Government agencies to blame for e-Citizen service delays, says founder

e-Citizen Founder and CEO James Ayugi. [Screen grab]

The delays and downtime in service access on the e-Citizen platform are to be partly blamed on government agencies and their workmanship. 

This was said by e-Citizen Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) James Ayugi, while appearing on Spice FM on Tuesday, February 20. 

Ayugi explained that e-Citizen is only responsible for logging and signing in, and facilitating payments which once made, go directly to the Treasury.

Therefore, any challenges in processing applications or access to services can only be sorted out by government agencies and not the platform.

“Once you log into e-Citizen and submit your application to business registration services; their officers are the ones who own and manage the data, make the approvals, and support in the event there are issues with the applications,” said Ayugi.

His remarks come at a time when Kenyans seeking different services have expressed frustration noting they are unable to access services they so desperately need, making it more difficult than before.

In the Department of Immigration, for instance, thousands of applications have been made through the platform yet only a few have been processed.

However, according to Ayugi, e-Citizen is just a system that acts as a gateway to access government services.

Therefore, any challenge that does not include logging in, submission of application, or payment should be directed to the relevant Government agency.

“The e-Citizen is a distributed system and the only shared service is the single sign-in and payment. A department like Immigration is responsible for their service delivery. In the event you make an application and there are delays, it is in most cases associated with the printing and not the system,” he said.