After getting rid of “bureaucrazy”, Estonia is busy with exporting its digital marvels abroad. Following a successful case of modernising government infrastructure in Benin, another Estonian company is exploring cooperation in Africa. This year, Tallinn-based software company Trinidad Wiseman has successfully completed a major digital development project in Kenya.
In collaboration with the Estonian Centre for International Development Cooperation (ESTDEV) and Kenyan government agencies, Trinidad Wiseman analysed and designed three key public services:
- Birth registration in Kenya’s population registry
- Loan application services for vulnerable groups through the Uwezo Fund
- Information services related to vocational education in Nairobi County
The three-month project is part of Estonia’s largest externally funded digitalisation initiative in Africa, with a budget of €2.4M. Funding came through the Team Europe Initiative’s (TEI) program promoting human-centred digitalisation, led by GIZ through the Kenya Digital Transformation Centre.
The most significant impact came from transforming Kenya’s birth registration process, writes the company. With approximately 1.5M births annually in Kenya and only 80% registered nationally (with regional rates as low as 13.4%), this service was critical to improve. Due to the gaps in the data collection, the country’s population estimates vary by millions at this point.
“Our digital solution reduces the time to issue a birth certificate from an estimated six months to just one day,” says Helen Susan Selirand, a strategic designer at Trinidad Wiseman who participated in the project.
As with any good e-gov design, this was not just a question of writing code and populating databases. During their seven weeks on-site in Kenya, a team composed of a business analyst, strategic designer, and digital designer performed several key tasks: looked for the obstacles and problems faced by service users, identified service bottlenecks, and analysed the needs of service-providing institutions.
Additionally, they created and tested digital service prototypes with local users and developed a comprehensive handbook for designing human-centred digital services in Kenya.
Future Impact
Most public services in Kenya currently require citizens to wait in physical queues, often taking days off work and travelling long distances. The digitalised services will allow users to submit applications and access information directly from their smartphones. The project continues in the pilot phase, carried out by ADM Interactive OÜ.
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