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Introducing the Badili Initiative

  We are happy to unveil Badili (Swahili for Change), which is an on-line resource to share stories and experiences, initiatives, content, and generally track progress on the data revolution in Africa. This initiative, driven in partnership with Development Initiatives – Africa Hub, Hivos East Africa and the Association of Freelance Journalists, is a contribution to the growing momentum…

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Open Data Day 2015

Open Data Day is back After a very successful Open Data Day 2014, Kenya is once again gearing up for 2015 edition of the International Open Data Day. A gathering of citizens in cities around the world to develop applications, liberate data, create visualisations, publish analyses using open public data to show support for and…

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Players or Spectators – 6 Observations of CSO participation in OGP

Our founder, Al Kags is happy to publish Players or Spectators – Observations on CSO Participation in the Open Government Partnership, a culmination of a study that he conducted while interning at OpentheGovernment.org in August and September this year. “The experience that I gained at OpenTheGovernment.org under the guidance of Patrice McDermott and her colleagues…

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Where are the citizens in Devolution?

Yesterday at the World Bank in Washington DC, I had the pleasure to spend lunch hour reflecting with colleagues there about the progress that Kenya is making with bringing government closer to citizens – especially using devolution. In my reflections, I also discussed not just the practical gaps that exist in making devolution work, but…

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The great thing about fellowship programmes

At Open Institute we are thrilled that our very own Al Kags has been selected as one of the inaugural cohort of Washington fellows, under the Young African Leadership Initiative. Joining 45 other Kenyan fellows, he will be in the US for three months most of which will be spent at Open The Government, a…

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The Open Data Delusion

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 with opening up their data. However, as much as open data holds great promise, there is a real danger of initiatives failing.

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