Treasury moves to digitise records

NAIROBI: National Treasury is to digitise all records in a move meant to improve efficiency and cut operation costs. Once complete, the exercise is expected to see more than 40 year’s worth of data digitised and archived.

“The National Treasury would wish to undertake data conversion from regency proprietary storage tapes into contemporary storage media for further transformation and storage into modern devices such as hard drives,” read an expression of interest from Treasury yesterday.

“This data includes information on personnel and other details which were originally captured through software and hardware systems, which are currently inoperable.” There have been several attempts by the Government to digitise the records of key institutions to align them with modern technology.

Previous attempts have included digitising records at the Kenyatta National Hospital and the Ministry of Roads. Treasury says previous systems at the institutions have run on IBM platforms like the IBM system 4331, 370 and the latest IBM s390 generating large volumes of legacy data in 8-track magnetic tapes.

“The National Treasury intends to shortlist the best company or companies to undertake this process of retrieval, conversion and design of a suitable archival and retrieval system with capabilities to query and generate reports in a readable format,” read the statement accompanying Treasury’s expression of interest.