Decision-maker’s challenge

Government services can only be expected to work for citizens if sufficient resources are available and the underlying systems for allocating and managing these resources, also known as Public Financial Management (PFM) systems, facilitate equitable and efficient service delivery. Strengthening countries’ PFM has been at the core of technical assistance for decades, guided by the conventional objectives of aggregate fiscal discipline, allocative efficiency, and operational efficiency. While these principles remain important, recent global discourse has highlighted a critical gap: improvements in PFM systems and compliance have not consistently translated into better service delivery or development outcomes. This renewed perspective emphasizes the need to reorient public finance reforms toward outcomes. Achieving this shift requires more than principles alone. Ministries of Finance require additional tools and capabilities to design their own policy in light of considerations related to equity, timeliness, and predictability of service delivery under different policy scenarios. Targeting these outcomes requires an evidence-based approach and feedback loops that foster learning and iteration.

IDinsight received funding from the Gates Foundation to support the Government of Kenya in strengthening its use of data and evidence in PFM to ensure scarce resources go to the most impactful programmes and services. The LP model has enabled us to co-create solutions to key PFM challenges together with Government and CSO partners. By strengthening how the government tracks, analyses, and uses information, we are helping Kenya direct scarce resources to the programmes and services that deliver the greatest impact for its people. 

Impact opportunity

Governments remain the primary providers of essential public services such as healthcare, education, and infrastructure. Yet across many low- and middle-income countries, the ability to finance these services is increasingly constrained by persistent fiscal deficits, rising public debt, and limited domestic revenue mobilisation. In Kenya, underperformance in revenue generation, coupled with a steadily increasing planned expenditure, has contributed to the growth of Kenya’s debt stock, estimated at 4.3% of GDP in FY 2025/26. As of March 2025, Kenya’s total public debt stood at 65.7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As a result, debt servicing has become one of the fastest-growing budget items, absorbing over a third of government revenues before resources reach critical services.

Fiscal pressures are further compounded by changes in the global financing environment. Official development assistance is declining, with OECD projections indicating that global aid flows could fall by up to 17% by 2025 and in the near term. Recent disruptions following the scaling back and restructuring of major bilateral assistance programmes, including those historically channelled through USAID, have heightened uncertainty for health, education, and humanitarian financing in many countries. As concessional financing becomes less predictable, governments face increasingly difficult trade-offs – often with adverse consequences for social sector funding.

Together, these trends highlight the urgency of improving how resources are allocated, tracked, and linked to results to protect service delivery outcomes and ensure that limited public funds generate the greatest possible impact for citizens. The ultimate goal of IDinsight’s work in public finance is to support government partners in making the most of limited resources by setting achievable priorities, allocating funds strategically, and tracking the impact of spending against clear outcomes. 

Our approach

IDinsight is working closely with government and civil society partners in Kenya to strengthen PFM systems so that public resources are more effectively translated into results for citizens. We are doing this through Learning Partnerships (LP) – long-term, hands-on collaborations that embed evidence, data, and problem-solving directly into government decision-making.

Our approach is flexible and demand-driven. We work closely with partners to identify the most important PFM bottlenecks, generate practical evidence to address them, and support institutions to use that evidence in budgeting, monitoring, and accountability.

Our Work and Partners

• Strengthening Monitoring of PFM reforms across the country: IDinsight is partnering with Kenya’s Public Finance Management Reform Secretariat (PFMRS) to support evidence-based PFM reforms. We have supported strategy evaluation and development of a monitoring framework that tracks and informs ongoing PFM reforms across the country. 
• Using Data to Track Service Delivery: IDinsight is supporting efforts to better link financial and service delivery data, particularly in the health sector. Our Health and Education sector landscaping studies identified gaps in how financial and non-financial information is captured and used. We are using the findings to co-design interventions with government partners to integrate and use both sets of data to track whether public spending is improving services.
• Linking Budgets to Results: Building on the health and education landscaping studies, IDinsight is partnering with the National Treasury’s (NT) Budget Department (BD) to support ministries and county governments to strengthen Programme-Based Budgets (PBBs). We are working with government teams to define outcome-oriented programme goals and improve performance indicators so budgets better reflect what public spending is intended to deliver. This work has supported national ministries in health, education, and social protection, and has expanded to selected county governments.
• Strengthening Budget Oversight: Through a Learning Partnership with the Office of the Controller of Budget (OCOB), IDinsight is supporting improvements in budget implementation, reporting, and data systems. Our work with OCOB focused on strengthening core processes and the Controller of Budget Management Information System (COBMIS) so OCOB can produce more timely, consistent, and reliable budget implementation reports.
• Supporting Citizen Participation in Budgeting: In partnership with Bajeti Hub, IDinsight is developing a digital feedback tool to strengthen public participation in the budgeting process. The tool enables community facilitators to collect and aggregate citizen input and translate it into clear, usable insights for engagement with government, supporting more transparent and inclusive budget processes.

The results

The project is ongoing.