At a time when ICTs are defining the way we do business, Private Public Partnerships are championing the effective delivery of Government services to the citizens. Zachary Ochieng gives an insight.
The BBC's article titled "Politicians must let go - Cameron" of 11th October 2007 quotes David Cameron, the Leader of the UK's Conservative Party, at a Google Zeitgeist conference in San Francisco as saying: "In the post-bureaucratic era, you shouldn't just be telling Government what you want.  You should be choosing what you want, and acting to get what you want, so your money is spent on your priorities, all the time."
Holding politicians to account
The main thrust of his speech was that technology now makes it possible for people to "hold their local politicians to account".  Therefore, the politicians must "learn to let go of power" in the face of democratising forces that are being unleashed by the use of technology.

In response to this challenge, therefore, the achievement of e-Government should become one of the main priorities of the Government towards realization of national development goals and objectives for wealth and employment creation. This is because effective and operational e-Government will facilitate better and efficient delivery of information and services to the citizens, promote productivity among public servants, encourage participation of citizens in Government and empower all citizens.

Better services to Kenyans

To show its commitment to make e-Government a reality and to ensure that it provides better services to Kenyans, the Government of Kenya established the Directorate of e-Government (DeG) in June 2004. DeG is headed by the ICT Secretary at the Presidency and Cabinet Affairs Office, Office of the President. The mandate of DeG is to provide leadership, facilitation and coordination of e-Government services across ministries and accounting units. DeG further coordinates and prepares the e-Government Strategy including the implementation plan, and monitoring and evaluation of the process.

National development goals

“Information and Communications Technology (ICT) was recognized by the Government as a strategic tool in the realization of national development goals. There was also the need for coordinated approach to the deployment and use of ICT in Government”, says John Sergon, Acting ICT Secretary, Directorate of e-Government.

Kenyans, like other citizens of the world, are increasingly turning to online transactional services to conduct their day-to-day affairs. The Directorate of e-Government’s goal is to increasingly contribute to developing e-Services for Government; services that are easy to use, meet the real needs of people and ensure security and privacy.

Minimising Government bureaucracy

The adoption and use of the e-Government strategy has significant benefits for Government in the delivery of more effective and efficient information and services to the customers of the Kenyan Government. Some of the key benefits of e-government include minimizing Government bureaucracy, increased empowerment of citizens and businesses through access to information, knowledge and services, improved productivity and efficiency of Government agencies, strengthened legal system and law enforcement and cheaper and more convenient delivery of information, knowledge and services, among others.

“From the very beginning, the Government focused on four key areas – institutional and legal framework; capacity building, ICT infrastructure and e-applications (also known as content). The first two areas are more or less in place and they form the foundation; the other two are in various stages of development and we are already seeing very exciting developments in terms of  increased revenues, quality service delivery, improved governance and reduced cases of corruption resulting from these initiatives”, says Sergon.

Following the adoption of the e-Government strategy, Kenyans can now access a number of services online. They include applying for public service jobs, tracking the status of ID and passport, checking exam results and candidate selection, submission of tax returns, customs services and reporting corruption, among others.

Making country globally competitive

According to Sergon, there are a number of ICT projects currently in the Government; some managed by the Directorate of e-Government others by line ministries. The overall aim of the various ICT initiatives is to achieve an efficient and effective way of delivering services to the citizens, the business community and other Government departments. At a higher level it is aimed at making the country globally competitive and a destination of choice for ICT investment.

“The implementation of ICT infrastructure is well underway; the ongoing e-application initiatives are at various stages of development; some advanced others not yet. Improved service delivery has been noted in key areas such as at the Immigration, KNEC, and KRA, Companies Registry, Pensions and Lands. Within the next 18 months, the landscape of service delivery to the citizens will be very different from the way it is today”.

