Peter Muya P.O Box 101410-00101 Nairobi, KENYA Ministry of Information Communications and Technology. P.O Box 30025, Nairobi. 00100 Kenya

23-April-2014

RE: FEEDBACK THE KENYA NATIONAL ICT MASTERPLAN

Thank you for releasing to the public the National ICT master plan 2017 whose vision is is to

make Kenya a regional ICT hub and transition the country into a knowledge economy.

I have gone through masterplan and I have the following comments and suggestions.

SERVICE PILLAR

There is a flagship project for public data hub to centralize data. This to me sounds a

technology driven project. I would suggest focus be places on building a government

information reference model that is adoptable across all government departments / sectors

but at central and county levels.

There is a flagship project on simplification and automation of services. I would suggest a lot

of emphasis be placed on fixing process before automation through business process

reengineering and a good starting point would be at the huduma centre level. This is to

ensure that what gets automated is the rationalized, optimized and tested process.

INFRASTRUCTURE PILLAR

There is quite a bit of focus on broadband reach but no mention of linkages with power

supply and reduction of power blackouts. It is critical consider this since a knowledge based

economy will not be achieved without poor power supply. How ready are our supply sources

of power with the increased demand for ICT.

There is also no mention of how cable vandalism will be stopped. In the past, there has

been frequent internet / connectivity outages due to either cable vandalism or accidental

cuts. How will this strategy provide permanent solutions to cable placement and guarantee

its usability in the long-run without interruptions.

HUMAN CAPACITY PILLAR

A lot of emphasis has been put in academic development of ICT professionals. I picked the

line ‘increase PHD throuput in Computer science’ and review of curriculum for networks and

communications. How about complete review of the university curriculum to adopt it to

emerging technologies and aligned to the strategic priorites of the government of Kenya for

the different sectors? How do we stimulate ICT innovation in schools that is relevant to our

strategic objectives? For example students developing digital content for schools rather than

building a robot for their class project?

There is a statement about working with industry to help young ICT professionals. There

needs to be a flagship project that underscores the principle of incentivization in this master

plan. There needs to be a foot print of how government will encourage / facilitate the private

sector to create and run mentorship / job-shadowing programs that are purely targeted to

developing young ICT professionals from schools.

INDUSTRY FOCUS SERVICE AREAS

HEALTH

There is a project to implement an integrated national health system. It seems this project’s

focus is on data integration. There is need to open up this project wider in the context of the

digital ID initiative under the public data hub initiative. In addition there is need to look at more

than just data integration but holistic process integration with other government sectors like

environment (for alert on outbreak of illnesses etc), social security / hospital fund for health

insurance management and payment gateway for collection of any health related fees.

EDUCATION:

There are two flagship projects listed. The school laptop project and the education e-portal.

In my view this needs to be further unpacked (broken down) to show the curriculum

development roadmap that will be integrated with the laptops and showing how the

transition will be from the current physical content to a complete digital content cross all the

various education value chains i.e. enrollment->teaching->learning->examination-

>progression. This should also be linked with the overall ICT education / human capacity

pillar that talks about programs to enhance literacy in order to ensure these initiatives are

not in conflict or in duplication.

About the education e-portal, it also needs to be opened up a bit more to clarify the entire

education cycle and service delivery and see the linkages with the data hub project for

single view of students and teachers plus the Huduma Centre project where matters

education are concerned especially with bursaries etc. In addition, there is need to also

consider the wider scale national payment gateway to see if there is any linkage to this

project for collection of fees etc.

SECURITY

There is mention of an integrated security, intelligence and surveillance system project will be

implemented using the persons data hub. This to me looks like a reporting system.

Beyond just a reporting system, there needs to be more footprint of ICT in the entire security

value chain viz PREPARE->PREVENT->PROTECT->PURSUE cycle. I suggest that this be

articulated deeper in terms of BPR (business process re-engineering) of existing security

process and linkages with other government sectors / agencies to create a target operating

model that effectively uses ICT as a platform for better service delivery including volunteer

based reporting mechanisms which are easily filterable and pursued where found to be worth

pursuing.

