REPUBLIC OF KENYA THE PRESIDENCY MINISTRY OF DEVOLUTION AND PLANNING Report for the year ending 31 December 2014 As we come to the close of 2014, as the Cabinet Secretary responsible for Devolution and Planning, I wish to take this opportunity to thank you for all your support and goodwill. As a Ministry we have been listening keenly to the concerns that Kenyans have raised and designing programmes aimed at addressing these concerns for the betterment of our society. I wish to also thank all the dedicated staff of the Ministry of Devolution and Planning, your commitment and creativity has enabled us achieve results based on our mandate. The Ministry of Devolution and Planning has had some significant accomplishments in 2014. It has also been a year filled with challenges on some of the longer more ambitious programmes but we are excited at the progress we have made. In this report we have detailed the major achievements over the past twelve months (calendar year) and in some cases over the past twenty months, since formation of the Ministry. 1. As the Ministry responsible for Gender and youth matters we are firmly aware that we cannot achieve equitable growth unless we address this dual agenda. Empowering the youth and women and addressing gender and inter- generational equity are key policy areas for the Ministry in fulfilment of the Jubilee promise. The Ministry has in the past year worked on mainstreaming youth and gender issues within Ministries to ensure the needs of these important groups are incorporated into the planning and programmes of the various sectors. Towards this end, the Ministry has been spearheading the following initiatives: a. Supporting and monitoring the implementation of the 30% pul procurement provisions. We are seeing modest success in the 30% allocation of all public procurement to youth, women and persons with 1disabilities (PWDs), with over 4,000 registered companies benefiting in the past eighteen months from public procurement of over KShs 6.4 Billion. As of December 2014 Treasury has over 6,000 companies registered and we will continue to work with Ministries and SAGAs to realize greater allocation of government tenders and contracts to these registered companies. We have also partnered with private sector to support capacity building of both procurement officials (officials in all 18 line Ministries trained) and youth, women and PWD owned businesses and we expect to report even greater progress in the coming year. . Roll-out of the UWEZO Fund. In the year 2014, we have established the institutional architecture to support the implementation of the Fund. Groups that have successfully qualified for award, have gone through a capacity building programme that will enable them utilise the resources in a sustainable way to ensure they can pay back. Most of the constituencies are now disbursing monies to the successful applicants. Re-envisioning the National Youth Service (NYS) as articulated in the NYS 5-Point Plan. The 5-Point Plan outlines the transformative agenda that NYS will have for the youth. Through this plan we will scale up the number of youth recruited to NYS from the 4270 youth recruited in 2013, to 20,000 in 2014/15. In November, we recruited the first batch of 10,000. We will work with an additional 200,000 community youth in various national service programmes aimed at empowering the youth through enterprise development, building community assets and instilling a sense of nationhood and community service. This is the youth re-socialisation philosophy that is the key pillar of the re-envisioned NYS. So far NYS has been involved in a multi-faceted youth empowerment programme in Kibera, aimed at transforming the live of the youth living in Kibera. Working alongside local youth we have built over 50 abulution blocks, model houses, sewer lines, the Darajani — Silanga road, health clinics, police posts, cleaned up the villages and put up street lighting. In addition the Kibeera youth will be left with income generating projects including: fish farming, urban agriculture, posho mills, brick making machinery and will also begin accessing free wifi in desognated areas. By creating opportunities for meaningful engagement for our youth we increase their participation in our communities and reduce the likelihood of their involvement in anti-social activities. |. The Gender Research and Documentation Centre at the Jomo Kenyatta Library at the University of Nairobi was operationalized and we look forward to their contribution in terms of research on gender challenges as well as in documenting Kenya's innovative gender programs.2. The Jubilee Government committed to transforming the public service into an efficient and effective service. In achievement of this objective, the Ministry has focussed on the following: a. Improving the public service experience of citizens by providing an integrated one-stop service delivery solution, through the Huduma Centres. The completed 13 Huduma Centres across the country have had an immediate positive impact on service delivery, making it easier, faster and more convenient for citizens to access government services. Additional centres will be built in the coming year. In addition the partnership with the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) will ensure that this coverage will be further expanded. The first such initiative has been in Kajiado West Constituency, where a Huduma Centre funded by CDF funds was launched this December. b. Capacity Assessment and Rationalisation for the Public Service (CARPS) programme: The Ministry through the Directorate of Public Service Management has embarked on an ambitious program to align and upgrade ‘our public service to meet the demands of the 2ist Century and the expectations of Kenyans. This includes a comprehensive skills and competencies assessment and institutional review that will ensure that skills are matched to mandates. Running concurrently is the biometric data capture exercise which registered over 190,000 existing and newly recruited civil servants at both level of government. It is expected that upon completion, this exercise will contribute to eliminating ghost workers from the government payroll, thus reducing the wage bill. c. As part of the efforts of strengthening human resource management, the Ministry in collaboration with the Public Service Commission developed the Human Resource Decentralization Policy. This policy will ensure that Ministries are better able to manage their human resource capacities and outputs. d. On performance management, H.