News Round-up
Give us your feedback on Critical Infrastructure Draft Bill
The critical infrastructure Draft bill is now ready and you can make your contributions. We will be sharing the draft bill soon.
The bill, intends to provide the legislative and policy framework for the protection of critical infrastructure in the country. This will in turn save the country a lot of resources currently being used to maintain and protect the infrastructure. The Infrastructure under this bill includes; Information, Communication and Technology, Energy and Petroleum, Transport and Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development and Water and Sewerage systems.
The bill is timely as it looks at bringing down the losses incurred through damage to infrastructure to below Ksh. 500 million in the next three years from the current Ksh. 1.5 billion to Ksh.2 billion annually.
On 21st April, stakeholders made their contributions towards the bills at the Bomas of Kenya, Nairobi. More than 200 participants drawn from members of the public, government institutions, ICT, transport, energy and petroleum representatives gave their views. View Benefits of the bill
Whole of Government set to use official emails
The Government has in the past faced daunting challenges in the management of email services across the public service. This has led to untimely upgrades, non-compliance to licensing requirements and either duplication or lack of technical competence to provide optimal support.
As a way of mitigating this unrelenting problem, improving quality of email services in government and relieving ICT staff in ministry of time-consuming maintenance efforts, ICT Authority embarked on an initiative that adopted a different model of email services delivery where all ministries email services were to be provided on a hosted platform for all.
The Authority is in the process of procuring an email management solution.
Our Partnerships and Capacity building programmes
Some of the projects that we have successfully delivered through partnerships include:
Supporting the Kenyan ICT exports: Through the
Netherlands Trust Fund III,a project which was launched in February, 2015 and supported by the Dutch Government, saw 33 startup companies become beneficiaries.
The team is currently developing an ITES Export Strategy. The project has facilitated several consultative forums between the ITC consultants, the Ministry of ICT, ICT Authority (ICTA), KITOS and other stakeholders to review the National ICT Master Plan and assess the export capacity of the IT&ITES sector.
To make this an inclusive and consultative process, the project has facilitated the formation of caucus groups.The export strategy for the IT&ITES sector will be developed and validated in May 2015. Read more
The Presidential Digital Talent Programme which recruited 100 interns to gain experience in government and private sector has currently been offering them training and certification in the following areas : Microsoft - V learning platforms, Oracle modules ,HP -Entrepreneurship skills & CISCO certification. The interns have been deployed in both public and private sector to enhance government capacity in ICT.
The interns are now part of the rapid results initiative that will assist government departments to speed up ICT adoption. The programme hopes to assimilate the talent in its operations and is looking at interning at least 400 fresh graduates next year.
The Kenya ICT Innovation Forum led to Enterprise Kenya which is a national accelerator that will catalyse innovations and provide entrepreneurs with needed support in their innovation journey. The government through a Presidential directive has already committed 1 billion shillings towards this initiative Read more.
A gazzete notice is being worked on to formalize the establishment of Enterprise Kenya.View Innovation Report.
Connected East Africa This year Connected East Africa lived to its theme of "Strength is in Our Networks". More than 500 decision makers across the region made profound recommendations at the event that took place early April.
View Recommendations here
One of the key outcome was that of having a framework to support entrepreneurs to fabricate, develop and assemble devices uniquely designed to respond to local needs and demands at a low cost. This was to include looking at the taxation of components used in hardware assembling. We are glad to report that this is one of the outcomes that the government is taking into consideration as it looks towards adopting a sustainable digital literacy program.
To increase ICT capacity and literacy, we signed an
MOU with Microsoft , in April which will among other things see Microsoft offer support in providing a platform that will enable ICT skills training for up to 300,000 teachers.
The fourth round of Huawei Internship programme closed on 29th May 2015.135 students applied for this round and they are awaiting evaluations so that the best can be selected. They will intern between Jul-Aug 2015. There are 3 more rounds of applications in the 2015 calendar year. Some of the interns have already got permanent jobs at Huawei.
Whole of Government set to use official emails
The Government has in the past faced daunting challenges in the management of email services across the public service. This has led to untimely upgrades, non-compliance to licensing requirements and either duplication or lack of technical competence to provide optimal support.
As a way of mitigating this unrelenting problem, improving quality of email services in government and relieving ICT staff in ministry of time-consuming maintenance efforts, ICT Authority embarked on an initiative that adopted a different model of email services delivery where all ministries email services were to be provided on a hosted platform for all.
The Authority is in the process of procuring an email management solution.
The Global Entrepreneurship Summit to take place in Nairobi
The 6th edition of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) takes place in Nairobi on the 25-26th July, 2015. The event, will be graced by President Barack Obama.This initiative aims at bringing together entrepreneurs at various stages of business development. These groups include business leaders, mentors, and high-level government officials.
Already, three Kenyan science and technology entrepreneurs are semi-finalists in the Global Innovation through Science and Technology (GIST) Tech-1 pitch competition.
They are:
- Michael Gathogo michaelpops1@gmail.com ( ICT category)
- Stephanie Gaku stephgaku@gmail.com ( ICT category
- Taita Ngetich taita.ngetich@illuminumgreenhouses.com (Agriculture category)
In order to make it to the finals hosted at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) they need help getting the message out. Finalists will be decided by open global voting with each person in the public being eligible to vote once per day per semi-finalist.
Kenya will be allocated 175 participants in total. Thirty of these participants will also be invited to attend a "Day 0" of the women and youth event.
Tenders
Attached is the summary of procurements, contracts and opportunities. Click here to view.
