Kenya's Single Registry for Social protection
The Single Registry is a software platform designed to manage and provide integrated oversight of the principal social protection programmes in Kenya. The Single Registry has evolved as part of the broader social protection policy framework, with the following stated objectives:
• to provide increased harmonisation and consolidation of fragmented schemes
• to enhance the responsiveness of social protection initiatives to increase its capacity to quickly scale-up in response to rapid-onset crises.
• to support planning, coordination, accountability at both programme and policy-level decision-making on social protection in Kenya.
Anyone can use the Single Registry as a tool for searching data on Kenya’s social protection programmes and beyond. The data will be most used by local and national government, policymakers, safety net programme designers and managers
The Single Registry contains data on 465,000 beneficiaries from the WFP’s Jenga Jamii and 839,000 households from the National Safety Net Programme and aggregates and analyses this information to support planning, coordination, accountability and both programme and policy-level decision-making. It is also linked to the Kenya National Population Register at the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, and uses that database – of more than 30 million citizens – to verify the identities of the recipients of the cash transfers. To date, over one million beneficiary details have been run against the National Population Register.
The introduction of the Single Registry has increased the transparency, accountability and the functioning of the social protection programmes in Kenya. Previously, managers were unable to answer the simple of question of who was receiving what within each social protection programme. The registry has now linked data from the disparate programmes into one coherent viewing platform, providing a means of managing and cross-referencing the information.
The Single Registry also provides an accessible reporting system and easy-to-use dashboards that generate reports on many aspects of the programmes’ performances. It can show if beneficiary needs are being met, and how targeting of beneficiaries and cash transfers might be better harmonized, aligned and overlap reduced. This information is critical for effective management of the cash transfer programmes and for continued development of social protection policies.
With the implementation of the new constitution in Kenya, a number of functions have been devolved to the county governments. From the county consultations, it was evident that counties are implementing a number of social protection interventions such as agricultural subsidies, women and youth empowerment, supplementary school feeding to mention a few. Although a number of county social protection interventions have been established to complement and supplement national programmes, all do not have robust Management Information Systems (MIS) to support programme operations, which hinders linkage to Single Registry. To address this challenge, the National Social Protection Secretariat (NSPS) with support from Development Partners has developed a generic County Social Protection Management Information System that will be linked to the Single Registry.
Moving forward, NSPS with support from development partners has been in the process of enhancing the Single Registry to be responsive to broader social protection needs. The following enhancements have been undertaken in the Single Registry: (i) development of complementarity module to support automated data sharing and feedback mechanism (ii) development of a generic County SP MIS (iii) development of a dynamic API for linking other SP sectors to the Single Registry.
All these enhancements have been finalised and functionality tested and currently ready for deployment or adoption for use by various SP actors in the country. The enhancement process of the Single Registry is ongoing and the following processes are being undertaken: (i)development of a social registry module for harmonized registration of targeted social assistance schemes, (ii)upgrade of the Single Registry dashboards to include other SP thematic areas as well as SP M&E indicators
Enhanced Single Registry Diagram
what is the future of Kenya’s Single Registry? As illustrated in Figure 2, Kenya’s Single Registry is linked to social assistance program (PWSD CT, CTOVC, OPCT, HSNP, and WFP-CFA) and will continue to be shaped by broader social protection policy dialogue in the country. Currently, the government of Kenya is the process of finalising an investment plan with an ambitious strategy of moving towards a life cycle entitlement programmes. The Single Registry will endeavour to support shock-responsive objectives for some programmes as well as complementary programming. Given the devolution of services and implementation of social protection interventions by County governments, the Single Registry through the generic county social protection management information system (MIS) will play an important role as a policy tool for coordinating and preventing duplication across programmes. Finally, the Single Registry will continue to be the key pillar supporting monitoring, reporting and learning of social protection sector in Kenya.