The desire for evidenced-based policies and practices cannot be overemphasized when the world is grappling with issues of climate change, increase in human population, and conflict among other. In Kenya, different agencies have collected data over a long period of time. However, the greatest challenge has been how to bring these data together to inform decision making.
Conservation International through Vital Signs got funding from Schooner Foundation to help the government of Kenya to develop and integrated online platform (Data Integration for Sustainable Development Platform). This made it possible for data from about 10 different agencies with over 40 indicators to be hosted at one place. With the realization that generating information form data is central, the system incorporated capabilities for simple and quick analysis of the data. The implementation of this was done by Jeff Worden, a consultant and the director of Osilalei Ltd.
The Platform is an ambitious vision to transform decision making in the country. It integrates data from various priority themes and displays visualizations that can be used by policy makers and other key data users to:
- Support decisions and formulation of policies
- Catalyze demand for more information
- Monitoring and assessment
- Integrated planning- Better data for decision making.
- Cutting edge data for informed decision making in the country.
- Challenge policy makers to make data accessible and use it when making decisions.
- Data assessment showed that there is a need for enhanced demand for data; required support production of data and to coordinate future efforts.
On 29th March 2019, Vital Signs took part in a stakeholder’s workshop on Data Integration for Sustainable Development at Pride Inn in Nairobi. The stakeholders were drawn from different sectors including the ministry of environment and natural resources, ministry of tourism and wildlife, academia, Museums of Kenya, private sector among other. The workshop’s main agenda were;
- Give an update on the current status of the platform
- Training all stakeholders on how to utilize the platform
- Through group discussion identify opportunities and priorities for utility
- Discussions and suggestions on Institutional Framework-Sustainability of the platform
It emerged from the workshop that indeed the platform will be a critical tool in enabling the government of Kenya and other stakeholders to develop:
- SDG reporting
- Conservation status report
- Status of forests report
- Water towers module
- Climate change action module
For more information, please email tkiptenai-kemboi@conservation.org