1,000 Government Datasets Are Going Up For Sale

The government wants to start earning money from non-personal data collected through platforms such as eCitizen and other public agencies. Under a proposed National Data Governance Policy, a State run marketplace would be created where businesses, researchers, NGOs and innovators can buy access to anonymised datasets.

The data would not include personal information such as names, phone numbers, ID numbers, email addresses or photographs. Instead, it would consist of aggregated statistics such as business registrations, passport applications, birth and death trends, vehicle registrations, land transactions, traffic patterns and crop production data.

To manage the initiative, the government plans to establish a National Data Governance and Emerging Technologies Council and a Data Governance Office. The marketplace is expected to make at least 1,000 datasets available over the next five years.

Why this matters
Supporters argue that government agencies sit on large amounts of valuable information that can help businesses make investment decisions, researchers study economic and social trends, and innovators develop new products and services. Selling access to this data could also create a new source of government revenue without introducing new taxes.

However, the success of the plan will depend on strong safeguards. One concern is that data described as “anonymous” is not always impossible to trace back to individuals. In some cases, combining different datasets can reveal information about specific people, a challenge that has emerged in data sharing programmes around the world.

Public trust will also depend on transparency about how government data is collected, stored, priced and shared. While the government says only anonymised and aggregated data will be sold in line with Kenya’s data protection laws, the effectiveness of those protections will ultimately be judged by how they are implemented and enforced.