Kenya's new Constitution and supportive legal framework contain multiple provisions requiring both national government and counties to make information publicly available and consult with citizens in planning and budgeting. Citizen participation affords county governments an opportunity to empower citizens on their operations and to deliberate, debate, and influence the allocation of public resources. This working paper presents practical approaches for Kenyan counties to implement public participation in their systems that encourage meaningful public engagement.
Kenya has embarked on a highly ambitious decentralization that seeks to fundamentally change the relationship between government and citizens under the 2010 Constitution. The Constitution and new legal framework place a strong emphasis on strengthening public participation. This paper summarizes findings and analysis from five working papers and case studies reviewing opportunities and challenges for strengthening public participation in Kenya's newly decentralized system. It provides a consolidated list of recommendations emerging from all the working papers.
This report covers four areas that had been identified by County officers from both the County Executive and the County Assembly as areas that have brought conflict and disharmony in Counties. These issues and challenges cut across Public Finance Management (PFM), public participation, functions and powers of the County actors and formed the basis for capacity building and training intervention that was provided through the Council of Governors (CoG) and Kenya School of Government (KSG) with the support from the Kenya Accountable Devolution Program (KADP). This brief report highlights the issues and challenges identified in four thematic areas and then provides the identified good practices and lessons learned that can be considered and implemented by County Governments. The first chapter discusses the PFM legal framework with reference to the fundamental processes of planning, budgeting, revenue, expenditure, and financial reporting and relates these to identified areas of conflict that are experienced while executing various PFM processes. The chapter also makes corresponding recommendations for good PFM practices in Counties. The second chapter highlights the challenges that County Governments have experienced in rolling out public participation and provides conceptual clarification and examples of good practices. The third chapter highlights areas that were recurring areas of misunderstanding and misinterpretation with regard to the Constitution and legislative framework on devolution (especially relating to functions and powers of the County Executive and County Assembly). Further, it articulates the Constitutional framework and interpretations of key provisions covering those areas of concern to facilitate common understanding that would help reduce recurring operational disharmony and conflicts. The fourth chapter highlights challenges that the County assemblies experience while executing their responsibilities with regard to fiscal matters and suggests good practices that should address these. This report is intended to be a simple, practical, go-to reference resource for County Executives and County Assemblies on common challenges that they experience while executing their roles and responsibilities and suggests good practices that can help them navigate through the challenges.
