Cannot find this notice either at: http://kenyalaw.org/kenya_gazette/gazette/month/12/2022/ Hopefully, if this was not a roadside announcement, the full notice will clarify "official government digital payment platform". Direct payments on e-citizen are handled by a third party payments provider. In addition to the third party payments processor currently being used in e-citizen, there are a number of companies and banks that provide payment options such as mobile payments, credit cards, direct deposit etc. Will e-citizen issue payment slips and check against deposits? Will county governments be forced to use e-citizen thereby preventing development of other infrastructures and broadening the pool of local people with expertise and experience that can provide such services? What happens if there is a cyber attack on e-citizen? Will all electronic government services be shut down? As noted by Alex Watila, e-citizen has serious shortcomings. Preventing creation of spaces for development of alternatives is short sighted. e-citizen is of course helpful for verifying persons and possibly also companies in Kenya. While it can be used as an authentication service, other government functions should be handled as much as possible by the relevant government departments on separate infrastructure with information communicated on a need to know basis after appropriate authorization (which can be electronic). The tendency towards centralization and "Big Brother knows everything" is quite alarming and a threat to national sovereignty. A design of e-citizen that enables others to extend upon it accessing information they need seems more useful. In particular one that allows for protection of data, citizen privacy and also allows for information correction. It would be good for ODPC to do an annual audit of e-citizen, and release the resulting report publicly. On 1/1/23 20:53, Johnsey Kivoto via KICTANet wrote:
A positive move.....
On Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 10:29 AM Victor Kapiyo via KICTANet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote:
All payments for government services shall be made through the E-citizen portal.
This comes as Cabinet Secretary for Treasury Njuguna Ndung’u gazettes the portal to be the official government digital payment platform.
https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2022-12-31-e-citizen-portal-gazetted-as-gove... <https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2022-12-31-e-citizen-portal-gazetted-as-governments-official-digital-payment-platform/>