AGRICULTURE

There is an initiative to establish a national agriculture commodity exchange for sharing of

market and price information as well as implementation of animal monitoring system. More than

this, there is need to integrate this sector with environment and department of meteorology plus

other departments like science and research to enrich the information farmers need to prepare

their crops and minimize crop damage. In addition, there are service industries like insurance

and banks where such additional information would enable farmers access funds and protection

for their investments. The data hub project needs to consider how to identify and classify these

farmers to have a better planning mechanism of what kind of farming is being done and at what

scale for purposes of food security planning and targeted information dissemination to the right

forums.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

There is an initiative that aims to implement a national payment gateway to facilitate secure

online payments. In addition, there is need to ensure that cyber security projects mentioned in

the Infrastructure pillar go hand in hand. The payment gateway project should begin by first

making government service payments to pass through this gateway in all sectors. There needs

to be details of how this roadmap will transition such payments in various government

departments to eliminate corruption and cash handling offices.

TRADE, TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS

The implementation of a national physical addressing system must go hand in hand with the

citizen registration (digital ID) project to minimize double work of having to collect

information from the citizens. There is need to properly determine what information is

important to capture about the citizen and where to keep it and for what purpose.

Transport integrated management system initiative needs to be re-looked at in line with the

data hub project and the payment gateway project in areas such as driver registration and

collection of fees respectively to reduce duplication and redundancy in creating

functionalities that will be overtaken once the other complimentary projects come on board.

THESE SECTORS HAVE NOT BEEN COVERED BY THE MASTER PLAN

Energy and Petroleum

There is a lot about upstream activities that the masterplan can talk about especially usage of

data for decision making as well as process efficiency in registration of prospecting companies

and monitoring of blocks. Also the demand and supply side of things in the mid-stream and

downstream side of things require lots of ICT support which this master plan needs to consider.

Mining

There is need to look what ICT can do in terms of information sharing with the likes of the

environment ministry as well as enterprise development ministry.

Tourism

ICT can consider opportunities to enhance decision making especially with better reporting on

bed capacity, classification of various tourist attraction sites and their competitiveness with

international destinations and integration with security interventions to see the impact of such on

this sector.

Labour Social Security and Services

Where are the linkages between Education and Labor? This is in terms of demand versus

supply of workforce and the relevant skills and how ICT can help improve that. Also consider the

role of Social Security in the Digital ID / data hub project and any impact on delivery of social

services plus any roadmap into how Social Services will be delivered at huduma centres and

the integration (process and data) thereof.

Land, Housing and Urban Development

I think there is a lot that needs to be talked about here. The physical addressing system in

transport sector will indeed rely alot on data from Lands and Housing. What is the roadmap on

digitization of records in lands, process improvement in land transfer and tenure and the support

this master plan will provide on such?

Sports, Culture and the Arts

These sectors seem to have been disregarded yet there is lots of potential emanating from the

education sector in terms of extra-curricular activities. How can this master plan work with this

ministry to design programs that identify such talent and nurture them and position them in the

right places. In addition the management of various bodies that run sports in this country

requires ICT which hasnt been tackled here. How about management of sports / art facilities like

National Archives and our sports stadia. Don’t we need some level of inventory management to

check on how many leg bones of zinjanthropus are in National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi,

Kitale etc?

Environment, Water and Natural Resource

Together with the Lands ministry, the effort and process of identification of who has invaded

protected areas using the addressing system would make things easier. How about keeping

information about water towers as well as our forest cover? I think ICT masterplan has so much

role to play here.

Industrialization and Enterprise Development

There is opportunity to identify and classify the local enterprise for proper incentivization. Which

local business is best suited to run with a particular government project? Such information

would help government quickly profile and target as well as encourage specialization in the

development of local enterprises. It would also help government identify and flag rogue

companies that win tenders and then don’t deliver.

I hope you will consider these comments / suggestions in your subsequent revision / detailing /

allocation of resources in the implementation of the master plan.

Warm Regards,

Peter Muya.

ICT Consultant, Nairobi.

23-Apr-2014