The role of development partners

• Improve the quality of the BOOST dataset (which provides user-friendly access to granular county budget data) and its release to allow for timely assessment of trends in budgets and expenditures. • Implement improved systems management at the county level, tracking budgets and expenditures to the subcounty level. This will enable the assessment of intracounty disparities in sectoral inputs, outputs, and outcomes.

National and county governments and jointly address the following:

• Implement systematic and coordinated service delivery surveys. Line ministries, working in close coordination with the Kenya National Bureau of

Statistics (KNBS) and county governments, will enable the execution of systematic and coordinated service delivery surveys.

THE ROLE OF DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS

Development partners have played an important role in supporting the national and county governments in establishing devolved institutions, processes, and systems. Development partners have also channeled resources as conditional grants to programs that address financing gaps and encourage performance; these conditional grants programs have shown potential. However, the multiplicity of development partner engagements has also shown the potential to fragment county financing and support inconsistent approaches to service delivery.

In terms of future engagement to support devolution in Kenya, development partners will have to build on their current programs to address the service-delivery bottlenecks identified in this study and implement the recommended policy options. This will demand greater coordination among partners around a common agenda established by the government of Kenya and county governments.

Development partners can help the government to deepen devolution in the following ways:

• Provide national policy-level support and technical assistance for reforms to remove identified service-delivery bottlenecks and promote intergovernmental coordination within and across sectors. Special consideration is urgently needed to support the development of service delivery norms and frameworks; the establishment of a standardized evidence base for devolved sectors, particularly focusing on improving sector management information for service delivery; strengthening county service delivery, budget reporting, and monitoring for results; and addressing staff motivation and absenteeism. • Support funding gaps for service delivery through jointly designed sectoral conditional grants in a way that provides incentives to address service delivery challenges and achieve sector policy objectives within a common framework. Performance-based programs such as the Kenya Devolution Support

Program (KDSP) have shown the potential to catalyze institutional change in counties while financing service delivery investments. • Align capacity-enhancement support to strengthen systems and institutions of both the national government and county governments in ways that address identified challenges to strengthening service delivery. Within this context, county-level support should be targeted toward addressing specific