State ICT institutions merged to streamline operations
ICT secretary Fred Matiang’i said the merger shall reduce costs and streamline finance and budgetary issues. FILE
What you need to know:
The new entity, the Kenya ICT Authority, will rationalise and streamline the management of all government ICT institutions.
It will also advise the government on sectoral development and ICT project implementation and investment.
The State has consolidated the Kenya ICT Board, Directorate of E-Government and the Government Information and Technology Services (GITS) under a new body in a bid to enhance efficiency.
The new entity, the Kenya ICT Authority, will rationalise and streamline the management of all government ICT institutions. It will also advise the government on sectoral development and ICT project implementation and investment.
The authority will enforce ICT standards in government and enhance supervision of electronic services in an effort to eliminate duplication of roles among government agencies.
The new Authority will compromise of a non-executive chair and 10 members, whom the ICT secretary Fred Matiang’i said shall be in place within 30 days.
“Our objective is to standardise and procedurise e-government services and to avoid duplication of roles among government agencies and wastage of resources,” Dr Matiang’i said.
“The merger shall reduce costs and streamline finance and budgetary issues. “It will rationalise services and programmes, for example the Sh2 billion Kenya National Special Data Network Initiative.”
He added that government websites will now be hosted under one server and security system.
The consolidation of the three bodies has been in the works for the past few years. But according to industry insiders, the plan repeatedly met stumbling blocks as key stakeholders guarded their vested interests.
The current system stemmed from the Kenya Communications Act 1998, which brought ICT policy formulation to the fore of government strategy shortly after the liberalisation of the telecommunication sector.
In 2000, GITS was established under the Ministry of Finance to provide computer services to government ministries. It was tasked with assisting government agencies to entrench ICT in their processes, thereby improving service delivery.
The Directorate of E-Government was created in 2004 under the Office of the President to among other things deal with cyber crime.
In 2007, the Kenya ICT Board was formed to market the country as regional technology investment destination and to grow investment in the industry.
Although the roles of the three bodies may have been distinct at first, as Kenya’s ICT sector has grown, the roles have increasingly overlapped, leading to duplication of activities and wastage of government resources.
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