The government continues in its quest to get services closer to the citizen. The treasury is leading other government agencies by using ICT to monitor and report on the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP) says Ann Waiguru, Head of Governance at Treasury and Acting Director of Integrated Financial Management Information System.ESP uses an ICT tool and Geographical Information System (GIS) monitoring tools to monitor update and status updates on funds disbursement. Treasury did not have requisite skills to use the system and has partnered with other government agencies and the private sector in this. Google has provided capacity through training of treasury officers in the use of these tools while Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) provides interns to map the information.“It was very big challenge for treasury to monitor without a tool that would allow them to do so. It meant traversing the country. In addition, the public can comment and give feedback,” she adds. ESP also marks the first government implemented project to have a presence on both Facebook and Twitter.Implementation of the new constitution will go hand in hand with various ICT led initiatives. Kate Getao, secretary of the eGovernment secretariat says that these initiatives will also see sharing of data within various ministries and counties. “Cloud services and shared services to make it possible to receive services irrespective of where you are,” says Getao.Some of the initiatives that eGovernment is looking to implement include open databases on rights performance, land and infrastructure. Other projects to be implemented include information systems audit, eVoting, eJustice, citizen feedback, county indexing, cyber security, smart identity cards, eboarder and evisa system. All this will revolve around three pillars of access to public systems, shared information and efficient government operations.“Whereas there is a high demand for skilled work force, a huge number of graduates and other factors have contributed to a lengthy recruitment process,” says Betty Macharia, Project Manager - Knowledge for Life. Macharia shows that Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product per capita still lags far behind when compared to that of Egypt, Singapore and South Africa. Compared to India, Kenya is on the same level when it comes to costs, risks and infrastructure, but India is far ahead in talent management and maturity.While universities in the country provide about 5,000 ICT graduates annually, the quality of the graduates does not meet the demands of the ICT industry. Kenya needs to come up with a proper skill development strategy which integrates industry skills into university curriculum. Seven Seas Technologies is looking to bridge this gap with its Knowledge for Life (K4L) program. The program includes talks to university students to help them understand the industry offerings, mentoring to the students and free industry relevant training. The K4L programs targets final year university students undertaking business and IT related courses. 400 students from the University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology have already gone through the program with 30 been employed in various ICT industries and 20 others at Seven Seas Technology.Orange Kenya is focusing a significant part of its value added services (VAS) to the m-health sub sector of electronic health initiatives. Orange says that in addition to corporate social responsibility, taking part in m-health helps broaden the firm’s use of its applications and become a health enabler. The health industry benefits through broadened reach of health care services, reduced costs, faster service delivery and eradication of counterfeit drugs.Orange’s 10 year participation in the health sub-sector now includes M-pedigree, a solution that identifies drug authenticity, Text to change in Cameroon is an interactive quiz that increases awareness, click diagnosis that provides tele-dermatology services in Egypt and Botswana amongst others. In Kenya, a pilot project with the ministry of Medical services and Qualcomm has equipped 10 health centers in Nairobi with software that manages HIV anti-retroviral drugs stocks and patient follow up. The results has been a more than 50% rise in report submission rates while reducing time taken and cost of doing the same.Kenya is looking at an ICT system to reduce the cost of doing business and make the process easier. Titled national single window, the platform was deployed by the Kenya Revenue Authority and Kenya Ports Authority at the country’s ports of entry. Before the single window all the stakeholders had to exchange multiple documents between them, with hard copies the same documents been handed in and manually processed by multiple operators.The results were delays in cargo clearance, high costs, corruption and loss of competitiveness by the country. With the single window system, the trader submits all required information at a single point from where all agencies and stakeholder access them and return their response through. After deployment of the system, port dwell times at Mombasa have decreased from 12.9 days to 6.7 days. This is against a world average of 3 to 6 days and Singapore’s 2.9 days. Singapore ranks 1st in the World Banks ease of doing business, while Kenya ranks 95.Dr. Kamau Gachigi discussed the Fabrication lab that has been set up at the University of Nairobi. The lab allows those who formulate ideas to come to the lab and transfer the ideas to a design and in to products using the equipment in the lab. The equipment is also capable of producing smart cards and Dr. Gachigi says that the lab is ready to produce such cards for firms in the country. The Fablab is open to anyone in the country with ideas. In future, the Fablab will be set up in its own custom location.