Laws and good intentions may only go so far in eliminating corruption from government, while digitization packs a more potent punch, according to a Kenyan government official.

Though there was some resistance to the idea of opening up official records because it might “give a bad name for government,” Kenya has made strides, said Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary of Kenya’s information and communications ministry, during a wide-ranging interview with Corruption Currents on Tuesday at our offices in New York.

Digitizing records gets government data into the hands of people who need it, and it had the positive byproduct of unleashing the innovation of Kenya’s youth, he said. The Kenyan government, he said, set up incubation centers for its youth to tinker with the data to create apps, which help make the information more useful.

Ndemo was in town for the launch of the Open Government Partnership, a multilateral initiative aimed at fighting corruption and increasing the transparency of governments. Kenya is one of the 38 countries that said Tuesday they would have a plan released by the partnership’s next meeting in 2012; the country’s plan is already publicly available.

2:57 pm  •  22 September 2011  •  4 notes