open data - Al Kags — Strategist, Social Entrepreneur, Writer

August 23, 2021

Thinking about Hewlett Foundation’s Strategy and Decolonising Philanthropy

In this blogpost, I decided to be a bit presumptive - to pronounce myself on the idea of decolonising development (and by extension, philanthropy) and to make comments on Hewlett Foundation's Transparency Participation and Accountability Strategy for the coming five years. First, A Short story "What do ...

April 1, 2021

Beyond the top 1% of Kenyans and the employed, there are Kenyans who don’t exist.

A couple of weeks ago, there was an article in the Business Daily that has costed me many nights of sleep and much consternation. That report has been a major distraction in my mind these past couple of weeks that I almost have been ...

August 26, 2016

Last year, I attended the very successful Africa Open Data Conference and there I said some things that I was later told are unpopular within the Open Data industry - particularly in the civil society. On reflection, I find that I still stand by what ...

April 16, 2016

Why the reality of philanthropy confounds me.

Note from me: I usually write about work stuff on the websites of the organisations that I represent - and that is because necessarily the views that I blog about there, align with the views of the organisation that I represent. This, however, is my ...

June 16, 2014

Essential Question: Can Open Government Really Change the World?

I have just started the six-week academic sessions of the Washington Fellowship at the Arizona State University. During this time, I shall spend my time learning and considering many aspects of civic leadership and most of all, I shall be considering an essential question, which is ...

March 1, 2013

Lessons from KODI: Completing the Job

My friend, Alex Howard from O'Reilly Radar, asked me a question in September last year that I have wrestled with since: "What are the lessons learnt from the Kenya Open Data Initiative experience?" I have wrestled with this question all of this time because I don't take "Lessons Learnt"questions ...

September 11, 2012

Why not? Why can’t Kenya vote via SMS?

In my last post, I promised to share my musings on the Kenyan elections. I did muse a little on this subject at the NDI Conference on Technology and Transparency and in general, the faces of my audience told me that I am too simplistic ...

September 24, 2011

The Power of Open: my reflections

I said yesterday that, I am likely to have more to say as part of the discussion started by Nathaniel Heller of Global Integrity Commons, wherein he wondered whether Open Data is a good idea for the Open Government Partnership. Of course, I hold that ...

September 23, 2011

Open Africa: Kenya achieves another milestone

This week, as the world went through its annual routine of holding the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, a very significant global milestone was achieved: 38 governments of the world made known their strong explicit intention to adopt principles of Open Government in ...

September 11, 2011

The value of Open Data

Today, I have been thinking a great deal about Open Data and the value that would - or should (or maybe must) be assigned to Open Government Data. This is especially because dealing with government officials in Africa, I have found myself needing to make ...

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