5. Pillars
The pillars are one of the ways of delivering the Master Plan. They
are meant to facilitate the achievement of real socio-economic growth
and Vision 2030 targets through e-Government services that benefit citizens, businesses and other stakeholders; strengthening local
industry using ICT; and creating ICT businesses that help to create
a thriving ICT sector. Therefore, three pillars were derived from the
situational analysis as outlined below.
a) E-Government Services. Government is by far the biggest player
in all key sectors in provision of information and services to citizens,
businesses, government employees and other stakeholders. The provision of e-Government information and services is key to improving
productivity, efficiency, effectiveness and governance in all sectors.
b)
ICT as a Driver of Industry. Transformation of key Vision 2030
2nd MTP economic sectors to significantly enhance productivity and
global competitiveness and growth.
c)
Developing ICT Businesses. Develop Kenyan ICT businesses
that can produce and provide exportable quality products and or services that are comparable to the best in the world. This will in turn
help to develop a thriving local ICT sector.
Each of the pillars contains the following:
a) Setting the context, including challenges
b)
Key drivers
c)
Desired outcomes by 2017, with targets
d)
Objectives, strategies and flagship projects
5.1 E-Government Services
5.1.1 Setting the Context
The Government of Kenya (GoK) has been undertaking various initiatives towards an effective and efficient public service delivery. For example, attempts have been made to create an enabling environment
for e- Government service delivery that includes improving ICT infrastructure across the country, institutionalizing legal and regulatory
Acts and policies, and automation of some services. However, despite
these efforts, provision of e- services remains department driven,
characterised largely by manual processes with multiple duplications.
Even where GoK functions have embraced automated support, the ICT
systems are inadequate and segregated with limited sharing of information, hence resulting in inefficient processes and inequitable and
ineffective delivery of e-Government services.
To date the key challenges that face Kenya in its quest to provide eGovernment services are:
a) Low automation levels of
business
processes, thus
threatening effective service delivery against the backdrop of increasingly high
demands for efficiency in Government.
b)
Public data and information is stored in silos and d i s p a r a t e
non- standard formats that are difficult to access.
c) Silo provision of government services by government agencies
that are not citizen centric.
‘despite efforts
by the government, provision
of
e- services
remains
department
driven,
characterised
largely by
manual processes with multiple
duplications. ‘
The above challenges will partly be addressed if the one-stop nonstop concept represented in Figure 11 is implemented.
Figure 12 shows Kenya’s e-Government index compared with two
countries in the lower middle income (Ghana and Senegal), two countries in the upper middle income (South Africa and Brazil) and one
country in high income (Portugal).
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Towards a Digital Kenya
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