Sunday was the international Public Service Day on the United Nations calendar. The UN Public Service Forum, Day and Awards Ceremony began today in Manama, the Kingdom of Bahrain, and will end on Wednesday.
This year’s theme is “Transformative e-Government and Innovation: Creating a Better Future for All”.
There has been plenty of investment by donors in automating some critical Government services to create a one-stop window for the same through the Internet.
The aim is to eliminate duplication of roles and drastically reduce opportunities for corruption and reduce the cost of spending on paper and related printing equipment.
But corruption remains a big problem in many Government offices where automation is either partial or totally lacking.
Registries are a good example where files mysteriously disappear only to resurface when one agrees to part with “chai”.
Even in some departments where services have been automated, long queues are a daily sight. This could be due to the fact that the staff is poorly trained or are hell-bent on sabotaging e-Government.
They may regard it as a threat to their jobs, or their chance of making a little extra income from bribes paid by Kenyans desperate to access the same service. An unwillingness to embrace e-Government as a tool to make their work easier is a major hurdle for the Vision 2030 project.
In fact, a fresh audit of the successes and weaknesses of the programme is urgently needed if it is to make a difference.
One would not be surprised, for instance, to find a correlation between the work ethics and attitudes of most civil servants and their failure to wholeheartedly embrace e-Government.
On August 22 last year, a Taskforce on Values and Principles of Public Service of Kenya was appointed to draw up a National Policy and Draft Bill. The latter would see values and principles of public service institutionalised as required by Article 232 of the Constitution of Kenya.
We need a public service that is efficient, effective, responsive, prompt, impartial, accountable and transparent.
While it must be appreciated that plenty of work has gone into transforming Government services by making them available via the click of a button on a computer of mobile handheld device, plenty more remains to be done.
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