State to offer over 400 more services on e-citizen

ICT Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo. [Wilberforce Okwiri, Standard]

The Ministry of ICT has moved more than 400 government services from manual operations to the online e-citizen platform in the last month, in a digital transformation plan initiated late last year, Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo has said.

Owalo disclosed that 489 more services were now available at e-citizen following a takeover of the government online services portal from a private operator last month.

This, Owalo said, will herald a paperless public service delivery in Kenya by the end of June.

According to the ICT CS, e-citizen was up to last month offering 350 services before it was taken over by the ICT ministry.

President William Ruto had announced that the government had put in place plans to onboard more than 5,000 government services, including registration of births and deaths, in the e-citizen platform.

"We are going a step further to ensure that as a government, we are going to have all government services aboard digital platforms. You will no longer have to visit government offices physically to get services. All these services will be in e-citizen," Owalo said at the Eldoret National Polytechnic, where he officially opened a Jitume Digital Hub.

He went on to say: "For a start, we have fully taken over the e-citizen platform that was hitherto in the hands of the private sector. It is now a fully-fledged government entity.

The CS expressed confidence that government services will be paperless by June this year as instructed by President Ruto. He said 5,000 services will have been on-boarded in e-citizen by the June deadline.