President Uhuru Kenyatta has rolled out a government digital transformation program for 2014-2016 geared towards tackling the lack of knowledge among Kenyans when it comes to important aspects of governance.
Mwende Gatabaki, special advisor for the first vice-president at the African Development Bank (AfDB) – the most senior Kenyan at the bank – told the Connected Kenya conference in Mombasa the government has limited knowledge of its people, land, assets and establishments.
“We need to have accurate data on those building blocks,” she said.
The digital governance programme plans to use several mechanisms to achieve its goals, among these an end-to-end digital process that will include a national digital registry services for assets, establishments, land and people, and government shared services that will include processes, systems and technology.
HumanIPO reported earlier today the Kenyan government will register all Kenyans afresh in a new national digital database with the aim of addressing issues of security as well as assisting in national planning.
Gatabaki, who is in charge of the transformation, said they have a timeline of six months in which to take the unique information from every person to help in synergising of records.
“We will hold a digital drive in August where we will ask everyone to bring their ID, birth certificate and use their biometrics so as to verify and come up with a clean database,” she said.
She said the current situation brought about by lack of adequate data is ministries and departments working individually and lacking a unified direction and synergy in achieving processes and goals, in addition to having duplication and wasted resources.
