Safaricom will be the lead sponsors of the third edition of the Connected Government series, dubbed Connected Kenya 2011 to be held from 18th of April 2011.  This was announced by Safaricom's CEO, Bob Collymore at press breifing in Nairobi last week Wednesday. The function was also attended by Ministry of Information and Communication Permanent Secretary, Dr Bitange Ndemo, Vision 2030 Director General, Mugo Kibati and Kenya ICT board CEO, Paul Kukubo.

Connected Kenya aims at creating a more collaborative government for people to get better services. Overall, the summit’s aim is to establish a collaboration platform where sharing of priorities between the government and the private sector takes place with a view to linking and speeding up implementation of government ICT projects on a world-class standard. This year’s summit will showcase the government's shared services master-plan which is now complete.

Previously held as “the Connected Government Summit”, the Connected Kenya Summit will include a greater representation from the private sector than the previous conference. The theme for this year’s summit is, “Innovating for the Citizen”.

The participants will meet to deliberate on key priority areas and identify areas for greater cooperation to help achieve service delivering to the public in a transparent, efficiency and effectiveness manner.
“We expect this to be a successful event particularly in aligning the role that shared services will play in Kenya Vision 2030,” Kenya ICT Board CEO Mr Paul Kukubo, said during the launch. “We want to thank all our sponsors, Safaricom being the main technology sponsor, IBM, Orange Telkom, Equity Bank, Seven Seas, SAP and Huawei Technologies and all media sponsors including CIO East Africa and Homeboyz for supporting this event.”
According to Kukubo, some of the highlights associated with connected government that have been made so far in the year include the issuing of grants worth $650,0000 to 20 entrepreneurs under the Tandaa grants program. He also added that the board had so far received more than 600 applications for 30 loans to be issues under the Pasha digital villages program been undertaken in partnership with Family Bank.
Other initiatives include the Wezesha laptop program that has benefited more than 8,000 students so far with laptop subsidies worth Ksh 9,000 (approximately $100). Kukubo said that the ICT board projects that the next 2 months will see 15,000 students covered, adding that 80 Megabits per second worth of bandwidth is also been currently distributed to various learning institutions all over the country.
“Safaricom feels honoured to support and be part of this great initiative because we believe the role of ICT is integral to the socio-economic development of this country and the achievement of the country’s development objectives as captured in the Kenya Vision 2030. As Safaricom, we are already playing an active part in creating a digitally-inclusive Kenya,” Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore said.
Collymore said that data was picking up in the country with the firm having sold 18,000 laptops and 55,000 modems in its retail shops in the previous year. He also committed to addition of 10,000 more digital villages in addition to the 500 the firm had already helped in establishing.
Collymore also asked the government to support the telecoms sector in maintaining a ‘healthy pricing environment’, saying “low pricing affects growth and investments, hampers customer quality.” He also asked the government to consider the taxation leveled at mobile operators and to restructure spectrum allocation to avail frequencies when they are required.
In response, PS Bitange Ndemo said that the government was currently negotiating with all operators in a bid to ask them to maintain prices that would enable growth and re-investment in the sector. The PS said that this was the preferable option rather than fixation of a lowest price floor., adding that a task-force formed by the prime minister’s office to look into the mobile sector pricing would be holding its inaugural meeting soon.
The government would review the structure of regulator levies and fees. Operators would now be charged a frequency fee rather than levied per base transmitter station (BTS). This would turn the tables on the current situation to now favour firms with an extensive network while hurting small operators that are been accused of setting up few BTS and holding on to spectrum with the hope of  been bought out by larger operators.
“We must cover the whole country with broadband before 2012,” said the PS as he affirmed the planned roll out of a Public-private-partnership shared-infrastructure LTE network. He added that such a network would enable electronic voting in 2012 similar to what happens in Brazil.
Red tape, particularly slow decision making was blamed for the delay in establishment of an animation park by the government at the Sameer Park along Mombasa road. According to the PS, the park would be bring content producers in a similar way to the iHub and would be ready in the next few months. The project is expected to offer a number of employment opportunities as animation is a labour intensive industry.
The PS also announced the roll out of an impact outsourcing program in April this year. The program will mainly benefit rural areas and is been rolled out by the Rockefeller foundation and IBM.
The digitization of the courts was now ensuring that stealing of physical files was not affecting on-going cases, adding that other departments would also be digitized. The Government is setting up a level 4 data center to handle the digitization.
Also said to be on course was the Malili ICT park project with its financial center launched in the previous week.  GSMA (GSM Association) was looking at Kenya as a prospective host for its conferences for a 5 year period starting 2018 and that the park and its proposed conference facilities would greatly increase the countries chances of been picked.
More about Connected Kenya can be accessed here