Highlights Of The e-Sir Design Workshop

 Ona at the e-SIR design workshop.

Last week Ona took a trip to Naivasha for a two-day design workshop with representatives from UNICEF Kenya, the Ministry of Devolution and Planning, and sub-county level officials. We all worked together to define requirements for the Electronic Social Intelligence Reporting (e-SIR) project.

 Defining user personas for e-Sir

Social Intelligence Reporting (SIR) is an initiative led by the Kenyan Government through the Ministry of Devolution and Planning (MDP) with the support of UNICEF Kenya. The initiative aims to enhance evidence-based budgeting for social services and improve accountability for public resources. Ona was appointed by UNICEF and the government of Kenya to help develop the e-SIR platform that is to replace the existing paper-based Social Intelligence Reporting system. This includes making it possible for sub-county staff to collect data at community level service points (schools, health facilities, etc.) through digital forms on their smartphones. The system will also provide powerful data analysis tools at the sub-county and county level to help with their local planning and reporting. We will also build a national level dashboard to help the Ministry of Planning and other line ministries better understand the community level needs in order to better respond with program planning and budgeting.

 SIR users voting on what information is to be captured in the e-SIR dashboards.

The design workshop was led by Roger Wong, our design lead at Ona, who facilitated a set of highly interactive user centered design exercises. These included sketching, organizing post-its, and actual form reviewing by users. We use these types of methodologies to engage actual users in order to better understand their needs and develop a system that really works for them. Through these exercises, we were able to get an idea of what the sub-county officials are expecting from the e-SIR system.

One stakeholder’s vision of e-SIR.

As a result of the design workshop, Ona will use the information gathered to develop a working prototype that will be piloted and tested in Turkana sub-county in mid October 2016.