KENYA
AT A GLANCE
Head of Government: President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Amolo Odinga
Next election: 2012
Capital: Nairobi
Population: 35.7 million
Independence: 1963 from UK
Human Development Index (HDI): 144th out of 179 countries
Gender Gap Index (GGI): 88th out of 130 countries
Gross National Index (GNI) per capita: US$680
Status: Complete, 2009
Local Organization: Office of the Prime Minister
Canadian Experts: Russ Robinson, Ivan Blake and David Gray
Article: Advising the Prime Minister of Kenya: A Report from Nairobi by Tony Dean, appeared in Public Sector Management magazine in 2009
The subject of disputed elections in 2007, Kenya is one of IPAC’s most interesting, challenging places to work. This year, IPAC has worked on two projects in Kenya, both of which involve the newly founded Office of the Prime Minister under the first ever Coalition Government in Kenya.
In the first project, we were asked to organize an evaluation of the “Results for Kenyans” program, which, since 2004, has been working to embed a culture and practice of results-based management across the Kenyan Public Service to improve service delivery for citizens. The program was nurtured under the auspices of the Public Service Reform and Development Secretariat (PSRDS), but following the 2007 election dispute, PSRDS was merged with another secretariat responsible for performance contracting and relocated to the Office of the Prime Minister. To gauge future directions for the “Results for Kenyans” program, IPAC was asked to coordinate an evaluation of the program’s results thus far. Canadian experts T. Russell Robinson, David Gray and Ivan Blake, working in partnership with colleagues at the Africa Development Professional Group based in Nairobi, conducted the evaluation, funded by CIDA’s Deployment for Democratic Development. The team found that “Results for Kenyans” has made significant progress in changing the orientation of the public service – most notably, in the areas of performance contracting and rapid results initiatives. Some of the more ambitious components, such as the National Performance Management Framework, will take longer than expected to catch hold.
Concurrently, IPAC was asked to work on a second project in the Office of the Prime Minister to support strategic planning, policy and prioritization. Tony Dean, a former Secretary to Cabinet in the Province of Ontario, was deployed to Kenya for six weeks on IPAC’s behalf to undertake this initiative, funded by UNDP, with the objectives to support the PM’s Office in establishing better capacity and momentum and to address a perceived absence of tangible levers to give full effect to the PM’s mandate. As part of this effort, Mr. Dean helped in developing a strategic plan and mechanism for the identification of key priorities; identifying actual priorities; and supporting the development of relevant policy and policy frameworks to facilitate implementation of the plan. Mr. Dean will be a keynote presenter at IPAC’s upcoming forum on transformative leadership in Kenya, along with other prominent Canadians, such as Bob Rae.