Kenya is now collecting an average of $4,6 million (KSh 600m) daily through the eCitizen digital payment platform, up from $462 000 (KSh 60m) in 2022 when services were largely manual.
The massive increase indicates how the digitisation of government services has enhanced efficiency and revenue collection, said officials from the National Treasury and the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Digital Economy.
The officials appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Wednesday to respond to the auditor-general’s Special Audit Report on government digital payments.
The platform has enhanced transparency, improved accountability in government collections, and demonstrated how technology can transform public finance management while reducing leakages, according to Eng. John Tanui, principal secretary for ICT and the Digital Economy.
However, the session, led by PAC chairperson Tindi Mwale, also addressed "red flags" in the audit report.
The Auditor-General expressed concern that the government may not have full control over the platform, creating a "single point of failure" due to vendor dependency. The report further alleged that KSh 9.4 billion was irregularly funnelled from the platform to private entities.
The platform is wholly owned by the government under a handover agreement signed in January 2023, said Dr Chris Kiptoo, principal secretary for the National Treasury. Kiptoo assured the committee that no third party has access to the back-end of the payment gateway.
With over 22 000 government services currently onboarded, eCitizen is considered a core pillar of Kenya’s digital public infrastructure. An expansion programme is ongoing to increase these services to 25 000 on the centralised, single sign-on portal.
The platform has significantly improved the citizen experience by enabling anytime access to services and streamlining payments through integrated digital channels, said Tanui.
To strengthen digital governance, draft regulations governing the platform have been finalised and will soon be submitted to stakeholders for validation, officials told Parliament.
The committee has summoned the heads of seven private entities and banks to explain their roles in the suspected diversion of funds and how they were licensed to collect government revenue.
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