 All right, so this is going to be quite different, but hopefully you'll find it also interesting another way Yeah, so my name is Erica Hagen, I'll be talking about Open Mapping and Government Projects in Kenya and the State of Citizen Data so This picture is a participatory budgeting meeting in rural Kenya And so I'll be referencing that a little bit later, but first I'm going to give some background on what is map Kibera so this is aerial imagery satellite imagery of Kibera and Kibera is a slum area in Nairobi in Kenya and the area you're looking at is around estimated two and a half square kilometers and Also estimated quarter of a million residents so extremely tightly a habitat area and In 2009 it was what you might call a blank spot on the map This is open street maps so most of my work centers in some way around Open Street map, which is also known as Wikipedia of maps in case you're not familiar with it So anyone can edit this world map and it was also a blank spot on any publicly available map including the somewhat less complete early Google Maps and basically anything so you just couldn't find it on Maps so that's when my partner and I went to Nairobi and Trained 13 youth that lived there to use Open Street map tool set to put Kibera on the map So this is the fast forward version of What is kind of a complicated? Usually could be a whole presentation, but I want to get to the part about the participatory budgeting so The youth that we recruited to be trained We basically didn't necessarily give them we didn't know if people would be really interested in using technology to create a map and Create it on the internet But as it turned out we did get a lot of interest especially by young people who were excited to learn Anything technical really is including using a computer Which they mostly did not know how to do So these are the kinds of things we mapped in that initial coverage is pretty much just whatever they felt was Important in their community to put on the map that they could kind of see no private data. This is an open data source a Lot of really interesting things that We would not have been able to find or notice so this kind of mapping I Love this kind of informal settlements in general. They're very They're kind of naturally difficult to get any data about but there's always somebody wanting to get data about it Kibera is extremely well researched But as someone mentioned at earlier talk Um, I think it was Emily's keynote. There's a lot of extractive kind of data So it's a lot of researchers coming in and taking maybe pretty intensive data collection and then not Coming back to present any results Or any data back? This is the map produced zooming in a little more recently there's been some tracing that's what those boxes are tracing of Some of the shacks, but mostly we did points Just to reference that then we also created a media Basically a youtube channel and a local media house was turned into be so this was sort of citizen journalism This was also a way to bring stories more To life that were coming out from the mapping. We always had this idea of I guess data journalism in a way Um And this is just another example of what we've done locally. They're mostly in Kibera is map a lot of schools We have this open schools Kenya project that's been ongoing for a few years now In a few different informal settlements mapping particularly these small What you might call informal schools or alternative schools non-governmental schools lots of data about that what each school offers And this is done in collaboration with the schools. This is the kind of school. We mean I mean they have a wide variety of appearance Um, but there's many of them And we always focus on giving data back So kind of right to information I would say So this is a teacher on the left receiving a print map Of that school's data collection which she took part in and this is lucy one of our Team on the right who was one of our original 13 actually and still works for the organization So, but what about it's place like this? Um, so we worked a lot in urban areas where things like I mean mobile phones were not necessarily ubiquitous at first But over time they have become so and the internet has become more easily accessed on such phones There's a lot of awareness of what technology can do Um, if not a lot of access to education about it, but um awareness and We were asked to work on mapping in some rural areas of kenya recently um The reason was that first of all there had been 47 counties created I think it was 2010 when the new constitution was passed to kind of devolve governance to local Authorities in kenya. So they created these new kind of entities counties Which were given a lot of power which previously had been very centralized In the national government, especially budgets So, uh, the world bank had started working with some pilot counties around five I think at the time to train those county officials to do participatory budgeting This was very experimental as well. Um And so this is for example a meeting, you know sitting in the village or in the countryside near your village um discussing the budget priorities like what do you want that county budget to be spent on which is um kind of an amazing and ambitious Thing to do and then passing those priorities up So that had been going on and the projects had been created But they had not necessarily been documented and definitely hadn't been mapped. So we were called in to try to do some kind of Data gathering or create some kind of map Because it was found that during those meetings people would be kind of maybe drawing on the ground or trying to figure out What was where and there was just not this geospatial data. So we did We used cobo this is cobo toolbox to create Which is basically a way to interface with open data kit and That was our mechanism To create this kind of extensive survey of the projects that have been budgeted For example on the right on the left is a school Then on the right is a water point on the bottom is a Bota Bota shed. It's just a cover for that place where they would provide motorcycle taxis Um and in the beginning so our approach is always to involve citizens in data together um in both the gathering the editing the um Deciding what to do with the data, you know, like making use of it that whole kind of process, but in this case um Yeah, in this case we were we were um Let's see we started with some government officials who Were used to the projects being primarily for them and with them And they weren't really sure how to do this kind of citizen like what were we going to do with the citizens or how are we going to Work with them if they were young people they needed transportation. There's always costs involved So in the beginning we ended up with some government folks trying sort of trying to do the mapping with their With their phones and with the app themselves and they were wading through the river They are trying to access these projects. So the products are extremely spread out Hard to access but um, you know, we need to visit every single project So I think after this they became more open to the practicalities of working with communities Um directly and with youth in in those communities the way that map cabera was kind of our um approach This is also them doing some editing. So they also edit the data into open street map After collecting it in cobalt So we got a little more progress towards You know having local youth um do a lot of the mapping at that point So this is in a place called west pokot It's very remote Or it's very far from From Nairobi And some of these young people using the phones to Start to gather that data so um It wasn't just about mapping This is