Sergon says the arrival of the undersea cable in Kenya is a very important facet in the e-Government Strategy. Kenya is now in a strategic position to be a world’s leader in ICT, thus a destination of choice globally.
Investment comes with challenges
“There exist already a number of other factors that make Kenya a strategic country, and the connection to the world through a fibre optic cable sort of completes the missing link. With this in mind, both the private and the public sector have taken a cue and there is no way this investment can go to waste.”
But there is no gainsaying that the investment has come with its own challenges. They include lack of skilled staff in Government, user resistance, low level of computerization of existing records (huge task) and  budget constraints, among others. However, there has always been a way out. Some of the solutions include technical training of staff, improved user awareness, reallocation of resources to complete the huge tasks and request for more funds.   
As regards training, integrated communications solutions provider Telkom Kenya in conjunction with specialist IT services and solution provider, Dimension Data recently completed a specialised training programme for government officers.
The highly specialised CISCO training programme on bandwidth management and maintenance was undertaken as part of Telkom Kenya’s and Dimension Data’s contract to provide the government with 80Mbps Internet bandwidth for the e-Government programme. The training programme targeted six key government ICT officers in the Directorate of e-Government currently spearheading the programme rollout.

Perfect showcase of PPP

Speaking during a recent graduation ceremony for the six officers at Telkom Kenya’s head quarters, Telkom Kenya Chief Executive Officer Mickael Ghossein described the firms’ 2 -year tender as a perfect showcase of private-public partnership programme geared at catapulting the Kenya government service delivery points to a paperless e-Government framework.
“With this project, the Kenyan public will very soon be in a position to reach public officers on email, access and download information from government Web sites at the fastest speeds possible,” Ghossein said. Dimension Data Managing Director Rakesh Parbhoo noted that the project will ensure a secure e-Government communication platform, based on a dedicated and private infrastructure, to all government ministries and departments.
Such a platform, Parbhoo explained, will guarantee the exchange of information between government offices, thus enabling e-procurement, Internet services, SMS services, voice services and electronic project management information systems services among others.
“We are proud to be able to use our technologies to enable improved service delivery to citizens, and further drive efficiency across government departments”, he said.

