National Government Administration Officers (NGAOs) in Garissa County are undergoing a three-day training on data use which will support government planning and decision-making.
The training that brought together Deputy County Commissioners, Assistant County Commissioners, chiefs and assistant chiefs from across the county, organised by the State Department for Economic Planning, seeks to strengthen the capacity of local administrators to collect, manage, validate and utilize accurate data to support government planning and decision-making.
Economist and data scientist Dr Danielton Mwaka, who was the lead trainer, said accurate, locally generated data was critical to ensuring that government planning responded to the actual needs of communities.
“Data is the new gold,” Mwaka said, noting that planning often missed the mark when accurate data reflecting local realities was not properly collected and utilised.
He said the growing use of digital technology has created an opportunity to transform grassroots data collection, with NGAO officers equipped with digital tools that can transmit information instantly to national dashboards.
According to Mwaka, the system will enable the government to monitor projects in real time while also creating avenues for citizens and government officers to provide feedback on projects and services.
“We do not want different parts of government working in silos because, when that happens, we sub-optimise,” he said, stressing the need for a unified data-collection framework to eliminate duplication of effort and resources.
Mwaka said NGAO officers were particularly important in the process because of their proximity to communities and their understanding of local conditions.
He said that unlike periodic censuses, grassroots data collection should be continuous to ensure that government has up-to-date information to guide interventions.
He added that Konza Technopolis had developed an application that would be rolled out to NGAO officers to facilitate faster and continuous collection of data from the grassroots.
The application is expected to help government establish the status of projects, identify community priorities and determine areas requiring urgent intervention.
“The training is expected to leave the Garissa NGAO team better equipped to collect and manage grassroots information and ensure that data generated at the community level contributes to evidence-based planning, resource allocation and the implementation of the country’s long-term development agenda,” he said.
Garissa County Commissioner John Cheruiyot who officially opened the training said local administrators already played a critical role in various government statistical and registration exercises, but the training would equip them with additional skills to convert their extensive grassroots knowledge into reliable data.
“You know almost everything that is happening in your village. The challenge is how to convert that knowledge into useful and reliable data,” Cheruiyot said.
He urged chiefs and assistant chiefs to prioritise accuracy when collecting information, saying the data generated at village, sub-location and location levels would have a direct bearing on development planning.
Cheruiyot noted that local administrators were well positioned to provide information on government projects within their jurisdictions, including infrastructure and affordable housing projects, as well as issues relating to security and other public services.
He said data was equally important in security management, compliance and the protection of government information, urging the officers to understand what information they were required to collect, how to maintain it and how to protect it.
“You are the backbone of data collection at the grassroots level,” he told the officers.
Cheruiyot said county development plans, including County Integrated Development Plans, rely heavily on statistics and therefore called on the administrators to ensure that information submitted from the grassroots was clear, accurate and verifiable.
Rashid Shama, an official at the State Department for Economic Planning said the training was also intended to strengthen the link between grassroots data and the country’s long-term development planning under Kenya Vision 2060.
He said the extensive NGAO network would provide an important channel through which data collected from communities could be transmitted and subsequently validated.
“The importance of data is that it provides a basis for decision-making,” Shama said, adding that the government wanted to move away from decisions based on assumptions or hearsay.
He said reliable information on issues such as population, water shortages, the number of learners and teachers was essential in determining how government resources should be allocated.
Shama gave the example of education planning, saying data could help establish where schools and teachers were actually needed instead of allocating resources based on assumptions.
“We do not want to have a situation where we are building schools where there are no children,” he said.
He said with accurate data, scarce public resources could be directed to areas where they were most needed and utilised effectively.
