Members of Parliament have raised alarm over the dubious 'double' transfer of eCitizen, which is the official means of paying for all government services.
Led by the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Butere MP Tindi Mwale, the MPs queried the dubious handover of ownership between the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a local firm and the National Treasury, spanning several years.
The queries were in response to an audit by the Auditor General on the platform, and despite the government previously asserting that it had control and ownership of eCitizen.
The platform arose through the Government of Kenya’s initiative to digitise revenue collection in Kenya, with the idea being financed by the World Bank/International Finance Corporation (IFC), which contracted a local firm to provide software development and maintenance support services.
As a result, in 2017, IFC handed over instruments, including contracts, source code, business case, and handover notes, to the National Treasury via a handover letter dated August 7, 2017.
By doing this, the government took possession and ownership of the eCitizen platform in August 2017.
However, it was later established that on January 13, 2023, the Ministry of ICT and the local firm entered into a handover agreement where firm, being the vendor of the eCitizen platform, agreed to unconditionally hand over the platform to the government.
This is where the bone of contention arose. MPs noted that it was not explained how the ownership and control of the eCitizen platform ended up back in the hands of the vendor after having already been handed over to the National Treasury by IFC in 2017.
"It was not explained how the ownership and control of the eCitizen Platform ended up back in the hands of the vendor after having already been handed over to the National Treasury by IFC in 2017," the MP said in a report.
Further, it was established that after the “retransfer” of ownership by Webmasters in January 2023, the government did not obtain full control of the systems, resulting in continued over-reliance on the vendor.
Mwale said, "...the government did not obtain full control of the systems, resulting in continued over-reliance on the vendor. Noting that the majority of government services are provided through the platform, the control of the system by the vendor creates a single point of failure and a strategic risk in the delivery of public services to the Kenyan citizens."
According to the lawmakers, since the majority of government services were provided through the platform, the control of the system by the vendor created a single point of failure and a strategic risk in the delivery of public services to the Kenyan citizens.
The eCitizen platform currently runs 22000 government services and collects a whopping Ksh700 million a day.
It was first introduced in 2014, growing to house 5,000 county and national government services in its first few years of existence, including agencies like the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), the National Registration Bureau (NRB), and, more popularly, the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA).