Connected Government Summit

The e-Government projects have taken a substantial proportion of the Government Budget, though others are funded by development partners.  Notably, Public Private Partnership (PPP) has come in handy in the adoption of the e-Government strategy. At a recent Connected Government Summit held in Mombasa, the Kenya ICT Board in partnership with private sector players proposed the piloting of a Citizens Relationship Management (CRM) Portal project to enable the citizens to access non-emergency government information by dialling or texting one number, or visiting one Web site or emailing one address. The pilot is proposed as a PPP, with private sector investment in the concept.
Adam Nyagah, General Manager, Business Applications, Seven Seas Technologies, who presented the concept at the summit says after some discussion with his boss Michael Macharia, they felt the need to focus on using ICT as a tool to increase efficiency in the public service and to curb corruption.
“We were inspired by a recent meeting between the Kenya ICT Board and IDA International of Singapore, where the solution providers from Singapore gave an account of how their partnership with the Government has helped in the improvement of public service delivery”, Nyagah says.
According to Nyagah, the second inspiration came after the Naivasha workshop on shared services, with Government heads of ICT from different departments.
“The Naivasha meeting was a real eye opener. It helped us understand the structure of Government in so far as ICT is concerned. That is how we came up with the idea of a CRM portal and a Dash Board. We thought of how we could convert our experience at Safaricom in terms of customer service and see if it could be applied to Government in the effective delivery of services to the citizens.”
Pilot team formed
As a pilot phase of the CRM portal, Seven Seas Technologies, Safaricom and Kencall formed a partnership at the Mombasa summit and set up a pilot team. According to Nyagah, the PPP is to provide a certain scope of Government services, in which the partners will charge the citizens a small fee and share the revenues.  The pilot phase-which lasts 100 days from the end of the Mombasa summit held late March—targets the Ministry of Immigration and Registration of Persons, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), the Company Registry, Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) and the Ministry of Health.
Government offices few and far between
Based on the realization that Government offices are few and far between, the partners saw the need to create a service that allows people, even in the remotest parts of the country, to call or send text messages to access a particular service instead of travelling to Government offices.
“With KRA, for instance, a person filing tax returns online would be able to place a call to a certain number and get assistance in case of difficulty in filling in a particular section of the form”, says Nyagah.
Vehicle purchasers would also be able to authenticate the registration and ownership of the vehicle they are purchasing. 
As regards the Immigration Department, passport applicants will now be able to track the status of their applications via SMS. With this, they will be able to know whether the document is ready for collection, instead of visiting the Immigration offices physically. According to Nyagah, very soon Kenyans will be able to report a lost ID or passport online. They will also be able to make some payments online or via M-Pesa and get a confirmation SMS. But to ensure the success of the service, the partners are addressing the issue of interoperability.
Project involves risk taking
Still, challenges abound. For one, the project is an expensive affair, involving a lot of risk taking as the companies are diverting resources meant for their commercial value to enable citizens access better services from the Government. That is how the idea of revenue sharing came up. Nyagah says the uptake may not be as huge as expected as some Kenyans still believe in making visits to Government offices physically to access services. On the other hand, the uptake could be so huge as to overwhelm the system, given the enthusiasm shown by the public after the presentation at the Mombasa summit. If the response is overwhelming, the system may get clogged up, resulting in frustrations for the citizens. However, Seven Seas and its partners are working hard to ensure that technically, the system does not pose any challenges.
Future looks bright
The challenges notwithstanding, the future looks bright especially with the arrival of the fibre optic cables expected to lower the cost of bandwidth and encourage creation of more local content.
“If the pilot project becomes a success story, the partners could then float the idea to other countries in the region such as Uganda and Rwanda”, Nyagah enthused.
Nyagah’s sentiments were echoed by his colleague at Seven Seas Pierre Gein, Senior Business Analyst, Business Applications.
Demand exceeds supply
“E-Government is the way to go. After the Connected Government Summit in Mombasa, we have received numerous requests from people interested in these services. The demand has clearly exceeded the supply. Once this succeeds here in Kenya, we can then talk to the Government of Uganda on the same partnership”, Gein says.
Speaking about the Government Dash Board solution which Seven Seas Technologies is piloting, Gein says it is a visual balanced scorecard that enables easy tracking of projects at their various stages. With Kenya’s long term economic blueprint Vision 2030 having 98 projects, monitoring and evaluation of such projects would be a Herculean task were it not for this solution. Just as the name applies, a dash board is where a driver can check his speedometer to see whether he is speeding or his fuel gauge to see if the vehicle needs more fuel.
“The idea of the Government Dash Board came after my CEO Mike Macharia held discussions with Mugo Kibati, Executive Director of Vision 2030. We then partnered with Polymetre of Spain which already had a solution, to see what we could offer to the Government in the implementation of Vision 2030”, Gein says.
The project—which is expected to roll out in July after the Government’s annual Budget—is a management tool that will allow easy access of information from a centralized place.
“Under Vision 2030, it would be easy to track the progress of various projects such as roads, whether they are on course or behind schedule and what action needs to be taken. By clicking on Google maps, you are able to view the status of all projects.”
The neighbouring countries have also not been left behind. In Sudan, the National Information Centre (NIC) was founded in 1999 to take charge of all Government ICT-related projects. According to NIC’s General manager Eng Mubarak Ahmed, all Government ministries are now connected.
“We are currently working on the digital signature and by the end of 2010, people will be able to apply for their IDs and passports online”, Ahmed told CIO East Africa at a recent African Union Summit held in Addis Ababa.
In Mozambique, an interoperable e-Government strategy is already in place. There is a single financial management system for all ministries, as well as a land management system.
“The implementation of e-Government solutions has led to the better management of assets and reduced the amount of time people spend travelling to Government offices”, says Venancio Massingue, Mozambican minister of Science and Technology.
According to Massingue, a new biometric ID card has been introduced and by June, an e-voting system will be in place.
“We are slowly moving towards e-voting”, Massingue enthuses.