Enhanced Single Registry for Social Protection
Background
Social Protection in Kenya has experienced significant growth in the past few years; this includes the exponential growth in the number of beneficiaries households covered to the current over 1.5 million in 2018 from all the counties. This growth, however, has been plagued by a number of challenges. The main challenge has been fragmentation and lack of coherent coordination mechanisms, which results in missed opportunities for ensuring efficiency of the investments made. Consequently, duplication of effort and parallel implementation structures do not optimize the limited capacity or support a coherent approach to capacity building across the sector.
As part of efforts to address this challenge, the Social Protection Secretariat (SPS) has developed a Single Registry System for the social protection programmes as part of the implementation of National Social Protection Policy and the Vision 2030. The objective of this system is to consolidate information from the different management information systems (MIS) for the SP programmes that are currently operated independently by different departments and ministries.
The goal of establishing the Single Registry MIS is to provide accurate and analytical reports on the performance of the social protection sector. The objectives of the program are as follows:
- Provide increased harmonization and consolidation of fragmented social protection schemes through comprehensive oversight of all social protection initiatives
- For better communication to the general population and target audiences
- To provide a single platform where common and essential information across social protection programmes are stored, analyzed and reported for the benefit of the stakeholders.
- To provide checks against one beneficiary receiving multiple benefits within and across programme
- Helps in the elimination of fraud by ensuring that beneficiary details are verified electronically against the 30 million National Population Registry (IPRS) database. This ensures that the programmes pay only genuine beneficiaries.
- Strengthen Monitoring &Evaluation of National safety Net Programme by providing reports against indicators on a bi-monthly, Bi-annually and annual basis based on established monitoring and evaluation framework.
- Expose potential area(s) for social protection effort(s)
The system currently has information from the following programmes: Cash Transfer for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (CT-OVC), Older Persons Cash Transfer Programme (OPCT), Persons with Severe Disability Cash Transfer (PwSD-CT) – which are under the Ministry of Labour and East African Affairs; Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP) – under the National Drought Management Authority and the World Food Program (WFP) Cash for Assets Program. The Single Registry joins key information from the five cash transfers on registration and enrollment, payments, complaints and grievances and change management for the beneficiaries as well as a link to the Integrated Registration Service (IPRS) to validate beneficiary national ID details. Figure 1 illustrates the current data sources of the Single Registry.
At present, the single registry links programs in the social assistance component of social protection. Going forward, linkage to other components of social protection will be sought such as social security and health insurances.
Single Registry Data Sources
The Single Registry is a web portal that allows anyone with internet access to gather key statistics regarding the programs that are linked. Authorized users, such as the implementing officers can gain access to the restricted area which provides more information on beneficiaries of the cash transfer programs that are linked. Click here to access the Single Registry.
The following are some of the benefits of the Single Registry:
- Efficient program monitoring
- Reduced double registration
- Increased transparency and accountability
- Seamless and efficient transfer of data
- Enhanced quality of operations and services for field officers
- Baseline Data for future programs