Kenya partners with GovStack in relay race towards adoption of digital transformation of County Government services
Kenya is recognized as a leader in digitalization, in Eastern Africa, and is often referred to as the Silicon Savannah due to its advancements in technological adoption across different sectors. Recently, the national government was able to realize its deadline of June 2023 to shift 5,000 services to the e-Citizen portal, in line the with the National Digital Master Plan for 2022-2023.
County governments, on the other hand, are experiencing challenges in developing an e-Governance system to address the growing demand for e-services from a youthful, digitally savvy and change ready public. These governments have encountered several challenges in their bid to embrace digitalization which include budget constraints, difficulties with coordination across agencies, and siloed investments in digitization. As much as county governments recognize the importance of digitalization in public service delivery, they are also unable to implement it fully.
On March 21 & 22, 2024 GovStack hosted representatives from Elgeyo Markawet, Uasin Gishu, Kericho, Bomet, and Nandi counties for a 2-day Use Case Identification and Prioritization workshop. The target of the workshop overall was to collaborate with the County Executive Committee Member for ICT, Chief IT Officer & County Director of ICT, as well as county officials responsible for ICT in different capacities, to accelerate the process of digitalization of services within county governments.
In his welcome remarks at the workshop, H.E Wisely Rotich, the Governor of Elgeyo Marakwet county and the current chair of the Council of Governor’s Governors’ ICT and Knowledge Management committee underscored the importance of digitization of public services when he said:
“Digitization can never be underestimated, and I have a passion for it. If we implement very good systems, we can actually cut down the cost of running our county governments. In Elgeyo Marakwet, we digitized our revenue system and raised our revenue by 50% in a month and a half. Digitization has brought transparency and accountability.”
Workshop attendees were provided with the opportunity to learn more about the GovStack initiative and approach through hands-on trainings. On the second day, they begun to conceptualise how GovStack can be implemented within their specific County Government context using the GovStack services Prioritization framework to identify key county services for digitization based on high impact and high feasibility.
At the conclusion of the workshop, the use case that was identified for advancement at a later stage was the development of an athletes’ management portal. The Counties present at the workshop are the bedrock of athletics talent in Kenya and the respective County Governments are looking for ways to support athletes in their professional and personal capacity as citizens. Furthermore, representatives from the various County Governments convened and agreed upon the formation of a use case working group to guide efforts that will eventually lead to a piloting of the use case in the course of 2024.
To enhance the impact of this workshop, key findings and lessons learnt will be disseminated to all 47 Counties in Kenya through the Council of Governors, as well as through the Ministry of Information, Communication and the Digital Economy.
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