£ the president has signed performance contracts with all Cabinet Secretaries for the FY 2014/15. As a Ministry we have further cascaded these downwards, by signing with all the respective departments in the Ministry and the 18 state corporations and semi- autonomous government agencies. The Ministry has further developed a comprehensive Monitoring and Evaluation System and Dashboard, through which real-time monitoring of performance will be undertaken, by His Excellency himself and cascaded downwards according to the reporting lines.3. The transition from a centralised system of government to a Devolved system is probably one of the most significant institutional and governance restructuring that has ever taken place in this country. Making Devolution work as was envisioned in the Constitution has been our main objective as a Ministry. To this end the Ministry has undertaken the following: a, The transfer of functions from National to County governments was accomplished with Legal Notice No. 137, which ensured that county governments could effectively assume their responsibilities and had the requisite authority to meet their mandates. As a Ministry we facilitated the establishment and operations of the County operational units including the County Executives and Assemblies through the provision of adequate financial resources (32% of last audited accounts in 2013/14 and 43% in 2014/15); human resources in the form of transitional teams and staff seconded from the national government to the Counties; and finally through provision of the necessary infrastructure (e.g physical facilities for administrative and logistical purposes). The result is that we have fully fulfilled our role in supporting the establishment of all 47 County governments. b. In line with the provisions of the inter-governmental Coordination Act, 2012, as the Ministry responsible for inter-governmental affairs, we have continued to provide technical support to the Inter-governmental Coordinating Summit. We have also facilitated the establishment of other Inter- Governmental mechanisms, including the Inter-Governmental Sectoral Forums, which provide a forum for discussing sectoral policy matters relevant to both national and county governments. . In line with the functions outlined in schedule 4 of the Constitution, the Ministry has developed a National Capacity Building Framework and a framework for Civic Education. Some of the key programs in the areas of capacity development for the Counties have included the training of officers from all the 47 counties on Human Resource Management and Public Finance Management; we have also conducted induction for the County Executive Committees in more than 30 Counties. Civic Education will enable Kenyans better understand the Devolution process, and the processes of planning and public financial management, to ensure that they can effectively participate in these governance processes, and make meaningful contributions. d. The Ministry is in the final stages of finalizing the Devolution Policy to reflect the comments from the stakeholder engagement process. e. We have also developed model laws for the counties awaiting dissemination of the same in the coming year.4. In the area of Planning and Economic Cooperation, the Ministry has focussed on generating up-to-date statistics that would help in development planning as well as providing technical assistance and capacity building for both national and county government in development planning. In so doing the Ministry has undertaken the following: a. The Ministry launched the Second mid Term Plan (MTP II) and finalized and launched its own Strategic Plan (2013-2017) which is aligned to MTP II. We have continued to offer technical support to Ministries in developing their strategic plans. b. We developed and disseminated guidelines for County Integrated Development Planning and disseminated MTP II to all Counties such that they could align their County Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs) to ensure coordinated national and county development. c. As part of our mandate of generating accurate statistics, we rebased the country’s GDP from 2001 to 2009 which will allows us to evaluate economic progress with greater accuracy. In addition we produced the socio-economic atlas, which presents the current socio-economic data in cartographic format, for ease of reference. 5. Ending Drought Emergencies and Development of Arid and Semi-Arid Lands, is critical to promoting sustainable development and is highlighted as a key enabler in the Medium Term Plan 2. This policy objective is being implemented through the following programmes: a. The Hunger Safety Net Program, implemented by the National Drought Management Authority, and funded by the Government of Kenya and the United Kingdom/DFID, provides an unconditional funds transfer designed to alleviate extreme hunger and poverty. This program provided support to 64,794 households, with beneficiaries receiving cash transfers of Kshs. 2,300 per household per month, enabling these households to feed their familes and reducing the complications associated with extreme hunger. b. Towards promoting human development, we have continued to implement the Northern Kenya Education Trust (NOKET), which educates needy, bright girls through a scholarship programme. We have through this trust provided scholarships for 57 bright and needy students which enabled them to attend national and county schools. 6. In the year, a number of Ministry programs have been supported by our development partners and we are grateful for their partnership and support of our development agenda. In addition, as part of our commitment to promoting aid effectiveness through coordination, we facilitated the joint signing of the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) for theyear 2014-2018, within a ‘Delivering as one’ framework. This will ensure a coordinated approach amongst the UN agencies. 7. We have continued not only to transform the public service, but we do so with passion and dedication. The various awards we have received are a testament to this fact. The various awards have included: a. Excellence in Customer Service — Public Sector Category awarded by the Institute of Customer Service. b. The Best Rebrand Award, awarded for the NYS rebranding, by the Marketing Society of Kenya c. 2014 ICT value awards, by the ICT Association of Kenya - Best use of ICT (Ministry category); - Best Use of ICT for Public Service (Huduma Kenya) - Best Use of ICT (State Corporations Category - Women’s Enterprise Fund) - ICT Leadership Award ~ CS Anne Waiguru 8. As we close 2014 and open 2015, we urge you to continue to engage with us, we value your participation and feedback. We are keen to know how to better serve you, 2s we move our country forward. I take this opportunity to wish all of you a prosperous and blessed 2015! ie Anne Waiguru, OGW CABINET SECRETARY