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Cabinet Secretary for Information, Communication, and the Digital Economy (ICT) Eliud Owalo on Wednesday, February 8, negated an earlier directive made by President William Ruto concerning Huduma Namba.
On January 27, the President directed the ICT CS to oversee the full implementation of Huduma Namba, one of former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s pet projects.
“The Huduma-thing that was initiated under the previous administration must be a success.
“We need it to work because it is not the work of the government to issue identification numbers, but it is the work of the government to identify citizens,” the President directed then.
Undated Photo of former President Uhuru Kenyatta and former First lady Holding Huduma Namba
PSCU
However, Owalo remarked that the ICT ministry would not be burdened by the implementation of the program.
“We do not want to carry forward the baggage of Huduma Namba, instead we will hasten the process of creating a new digital identity,” he remarked.
On why the Ministry was disregarding Huduma Namba, he explained, “We no longer need the members of the public to visit government offices and flash out a card as means of identification.
“We need a virtual means of identifying members of the public so that the government can know whom it is conducting business with,” he added.
The CS further lauded his ministry on its digitization program remarking that it had made great strides in six months.
“By the time we took over the e-citizen platform, we only had 350 digitized government services.
“Today, we already have 680 government services onboarded at the platform and we have the capacity to onboard an average of 300 new services per week,” he explained.
At that rate, the CS was optimistic that in five months’ time, the government will have digitized 5,000 government services.
ICT CS Eliud Owalo delivering a keynote address at the 2022 International Conference on Economic Innovation Partnership Program on November 23, 2022.
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