your five-minute warning. Okay This it wasn't just about mapping the locations of the projects, but also gathering feedback So um because they wanted like a photo of the project or we were able to put that in the app um There was an opportunity for there to be a comment on the quality and the progress status So the that youth mapper Living in the same ward with the project would be able to actually put a comment as to How it was going? So for example, here's a few of the Projects I have one over here that was observed excellent poor poor Just to give you some examples. Most of them were adequate or excellent Um, some were completed some were not And then here we actually also got access to the budget. So this is a I mean Kenya signs on to a lot of open government data principles It's not necessarily easy to get that but including open budgets things like that. So some counties would Were actually forthcoming just this this one of the three that we worked with and so we produced kind of a Website here to show all of the projects But we're also always about like how do we get to these people that don't go on the internet? um, we like to paint maps on walls This is actually the whole print map Um, wait the print map is next. I think yeah, this is the print map that we designed based on that data And we actually had somebody paint it um each one on different walls in those locations So they could see like where they're essentially where their uh government tax money is going In their actual community or where it's supposed to be going and here's a PB meeting where they were using that printed map to kind of identify like what's been done kind of catch up So basically like a community M&E system almost this is a more urban participatory budgeting meeting Um, so just really quick. So a lot of challenges come up when working with governments and data Data literacy technical literacy geo data in particular in these counties is seen as kind of a separate thing And they were starting up all these GIS labs um But separate from say an M&E office. So these two things needed to be connected, but Um, so the way that data was conceptualized is what we were kind of trying to have some influence over More integration There's a lot of competition to fund different things in each county So the different ministries within each county might be pulled in different directions by projects that should be coordinated And citizens being not really part of the government and citizens are really seen as distinct, you know Civil society is this other thing So there's not really procurement structures even to bring in like if they need to have a stipend like a young person in the rural area doing all day Traipsing around gathering this data You know paying for their own food and transport. They really can't even afford that so And also while we were working there was a budget crisis so the counties weren't really receiving the money from central government So there's a lot of ins and outs of how We ended up having to work With different departments and different kinds of data sets that we were provided and cleaning it all up kind of which I would I would like to get into. I don't know if I really have any more time or are we on Questions period or should I talk a little more? You're welcome to talk a little more. We have five minutes left Okay, there are no questions at the moment. So Well, please chime in with a question and meanwhile, I'll just say a little more about that so essentially like you know getting I guess many of you might have worked with government data um But in rural kenya the government data it might be you know, somebody might have a spreadsheet But somebody else might have a paper list and it's like, you know, you're trying to kind of Match what the the finance department is giving you these are the projects that were budgeted in the participatory budgeting But then each department is responsible for implementing. So it'd be like the health department or the school's department or Lands as kind of planning department infrastructure projects. So it's very Hard to kind of harmonize. I mean there's a need to harmonize all of that Um, can you please say how the geodata is looked at a separate? Okay, so that's a question. Um Well, well, we were there. There was this kind of idea that gis labs were important and it was kind of Coming down from national government policies And then funders will come in like un type funders International aid organizations. So once so we showed up at one county meeting Suddenly there's like a sign on the door that was like gis lab. We're like, oh, okay. We didn't know this was happening so It's like but there were already eminy Officers and sort of data that was non georeferenced in that government office So then they kind of bring in, you know, they basically a gis lab to them consist of several computers and maybe a really big printer That no one knows how to use um And people that you know a couple of young very young kind of fresh graduates that had studied gis But not really studied much more than gis. So That's that was kind of like then how does that integrate with these existing Data concepts, you know, it's kind of like maps would be Seen as like well, we just need to make a map Not as like a type of data that happens to have coordinates Um associated to it How does the community feel about having their data out in the open? This is an interesting. Oh, so I saw your talk. Um So in kibara, we Found we were asked that a lot in the beginning But people that we were working with primarily these youth and the organizations. Maybe that were our partners They were really keen on having visibility so we kind of worked from a model of like Um visibility being away towards power as opposed to maybe what it looks like in the amazon So it's an interesting contrast because already being in the center of nirobi um You are Kind of visible but invisible. I don't know if that makes sense, but you're just not prominently There's no sort of power to being off the map in a place that's very Like it's the central hub of economy So not being there to people that that we worked with and to pretty much haven't got a lot of pushback on this from anyone In kibara, it was more of a like who's actually telling our story. So There's pushback to people that come to the informal settlements with um You know a desire to like a lot of photography things filming people don't like outsiders coming in doing photography filming there's an idea that people can come in and um Like use people um For their own benefit somehow and sort of take from people But having but being present on kind of a map that has been created locally or having video On youtube that's been created locally. So it has that legitimacy From like okay, we're from here and we're creating it that has been more of an empower empowering thing for people I or at least that's the feedback that I've had So it's interesting to me to sort of flip that around to think about the the power that can be and you know Keeping data private Um, of course, we're not working. We've never done household mapping So it's a little bit different than some other exercises that might happen um But yeah, happy to talk about that more Erica, thank you. Thank you so much for that talk. It was really interesting and A lot of things that felt very familiar to to work that I've done as well I thought it was like really interesting really valuable um We need to move on but um, I think ruda would like to continue the conversation in slack and also Laurie mcneill has a question Which will Sarah will make sure is copied and we'll go up in the q&a channel in slack So thank you very much. Thank you everybody Um and Kathleen I will now