A practical guide to delivering devolution

As a Kenyan, this is the time to ask yourself whether devolution has made a real difference in your life.

Some of the questions you should ask are: Did devolution help my children become healthier, better educated and better suited for the job market? Did devolution bring me electricity and water? Or was my only experience of devolution, the raising of a large cloud of choking dust from the fast-passing motorcade of my county Governor?

Kenyans expected that devolution would make their lives and the lives of their community better; and thus enable their personal aspirations for the future to become a reality. In other words, they want devolutionto deliver.

This is precisely the topic of this year’s National Devolution Conference where national and county governments as well as other stakeholders will meet next week to discuss the challenges and opportunities of delivering under a devolved system.

We are entering the second phase of devolution. The pioneer Governors and Deputy Governors of the first phase were laying the foundations of their county administrations. In the second phase of devolution, they should now focus exclusively on delivering to the Kenyan people.

But how do you deliver to the Kenyan people? Let us give you our joint perspective of a former Deputy County Governor of a Kenyan County in one of Kenya’s most historically marginalized regions, Isiolo. And an ambassador of a highly devolved foreign country - Switzerland. Indeed, the Swiss approach to devolved government is only slightly less famous than Swiss cheese and forms a global benchmark for non-centralized participatory democracy.

The two of us have been discussing the promise of devolution for many months now, both in formal and informal forums, and would now like to share a few insights with the Kenyan public.

One of the most important lessons learned thus far is that the county leadership should not promise too much. But must also then keep the few promises that are made. To illustrate this point, consider the example of the post-election period back in 2013 when Mohamed Guleid as the Isiolo Deputy Governor-elect, together with his Governor, faced the expectations of an electorate to whom they had promised heaven on earth during the campaigns.

As soon as the elections were over and they had won, the reality started dawning on them. To implement devolution was not going to be that easy. As a new county government, they inherited a huge number of civil servants and debts from the previous local authority. They also discovered that most of the county employees never had any form of job description and finding ways of managing this workforce was quite a challenge.

To make matters worse, the resources to be devolved to the counties for reducing poverty - and the billions of shillings from the shared revenue to make these challenges disappear like magic - was never to come.

Frustrations started early enough. Within the first six months signs of discontent started. The Governor and Mr Guleid had the daunting task of explaining to the electorate that the much-expected development was going to take a long time.

Where the money goes...

In fact, the citizens of Isiolo County were surprised to learn that most of the funds from the National Government were to be used for paying salaries and recurrent expenditures. “Surely this can’t be true”, said many of the people.

So, the most important lesson to come from this first phase of devolution was that the leadership must manage the expectations of the people. Don’t promise too much. Instead, choose a few thematic development goals and remain focused on them.

The second lesson would be on the prime importance of creating an accountable administration with professional employees. And on this Kenya can learn something from the example of the Swiss system.

When Dr Heckner joined the Swiss Foreign Service, he met a highly dedicated and professional administration. There was a reason for this: The Swiss diplomatic service has a tough and constant performance system in place that evaluates every single staff member every three years. In addition, to become an ambassador you must pass successfully three assessments during your diplomatic career.

Most significantly, in all these years Dr Heckner never met anybody in the Swiss administration who had any family link to one of the Foreign Ministers or the State Secretaries. Diplomats are hired on merit, not based on family connections.

But it took years to understand one important thing: Why diversity was key to a good administration. The Swiss Administration is trilingual with German, French and Italian. Any federal employee is free to speak and write his mother tongue, and the others are expected to understand. But what seems to be complicated had an incredible advantage: Different languages in an administration mean different cultures and most importantly different ways of dealing with issues and different ways of finding solutions to problems. Diversity turns an administration into a creative administration.

But it’s not enough to have a professional and creative administration. An administration has to be accountable. Two important measures make the Swiss administration less prone to abuse of office or corruption: Swiss federal employees are well paid and have to undergo regular security clearances.

As a high-ranking official, an Ambassador needs security clearance every five years. His bank accounts and tax files are thoroughly checked. His employer wants to know every detail of his private life and even the life of his family. He has to answer personally all these questions. These regular security clearances have an important preventive effect.

Finally, there are the internal audits of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. This audit unit assesses the performance and accountability of all administrative units of the Foreign Department. Embassies, consulates and cooperation offices abroad and the directorates and divisions at headquarters are regularly audited. The Internal Audit unit would correspond with the Auditor General’s Office in Kenya.

If Kenya was to come up with its own version of the Swiss approach to creating an accountable administration, this would go a long way towards putting an end to the comment often made by Kenyan critics of devolution to the effect that “the only thing that has been devolved is corruption”.

Mr Guleid is a governance consultant is the chairman, Frontier Counties Development Council, Dr Heckner is Ambassador of Switzerland to Kenya