Nairobi — President William Ruto has disclosed that 5,000 of the country's 7,000 government services have been digitized so far, as the country races toward digitizing all essential services.
President Ruto said Wednesday during the official opening of the seventh ID4Africa Augmented General Meeting in Nairobi that his administration is looking to complete the digitization exercise by the end of this year.
The Head of State pointed out that the move is aimed at enhancing service delivery for Kenyans.
"We have identified think close to 7,000 services, all of them should be available on digital platforms by the end of this year, so that citizen from the comfort of their homes or their offices can interact with government, access government services in an efficient effective timely manner without unnecessary bureaucracy," Ruto said.
Ruto pointed out that Kenya is among the earliest of its continent's peers to establish a policy framework for data protection which includes comprehensive legislation and regulations to safeguard privacy and personal data.
The Head of State further indicated that with a sound policy ecosystem in place, Kenya is ready to execute its "leap into a brave new world and become a fully-fledged digital economy."
He added that the government is deliberating the implementation of a civil registration and vital statistics system that meets the imperatives of a new digital era.
According to Ruto, the new system must be able to assign unique personal identification numbers at birth to all persons born in Kenya.
The Head of State said that effective and inclusive governance and fair allocation of public resources requires accurate citizen data.
He went on to say that sound identity management is essential to the integrity of the State and critical for the effective management of the democracy, society and the management of our economy.
"Accurate information about the population resident within our territory is absolutely indispensable. To validly constitute government, we need accurate idea of how many voters, how many people, how they have voted, so that we can effectively deliver," he said.
On Tuesday, Immigration and Citizen Services Principal Secretary Julius Bitok expressed Kenya's commitment to reintroducing smart cards by September this year.
He revealed that the government aims to roll out the Unique Personal Identifier (UPI) on September 16, providing newborns in Kenya with a unique lifetime registration number.
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The date coincides with the global date set aside to mark milestones in digital identity.
"As we reflect on UPI, we are very keen to identity September 16th as the day the government will be able to roll out some of the activities to support the UPI which will be the foundation for our smart identity," Bitok said.
The date coincides with the global date set aside to mark milestones in digital identity.
"As we reflect on UPI, we are very keen to identity September 16th as the day the government will be able to roll out some of the activities to support the UPI which will be the foundation for our smart identity," Bitok said.
He pointed out that the envisaged smart registration was intricately tied to the digitization of government services
Additionally, Bitok expressed the government's intention to expand the eCitizen platform, with the objective of making more than the initially targeted 5,000 digitalized services easily accessible
