ATHI RIVER, Kenya, Aug 10 — Public universities are racing against time to beat the end-year deadline to migrate over 1,000 services including admission procedures on the e-citizen portal.
Speaking during the opening of a retreat bringing together Vice Chancellors and other senior administrators from 47 public universities, Immigration and Citizen Services Principal Secretary Prof Julius Bitok said the move in line with a presidential directive on consolidation of government services on a single platform was non-negotiable.
Bitok who officially opened the onboarding retreat at the PrideInn hotel in Mlolongo urged the administrators to comply with the directive that is intended to boost convenient access of government services and raise collection of the relevant revenue.
“We have crossed the Rubicon on this and going digital is no longer an option.
It is a non-negotiable minimum that all public universities are required to
comply with and for very good reasons because digitalisation is a legacy
target of the government.”
Among the benefits he listed that the universities stand to enjoy by going digital is being able to track online and in real-time their revenues collected from students’ payments and other services offered by the institutions.
Taming pilferage
He said the digitisation drive will be linked to the launch of the smart/digital ID
and the Unique Personal Identifier number that are set to be launched later
this year as the government also seeks to make it harder to forge Kenyan
registration documents to comply with international travel requirements.
Over 5,127 government services are currently available on eCitizen and an
almost similar number is targeted for online end-to-end availability by
December.
President William Ruto gave all public institutions, including universities, an end-of-year deadline to digitise their services.
Besides cutting the cost on time and money for clients seeking government services, the campaign is also expected to minimise corruption and pilferage believed to cost the government millions of shillings in lost revenue.
Vice Chancellors who spoke at the forum appealed to the government to provide free and reliable internet to public institutions to make it easier and affordable for the university community to enjoy online services.
They also sought assurances that universities will be able to access on time monies intended for day-to-day operations and other recurrent expenses.
Availing their services online is especially critical for the universities who are expecting the latest batch of new students from next month.
