Industries / County governments & assemblies

Public participation people can actually find.

Websites, project trackers and citizen feedback tools for counties, assemblies and ward offices.

A county can spend weeks preparing a budget or a development plan, then announce the public forum in a newspaper few residents buy and a PDF few phones can open. We build the digital side of county communication so residents hear about things in time, understand them, and can respond in a way that is recorded.

What happens today

The law asks for participation. The tools rarely make it easy.

The County Governments Act and the Public Finance Management Act require counties to involve the public in plans and budgets: the County Integrated Development Plan, the Annual Development Plan, budget estimates and the Finance Bill. The Access to Information Act adds a duty to publish information proactively. In practice, the documents often sit as large scanned PDFs on a website that is hard to search, forums are announced late, and comments collected in a hall end up on paper that nobody outside the meeting ever sees again.

Residents, meanwhile, live on WhatsApp and on mid-range phones with limited bundles. They want to know three things: what is being planned for my ward, when can I say something about it, and what happened to the last project somebody promised. A ward office or an MCA’s team usually answers those questions one phone call at a time.

Courts have also been clear that participation has to be meaningful, not a box ticked the week before a vote. That makes a clear, dated, public record of how residents were told and how they responded valuable to the county itself.

An example

A ward’s participation notice, the way a resident sees it on a phone.

Design preview

Public notice · sample layout

Budget estimates: have your say

  1. WhatProposed budget for your ward, in plain language, with the full document attached
  2. WhenForum date, time and venue, plus an online comment window that stays open for the stated period
  3. HowComment online, send a WhatsApp message to a published number, or attend in person
  4. LanguageSummary in English and Kiswahili
  5. AfterA short report of what was raised and what changed, published on the same page

Illustration only. Not a real county notice.

What we build

Built for the way county offices actually work.

County and assembly websites

Fast, phone-first WordPress sites with departments, services, tenders, notices and documents that are searchable as text, not just scans. Every plan and budget gets its own page with a short plain-language summary on top.

Public participation pages

One page per participation exercise: the notice, the document, the deadline, the venues, a comment form and a WhatsApp channel. Comments are stored with dates so the county can show who was consulted and when. A summary report is published at the end.

Project trackers

A map and list of projects by ward, with budget line, contractor as published in tender awards, status and photos. Residents can flag a stalled project; the flag goes to the responsible officer, not into a void.

Ward office and assembly member pages

Simple sites for ward offices and assembly members to publish office hours, bursary application windows, constituency events and ward projects. We build for office communication, not campaigning, and we will advise where election-period rules apply.

SMS and WhatsApp updates

Opt-in broadcast lists so residents who asked for updates get the forum date the week before, not the morning of.

How it goes

From first message to live.

  1. A call with the communications, ICT or clerk’s office about what you publish now and what the law requires you to publish.
  2. A written scope and fixed quote, aligned to your procurement process. We can respond to RFQs and tenders.
  3. A private preview built with your real documents and one live participation exercise.
  4. Launch, staff training, and an optional care plan covering hosting, security updates and document uploads.

Pricing: after a short call we send a written scope with a fixed quote. Public bodies usually buy through procurement, so we quote to your specification.

Questions

Fair questions.

Can you work within government procurement?

Yes. We can respond to requests for quotation and tenders, and supply the registration and tax documents those processes ask for.

Do you host on our servers or yours?

Either. We can deploy to county ICT infrastructure or host for you in a managed environment, with the domain and content owned by the county.

Does this replace physical forums?

No. Many residents will still attend in person. The digital side widens reach and keeps a record; it does not replace the hall.

How do you handle residents’ personal data?

Comment forms collect only what is needed, and we set them up with your data protection officer in line with the Data Protection Act, 2019.

Will you build campaign websites for politicians?

This line is for official county and ward communication. Campaign work has different rules and is not what this page offers.

See all industry lines, or how we build websites.

Start here

Talk about your next public forum.

hello@anankedigital.co.keWhatsApp +254 790 939 404