The new State Department for Citizen Services Principal Secretary (PS) Amb. Julius Bitok has rallied a clarion call for improved and better services to the people has he took over the docket from the outgoing PS Dr. Karanja Kibicho.
Bitok assured that work will begin immediately as he goes over and be appraised with the department reports containing the workings and operations of the department handed over to him by Kibicho.
Speaking at the Nyayo Office Headquarters in Nairobi, Bitok thanked Kibicho for his loyalty, commitment and dedication that spanned through three administrations surviving intimidation, threats and blackmail to establish a legacy that will stand the test of time in service delivery.
He further commended the department heads and staff for supporting Kibicho to rise to a powerful PS who stabilized the State Department.
“Learning from my predecessor, I promise to stick to the law in all operations and will engage with members of staff directly for transparency and accountability,” stated Bitok.
The PS revealed three main areas of focus that will immediately come under his purview including transforming immigration, which makes or breaks a country, into a service for efficiency and focused on service delivery.
Secondly, Bitok reiterated the digitization of government services with a target of at least 5000 services from the current 300 online services, while making it people driven through coordination.
Commenting on the controversial Huduma Number as his main focus, Bitok said there is a need to re-brand and make it acceptable to the people and it was rather unfortunate for a good idea such as that to be caught between negative politics.
“I will be making visits to every department under my jurisdiction to identify and quell landmines that would have otherwise proven disastrous to the smooth transition and operations of the larger State Department,” he maintained.
In the same welcoming spirit, Kibicho congratulated the new PS for his appointment assuring Bitok of the team being a family that will offer him the much needed latitude and support to execute his vision.
Kibicho took the PS through a list of programmes currently underway touching on the data security of citizens in the department, which was split from the former department of national security and national coordination.
“The functions of this department which is headed by skilled staff include the National Registration Bureau responsible for the issuance of passports, work permits and temporary permits, Civil Registration Services responsible for the issuance of birth and death certificates, Integrated Population Registration System (IPRS) which has close relationship and similarities to the National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS) that deal with data capture for Kenyans thereby giving credible information to the country and its government,” Kibicho underscored.
He further recognized the Refugee Department for which Kenya is a signatory through International Law as he assured the PS of the autonomy of operations in the State department where policies only merge at the Ministry’s headquarters.
Kibicho assured that the department has developed a lot of programmes acceptable to Kenyans and the team has dealt with the prevalent backlog and integrity issues that ensures a transparent process.
“Civil registration before digitization was clogged in the registry with no factuality but through funding, it has become efficient where 85 percent of births have been captured currently through digitization in the database up from the previous 40 percent and also 55 percent of deaths captured too coming from as low as 30 percent,” he disclosed.
Kibicho urged the PS to fast-track the NIMS project which is incomplete and ensure that Kenya is not inconvenienced by debunking the political misconceptions surrounding the Huduma Namba, which has seen 38 million people registered and 10 million cards issued.
“The Huduma Namba project puts data of Kenya in one basket and offers credible information which will ultimately deal with fraud and impersonation,” he added, hoping that the project will be executed again for Kenyans who missed out to register.
