#CIO100AwardsEA: Seven Government projects helping drive digital transformation

Speaking at the Sixth CIO 100 Symposium and Awards that kicked off today on Digital Transformation in the public sector, Robert Mugo CEO ICT Authority said that the Government had been involved in driving digital transformation through a couple of projects guided by the ICT Masterplan.

“In terms of Digital transformation in the Government, the key guided by the ICT Masterplan that is built on three key pillars. With this, we plan to position Kenya as an ICT Hub and globally knowledgeably economy in relation to Vision 2030 which is our blue print for social and economic development,” said Robert Mugo.

The three key foundations, first is on people, where we focus on workforce and human capital. We also focus on Infrustructure that has to deal with datacenters and third is data infrastructure.

On pillars we look at e-government , applications and services and we also want to make ICT a driver of industry as well as drive ICT businesses. In keeping with the theme here are the seven key projects by the Government that are helping driving digital transformation:

TIMS

Transforming Transport Management: Transport Integrated Management System [TIMS]. TIMS is a portal based system that incorporates all functions of registration, licensing, inspection and enforcement of all motor vehicles and trailers online. It is designed to achieve the following objectives:-

Centralize road transport data and provide secure access to this data to citizens and stakeholder organizations;

Allow real time tracking and monitoring of PSV vehicles; support intelligent traffic management; and automate the road transport processes, provide online access to citizen services and automate enforcement of traffic laws.

Digital Literacy Programe

The Digital Literacy Programme is a government led program that is being implemented in all the 23,951 public primary schools in Kenya.

The main focus of the programme is to enhance learning in all public primary schools in Kenya through the use of digital technologies.

Spinoff benefits of the program include connection to electricity grid, enhanced teacher capacity, local assembly and job creation.

PDTP

PDTP is a 12 month ICT Management Trainee Program for ICT and Engineering University graduates and is implemented through a Public and Private Sector Collaboration. The PDTP is designed to build and entrench ICT capacity within Government to ensure ICT effectiveness and efficiency in public service delivery. PDTP fellows will be dispatched in various organizations and institutions to learn new skills as well as put into practice the expertise that they have.

NOFBI

The National Optic Fibre Backbone (NOFBI) is a project aimed at ensuring connectivity in all the 47 counties of Kenya. The implementation of this project aims to ease communication across counties as well as improve government service delivery to the citizens such as application of national identity cards, passports and registration of birth and death certificates.

Transforming Heritage: Kenya News Agency:

The Kenya News Agency (KNA) Digitisation Project is a digitisation and automation project for the KNA photographic library. The digitization began in May 2015 and now, nearly 400,000 images are available in digital format.

The ICT Authority together with the Department of Information will be launching the Online Historical Photo Library – Urithi.go.ke – through a series of public awareness events from October to November 2016 in selected towns across the country.

Through the Urithi online portal, researchers, organizations, academia and the public will be able to view and use photo archives gathered by the KNA dating back to pre-independence.

Transforming Records: Civil Registration Department (CRD) Digitization

Currently, there are over 107 Civil Registration Centres where parents can register births and any family member can register deaths. The process of scanning the records is centrally managed in Nairobi, and over 62.5 million records have been digitised.

E-citizen

Kenyan Citizens and Foreign Residents can now apply for Government to Citizen (G2C) services and pay via mobile money, debit Cards and eCitizen agents