Kiambu County is leading in the Kenyan Government’s digital transformation drive with the recent launch of a new digital platform. The Kiambu Digital Platform includes the enablement of cashless payments, an online citizen services portal, and a robust back-end management system to support it.
Through the system, the country will address five key challenges that include collection of revenue to bridge the revenue collection gap, improved service delivery to the citizens of Kiambu, higher fiscal accountability for the people of Kiambu, better control over expenses and sealing ‘leaks’ reducing waste.
The Kiambu County government is also looking to create 50,000 jobs through sustainable economic initiatives within the next five years. The innovation follows the identification of the challenges back in 2013 which led to the idea of embracing technology. “The first step of meeting these challenges was to implement a new system that would allow for better revenue collection. Our existing collection systems were consuming most of the revenue, leaving us with little to apply to much-needed development programs. Since implementing the new revenue collection solution, we have freed up budget and resources that were tied to internal operations, leading to the county recording a 90% growth in revenue collection for the financial year 2014-2015.” Kiambu County governor explained.
Phase 1 of the digital platform
Kiambu County Government’s ICT Roadmap incorporates two phases, the first of which involved revenue automation and business intelligence. Aside from the 90% growth in revenue for the financial year 2014/15, the analytical reports created by the implementation allow for accurate enforcement, greater compliance, improved admin efficiency and more transparent and accurate decision-making. In addition, Phase 1 brought a citizen-centric element to the County’s operations, which includes a better view of payment history, greater ease of payment and compliance, reduced need for commuting, and less opportunity for corruption and pilfering of funds. These benefits resulted in increased funding for development.
Phase 2
Phase 2 of the project is underway and involves the complete automation of devolved County functions with the stated objective of 600% growth in revenue collection within five years. The proceeds of this will be allocated to development projects within Kiambu County.
The system powered by SAP East Africa is a combination of Business Intelligence and Data warehouse solutions, to enable a real-time reporting interface delivered via a dashboard that can be accessed on desktop, iPad / tablet or mobile. County officials can now have a 360-degree view of citizens, all delivered to a master register and enabling accurate reporting for better resource planning and less waste. The Digital Economy and digital transformation provide a perfect stepping stone for countries to become more competitive.