At the Devolution Conference in Eldoret starting August 15, Makueni Governor Mutula Kilonzo Junior will be keen on showing his colleagues heading other counties an innovation that has surprised him and the rest of the leadership of his county – an app.

Although Makueni is only one of two counties using the myCounty app, it has begun working wonders, according to the leadership.

“We have decided as a Cabinet we are going to showcase myCounty app,” Governor Kilonzo declared at a recent event in the county.

Since the app’s launch in the county in April, the Governor said, the county has recorded the highest revenue collected since the advent of devolution in March 2013, when Kenyans across the 47 counties elected their first governors.

The app has provided a direct channel through which the county’s residents can engage their devolved government.

“This ensures our decision-making process is not based on assumptions but is informed by the actual requirements of the citizens,” said Elizabeth Ndungi Muli, the County Executive Committee Member for ICT, Education, and Internship.

“Through the app, real-time data on various aspects such as service usage, citizen feedback, and emergency situations are collected, analysed, and responded to effectively and on time. And we can go further. By leveraging this data, we can identify trends, patterns, and areas of improvement, enabling us to make more informed decisions, policies and allocate resources effectively,” she added.

Governor Kilonzo took the leap into the unknown earlier this year to have the app developed for the county.

“When I assumed office, we recognised from the onset that by digitising our county processes and services, we would embrace and facilitate innovations that allow the private sector to partner with the government. We, therefore, sought to dismantle the boundaries that hindered efficient service delivery and equitable access to government services. And through this app, we empower our citizens, deliver services right to their hands and give them a voice in the governance process,” he said.

For Safaricom, the ambition is to have all counties using the app.

The app seeks to ease access and payment of county services for the public, saving them from having to visit county offices for manual payments. Counties will benefit from more convenient  24/7 access to their services, increased revenue collection and better visibility of revenue collection and performance.

For county governments, it offers a sure way to avoid revenue leakage, as payments can be made directly on the platform.

It offers governors a platform where the electorate can interact directly, raise their issues, or give feedback.

Before it was developed, Emman Atwa, who led the Safaricom team that developed the app, spent hours in Makueni and other counties finding out what the county government needed.

“From a county perspective, sitting with different governors showed us that counties are struggling with revenue management. There’s a lot of cash collection but at the same time, a lot of leakage in terms of revenue. Issues of having substandard revenue management systems have also continued to expose counties to fraud and bribes,” said Emman.

For citizens, they found that many people struggle with the technical know-how of county payment services such as parking fees, environment and water, licenses, land, and urban planning.

Accessing and engaging with their county leaders has also proven to be quite challenging for many. The app gives a unique standard experience that provides all those services backed up by digital notifications in terms of receipts as well as a direct link to the county leaders.

The highlight feature of the app is the unique Sema na Governor feature that allows you to chat with your Governor by filling a form. This form requires you to fill in the title and description of your issue, your location, an option to attach an image, and an option to share and submit the form anonymously.

There was a frenzy of activity in the county as the app was being developed, said Boniface Mungania,  Director of Public Sector Digital Transformation at Safaricom.

“Two broad activities have been involved. The first one involved scoping, and the scoping started in the office of the Governor, where he gave us the vision. We’ve dragged him into endless Teams calls to try and understand whether we are in line,” said Mungania at the app’s launch.

The second step was the collaboration between the teams from the county and Safaricom to co-create the user journey – how a person will use the app – and the actual development. It was done concurrently, like driving two vehicles at the same time, said Mungania.

To get the development of the app going, the team first needed to establish whether the county had a revenue management system.

Makueni County had a system in place. The Safaricom team then integrated the system into the app through what is known in their parlance as a digital experience layer.

“This is basically the gateway through which the apps, which are the access channels, connect to the different revenue management systems and based on that, it is easier for us to make sure that the different services exposed or created within the revenue management systems are exposed to these channels,” said Emman.

The channels are in the form of USSD, the app, the mini-app on the M-PESA super app, a web version accessible on a computer and, in the future, on WhatsApp.

Explaining the integration of the channels and the cloud hosting to the stakeholders and the Governor was one of the big challenges the team had to deal with but once people got hold and bought into the vision of the leadership, the knowledge was decentralised. Time was also a challenge because a lot of movement between counties was involved but needed to be done. .

For Elizabeth Ndungi Muli, the County Executive Committee Member for ICT, one of the hardest was dealing with the fear of the unknown.

“The worry of whether it will work or not. Embracing a new but revolutionary technology and introducing a digital transformation initiative can be intimidating, especially when it involves significant changes to existing processes and systems,” she said.

Luckily for them, she said, they were working with a dedicated team and had express political will from the top, with the Governor personally tracking the development and giving feedback to the teams.

George Njuguna, the Director Information Technology at Safaricom, described the collaborative approach in developing the app as a unique concept.

“This is the first time we have ever built an application in the way we have done It has laid the foundation that all other counties, and even the national government, can copy. We don’t need to redo this afresh. We did Makueni in four weeks. We believe we can do the others in even two weeks,” said Njuguna at the launch of the app.

How it works

To access the app services, one needs to download the myCounty app from the Appstore following all registration prompts.

The first step for a user is to select a particular county which thereafter prompts the app to open the home screen that makes it easy to select the array of county services and featured news.

The app also has engagement features for emergency services such as access to the police, ambulances as well as firefighters.

The myCounty platform is accessible via multiple channels, such as USSD short code, Android, and a mini-app available on the M-PESA Super App. In the current phase of development, the team is looking at introducing the iOS (iPhone Operating System) and Web versions of it as well as including a WhatsApp chat service with the county leaders. These options make it a technology-friendly platform for diverse users.

To deal with cash collections, the team hopes to empower M-PESA agents along the pipeline to receive money on behalf of the county and get a receipt on the same.

According to Emman, the future is bright and they are inviting partners to plug in and scale up the platform to a national level. The team also plans to benchmark in Africa through which other devolved government systems can look at how they are empowering county governments to offer superior services to their citizens.

“Product management has evolved in the last decade and will keep evolving. It is important that we open our systems and have a lot more stakeholders’ plug in for the different value points because that is how you give superior value to the customers at the end of the day,” Emman said.

From his experience from making the decision to have the app developed and now using it, Governor Kilonzo has a word of advice for his fellow leaders who might be wary of using ICT to bring in more revenues and speak directly to the electorate.

“Embrace the discomfort and uncertainty that accompanies disruptive innovation. Challenge the status quo and dare to venture into uncharted territories. Recognise that the implementation of this app is not just a technological upgrade but a paradigm shift in governance. Challenge existing power structures and hierarchies, empowering citizens as active participants in decision-making processes and don’t forget, there will always be resistance to change, so lead from the front,” he said.