative blog and the Sunlight Foundation blog. Open Data has enormous unfulfilled…
This past week, as primary school pupils in Kenya started their Kenya Certificate of Primary Examinations (KCPE) – a landmark examination in any Kenyan’s life, we released some data that…
This is a Post written by Jennifer Lentfer for OXFAM America Tech geek proclaims the unthinkable! Says that when it comes to aid transparency, “There’s something more important than data.” “Even…
Over the last month or two, we’ve made a strategic decision to dedicate a huge part of our work to serve grassroots communities and we’ve increasingly found ourselves thinking about…
As we bridge gaps between open data ecosystems, we continually ask ourselves what impact our work has on grassroot communities and how open data can be used to improve their…
The Global Open Data Initiative partners are excited today to share a draft Declaration on Open Data, and welcome comments and feedback on its contents. Open Data has enormous unfulfilled promise to change…
This is a cross post from Greg Brown Kenya’s open data portal is floundering. Despite the excitement that surrounded its launch in July 2011, the portal has not been updated in eight…
When we started out in 2011, we were incubated by the Africa Media Initiative to implement the Code4Kenya project (it later scaled up to an organisation) and we worked on…
Authored by Nick Hargreaves and cross posted from his blog. It’s slightly over two years since the government of Kenya launched the Kenya Open Data portal; a move that was…
African Data Journalists and Code for Africa Hacktavists this week traveled to Nepal to be part of the country’s Open Data Initiative launch. The grassroots initiative dubbed Open Nepal week,…
Since 2012, the Open Institute, in partnership with the World Bank Institute, Africa Media Initiative and Google, has been running data bootcamps for various intermediaries and user groups across multiple…
In May 2013, delegates convened in Mombasa for the first OGP Africa Regional Meeting; a two-day conference that brought together representatives from Civil Society Organisations, Academia, Open Government Partnership participating…
I have spent the last couple of days in Wote, Makueni County with Sam Lee and Felipe Estefaan from the World Bank Institute in Washington DC. I’ve been here before…
The Open Institute is excited to announce the Global Open Data Initiative, which it is spearheading together with the Sunlight Foundation, Worldwide Web Foundation, Open Knowledge Foundation and Fundar. The Open…
There’s a basic premise held by many in the citizen agency space. Empower citizens with the right information and the right tools and they will change the governance environment for…
The Open Knowledge Foundation, in partnership with the Open Institute in Kenya and the African Media Initiative have submitted a proposal to the Knight News Challenge on Open Government: AfricanSpending –…
The Open Institute is playing it’s role in the 2013 Election in Kenya by expanding functionality to the Got2Vote application, that was one of the applications built by the Code4Kenya pilot…
Perhaps to answer the question we should start by reviewing what we hoped to do when we started the process. The KODI task force had four streams of activities:…
Below the speech delivered by Jay Bhalla, Executive Director of The Open Institute Trust, during the Code4Kenya Launch Event held on the 24th of January 2013. A very good morning…
The Open Institute is really proud to have helped birth an exciting new viral web campaign that is driving Kenyans to register and go vote.The GotToVote! campaign is the latest…
Ce week-end, ténors de la scène mondiale Open Data participera au Sommet Open d’Afrique, un «Penser / Ne” répondant qui se tiendra à Zanzibar entre Octobre 6 – 9, pour…
This weekend, leading lights in the global Open Data scene will attend the Open Africa Summit, a “Think/Do” meeting to be held in Zanzibar between October 6 – 9, to help…
This past week I was invited by the National Democratic Institute team in Kenya to speak at a conference they organised in Nairobo to discuss the elections. They asked me to discuss…
I said yesterday that, I am likely to have more to say as part of the discussion started by Nathaniel Heller of Global Integrity Commons, wherein he wondered whether Open Data is a good idea…
It’s a great pleasure to welcome you to the Open Institute Website. The Open Institute is a catalyst think-do tank of Domain Experts that provide technical and advisory services in…
