Thanks very much Ali, these are great pointers. And yes Senate ICT committee will take it up. Will it be concluded in the 12th parliament's term? Please don't hold me to it but we shall try our very best. 

With regards to the excuse that tech support is so bad that government employees resort to personal mail, they actually have a point there. A tale is told of employees fired becuase they were not responsive yet the mail to which the urgent request from a "very important person" went was down for days.  I have heard that employees resorting to personal mail is out of desperation and willingness to serve in the face of non-existent infrastructure and support. Either way, we must deal with this. This is definitely noted and we will take it up. 

On Mon, Jul 6, 2020, 08:55 Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> wrote:
Mheshimiwa

Thanks for your personal attention on this matter. My two cents:-

1. First to answer your two issues.

a) That government jobs are so temporary especially for a certain cadre of people - For as long as one is in Government employment everything that person does on behalf of the people of Kenya remains the property of the people of Kenya. I think the confusion starts when government employees mix personal business with government business. There's a possibility here that there is a requirement for some sensitivity training. We do take a lot for granted but we shouldn't. Bottomline. ALL OFFICIAL BUSINESS SHOULD BE DONE OFFICIALLY. ON GOVT COMMUNICATION CHANNELS.  Which means official .go.ke emails. 
b) Tech maintenance and support is so bad - I will not be surprised if this is the case.  However, this should not be an excuse for not using official Govt Email. To be honest, Mheshimiwa, its super embarrassing for a country that is kicking ass (forgive the slang) in the technology space worldwide to have a conversation with colleagues in say Nigeria, and one sentence about Government Ministers using gmail/yahoo/hotmail deflates the conversation. Isn't the ICT Authority supposed to sort of act as Government CIO (Chief Information Officer). May be its time for a substantive Government Chief Information Officer responsible for all ICT issues in Government? including Data Centres, ICT Strategy etc? Do we need to revisit ICTA's mandate? 

2. In today's world, we cannot afford sensitive government documents all over the world wide web on servers that we have zero control of. My sense is that we need to have some basic *musts* that need to be engrained in government employees. This could actually be an act of parliament on how govt operates ICT Infrastructure for its day to day operations.  Here's an example of how the U.K Government deals with this email issue.  

3. Lastly Mheshimiwa, this issue of government email use has been discussed for years on this list and others. I don't honestly think (with all due respect to all responsible) that it has been taken seriously enough. Time to take it a notch higher. Could it possibly be something that the Senate ICT Committee can take up and see it to its logical conclusion? I mean if the National Government is in such a rut when it comes to basic email communication can you imagine what is happening in the counties? 

I think that should be enough to keep you busy on this issue. :-)

Ali Hussein

Digital Transformation


Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim




Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.


On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 11:33 PM Abshiro Halake via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
Ali, Twahir, team,

Great idea to enlighten the government and its agencies on this.  The ICT Ministry should actually take the lead. We could put a parliamentary question to the ICT Ministry as to why the government continues to use  personal emails. That being said, I was once told that there are two reasons why this is the case - 1. that government jobs are so temporary especially for certain cadre of people and 2. tech maintenance and support is so bad. Not sure if these are just excuses but it may be worth it to still put the questions. Can someone send me a few pointers to include in the question/statement? Perhaps why it is important to change this and also reassurance on security etc.....

Thanks and kind regards,

Sen. Abshiro

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 8:26 PM Twahir Hussein Kassim via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
On these lines, the central government, county governments, parastatals, constituencies etc need to take the lead.

As Ali earlier in the week shared, it's very unfortunate to see government department letterheads with a PERSONAL yahoo / gmail / hotmail address. Is it that the government is unable to host a mail server or procure a cloud service? Bottom line again you will note is the ignorance towards basic IT security.

KENIC should seek to enlighten the powers that be!

My 2 cents!

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020, 12:55 PM Ali Hussein via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
Team KeNIC 

As we celebrate the 100k milestone we need to take cognisant of the issues raised in the last AGM. We still await a comprehensive follow-through by KeNIC. I suspect with better corporate governance the next milestone of 100k names will be much easier to reach.

Regards

Ali Hussein


Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim




Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.


On Wed, Apr 1, 2020 at 11:21 PM Barrack Otieno via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
Listers,

Finally we have over 100,000 .Ke names, what a milestone. Next should be the 1 Million Mark.

Kudos to the KeNIC team.

Regards

--
Barrack O. Otieno
+254721325277
+254733206359
Skype: barrack.otieno
PGP ID: 0x2611D86A
 



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