yes its a good site the sky is the limit

krishna 972 days ago

I must apologize up front for making expressly unflattering comments about GoK's accomplishments (or lack thereof) in establishing e-Government. I consider it a duty to provide constructive but respectful critiques on the performance of our government's efforts in this novel arena.

It is my hope this is a serious forum where substantive issues can be discussed in a focused and productive manner. Up front, I have a few major issues to raise regarding the manner Kenyan has approach the ICT revolution. ICTs are an epochal advancement in communication with transformative potentialities that has been embraced with varying degrees of enthusiasm and success across the world. Kenya's approach has remained abysmally grammarian i.e. the spirit appears to be one of "let's write papers, rate them as high quality and pretend that policy papers alone will deliver the benefits of ICTs". Wrong and mythical!!!

ICTs require practical, partnered efforts between government, business and citizens. The lift off is heavy but has to be built upon with deliberateness, informed focus and with specific deliverable goals in mind. None of this can be done on paper. Rather, practical action programs that include publicity, a broad national ICTs education program and incessant demonstration of the benefits of ICTs,

Secondly, e-government in Kenya (or as GoK approached it, setting up government websites) has taken a confused approach. The government has a critical role in ensuring the country, its economy and people, step into the information society confidently with eyes open and not blindfolded. That role should begin with the way the government itself leverages ICTs e.g. using information resources to transformation service delivery and citizen access to information. To establish this foundation, GoK needed to establish standards, protocols, information content oversight and regulation to arrive at a uniform, seamless e-government environment. This can be salvaged, however. The e-government secretariat must get back to the drawing boards and redraft the information archictecture and modus operandin for the e-government environment to be transformative. The two principle purposes of e-government are to transform service delivery and increase citizen access to information. Neither of these seem achievable thus far.

The e-government system has to take a holistic approach at transformation i.e. advances in ICTs necessitate a change in the configuration of government. GoK has to restructure from traditional service delivery methods to a restructured system with back and front office management formations. For example, GoK can estbalish common service centers that are purely for the delivery of process-end services like issuing a passport, ID, birth certificate,  school certificate, land titles, hospital records, driver licences etc. This requires a transformed cross-government data system with cross searchable data bases, the integration of individual information into this common data base etc.

There will be no e-government that can stand the test of this name if ministries are at liberty to determine what information to post. A culture of tokenism emerges from this laissez-faire approach. Ministries decide that posting name lists and bio data on senior management staff is adequate., for example.

Earnestly developing human capacity is as important a priority as streneously working towards a robust e-government enviornment on the demand side i.e. the public must be helped to utilize e-government services, provide feedback on their experiences as the system evolves. E-government is more than the provision of linked computers in government offices. And GoK needs to ramp up to the level of attention accorded to the information society in the EU, western, SE Asian and American governments. In many of these places office visits are becoming a thing of the past, paper documentation long discarded. An information society/economy has emerged as surely should in Kenya.

If I sound like skeptic, it is because I hope these views will help GoK to not accept cheap accolades for modest accomplishments. There is a great deal more to be done, and the ball is squarely in GoK's court.

 

John osoro 898 days ago