James Ayugi, the developer behind the eCitizen platform on Tuesday revealed that his company was paid Ksh7.6 million to program 10 services on the platform.
In an interview with Spice FM, Ayugi who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Webmasters Kenya Limited, explained that the Ksh7.6 million was payment for the pilot project meant to digitise and onboard 10 National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) services to the eCitizen platform.
“We were paid for the initial pilot. This was USD76,000 (Ksh7.6 million at the time) for the initial 10 services,” he explained.
“Our intention at the time was to prove the concept. We did not know 10 services is such a small number when it came to even just NTSA.”
The 10 initial services programmed to eCitizen were meant to streamline the process of applying for and renewing of licences.
President William Ruto's government would later retain the same company to continue building and expanding the platform due to the add-ons required.
During the interview, the developer also gave a glimpse of the platform's complexity, revealing that it takes 15 add-ons to work together to facilitate the application for a driving licence.
To make the platform better, Ayugi revealed that his team started incorporating additional add-ons to prove the concept to the government.
On how much they have made since the initial payment, Ayugi remarked, “Currently we have a contract with the govt, the govt pays us as per the contract agreement.”
While Webmasters Kenya Limited owns the intellectual property rights of eCitizen, the platform is owned 100 per cent by the government through licencing.
“We own our intellectual property but the government has its licence to scale and improve its version. They have the right to customise the version of the software to their liking,” Ayugi explained.
Interestingly, it is Webmasters Kenya Limited that proposed the introduction of a convenience fee for Kenyans accessing services on the platform.
