Kenya: Technology Creating Revolution in Public Service Delivery

For a long time, anyone seeking services from a government office was sure to meet frustrations. If lost records did not make it impossible to transact some business, long processes and lax staff did.

Few services were available outside Nairobi and people often had to travel long distances only to be told to “come tomorrow” by a stone-faced civil servant.

To be fair, the inability to provide faster and better services could not be blamed entirely on the lowly-paid or corrupt public servants. How much more could they afford with cumbersome, paper-based manual systems?

Even the private sector, known to spare no cost in deploying technology to push down operational expenses, could not do much before the late 1990s.

Leading banks like Kenya Commercial Bank had numerous branches sending the day’s transactions to a computer centre in Nairobi for overnight posting and reconciliations and then ferry back the print-outs the next day.

Everything was slow and tedious before the advent of digital technology in which storage, retrieval and transmission of data are accomplished by the touch of a button.

IT HAS GIVEN RISE TO A “SELF-SERVICE” culture where individuals rather than institutions are empowered.

Not so long ago, the Government announced that parents and students would find out school results instantly by querying a database through the mobile phone short message service (SMS). Traditionally, they would have to travel long distances when the school administration posted the results on a notice board.

Technology and reforms are revolutionising the way we do business. Kenya Revenue Authority owes much of the record tax revenue to the on-line Simba system and the introduction of electronic tax registers.

Last week, the Teachers’ Service Commission announced that teachers seeking basic personal information such as salaries, transfers and discipline cases would query the computer system at the Nairobi headquarters.

From getting cash at the automated teller machines (ATMs) to applying for jobs on-line, it is incredible how technology is putting services in the hands of individuals who get it anywhere, any time. The shop does not close any more. Everything has gone DIY (Do It Yourself), mainly through computers or mobile phones.

In March, the Public Service Commission launched a system where people could apply for jobs on-line. The following month, a job advertisement attracted some 7,000 applications, 2,000 of which were made on-line.

The next offer had 5,000 on-line applications, a clear indication that Kenyans are getting more and more e-friendly.

Most telling evidence

But perhaps the most telling evidence of the reforms through technology so far is the computerisation of the companies’ registry at the Attorney-General’s office in Nairobi, which was done with the help of Starehe Boys Centre and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology students. By scanning the backlog of files, the students were in essence digitising the paper documents for storage and retrieval ease.

That the Government has not used technology as much as it should to deliver better services has been more to do with political and organisational problems rather than technology itself. When properly deployed, technology will always work. What does not always work is people’s mindset.

Even in this age and time, there are some who feel threatened by the new electronic channels of service delivery. Technology ruffles people averse to change.

If you introduce teleconferencing as a way of holding meetings without leaving offices, the off-line gurus may scuttle for the simple reason that it denies them some cheap holiday in Mombasa, and not because it is not an effective way of conducting business.

We should not even dream of Vision 2030 if technology is not part of the plan. There is no way we as a nation can expect to participate in new knowledge-based economy such as the outsourcing business and call centres if we cannot embrace technology.

THE EXCUSE HAS ALWAYS BEEN THAT technology takes away people’s jobs. I wish we would consider what it gives rather than the jobs, if any, it may take away.

How many Kenyans have been employed by the wireless world? There are many people selling mobile phones and top-up cards and working as engineers or e-tailing (it is no more retail) digital services like Simu ya Jamii.

The other day, a young man in a township was spotted hawking Internet and e-mail services on a laptop using the GPRS/EDGE wireless connection. How much more “unusual” businesses will we see with technology?

Source: The Nation