On Nairobi County's tepid approach to digital public participation

Participation of the people, or public participation, is listed in our Constitution, along with patriotism, national unity, sharing and devolution of power, the rule of law, and democracy, as one of Kenya’s national values and principles of governance.

While the katiba does cover various aspects of public participation, what constitutes the threshold is an emerging practical question.

How many citizens must be consulted, and in what formats, to fulfill the constitutional obligation?

In the Nairobi City County Public Participation Bill, 2015, participation is defined as:

the involvement of individuals and groups that are positively or negatively affected by, or that are interested in a proposed project, program, plan, legislation or policy that is subject to a decision-making process.

Article 4 (e) of the Bill also states that the public shall be consulted on how public participation shall be conducted.  In addition to Nairobi, the counties of Laikipia, Busia, Marsabit, Machakos, Kitui and West Pokot have published public participation bills.

NOT JUST WEBSITES

Across Kenya, popular calls for public participation take the form of newspaper advertisements, with occasional public service announcements on television and radio. In some cases, we are seeing the announcements that are usually made on newspapers posted on official government websites.

The consultations are predominantly town hall style, and entail physically showing up. In Nairobi County, the town hall meetings, which have been on my radar, tend to take place on weekdays at City Hall, during morning hours.

Isn’t it time public participation also went digital, or at least incorporated participation via digital channels?  Isn’t it a natural next step for our ‘digital’ governments to test out and incorporate digital participation to supplement the traditional approaches?

The first rule of digital public participation is strategic communication and interaction, which means it is not enough to merely post announcements on websites. Government must also use popular digital channels to convey the appropriate calls to action.

Nairobi County, by virtue of having a large number of digitally connected citizens, should be leading the way in using digital technologies for public consultation and participation.

Here, for instance, is the county’s most recent call for public consultations on the 2016 Fiscal Strategy. A quick skim through the county’s official Twitter account, which does not seem to be very active, does not indicate a broadcast of this call.

The announcement also doesn’t seem to have been posted on the county’s official Facebook page, which has more activity in comparison. Yet county officials probably counted this off as a successful endeavour.

GOING BEYOND VOTING

Using digital technologies to engage the public would obviously mean more “work” for public officials, but it would be futile to resist this inevitable tide.

Understandably, social media content can be overwhelming to sift through and analyse, but we have a range of start-ups and solutions emerging from Kenya’s local technology ecosystem that could be leveraged to solve this problem.

A 2014 study on how ICTs impact governance in East Africa found that the combined use of radio and SMS proved most effective for facilitating citizen participation.

Social media, in particular Twitter and Facebook, were also a viable and favoured means for citizens to facilitate the interaction process.

As with service delivery, the ease of access for those who are connected was a big motivator. However, citizens also indicated that digital participation should be of minimal or no cost to them in order to be viable.

Examples from civil society organisations abound for both the county and national governments to assess and replicate.

We are a democracy that desperately needs to go beyond the voting event as the only notable moment when citizen voices are heard.

Digital technologies that are ubiquitous, easy-to-use and already adopted by many citizens should be one way to cement the national value and principle of public participation enshrined in the Constitution.

It is up to citizens and civil society organisations to push for their use to become a convenient reality.