Assessment of E-Government Initiatives in Kenya to Understand the Challenges, Opportunities and Impact: Case Study of Huduma Kenya in Nairobi County

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Huduma Kenya is a programme by the Government of Kenya that aims to transform Public Service Delivery by providing citizens’ access to various Public Services and information from One Stop Shop citizen service centers called Huduma Centers and through integrated technology platforms.

Huduma Kenya provides Efficient Government Services at the Convenience of the citizen. This is according to Oyugi (2015), Huduma Kenya is a ‘one stop shop’ approach in reforming service delivery in the public sector Kenya. Huduma Kenya involves bring services closer to the people whereby services are offered under one roof, effectively making it possible for service seekers to access it conveniently without moving from one building to another. This means that you will be able to get birth certificates, national identity cards, passports, registration of business names, and applications for marriage certificates, drivers’ licenses, police abstracts and many other services in one place (Oyugi 2015).

Huduma Kenya programme will introduce to the public, one stop Huduma Service Centers to provide customer services to citizens from a single location, online e-Huduma web portal to provide integrated services offered by various government ministries, an integrated payment gateway to facilitate ease of payment for government services through Posta pay, an m-Government platform for mobile phones and call center for customer service. Nineteen Huduma centers are already operational in Kenya together with the online e-citizen web portal and payment gateway.

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PROBLEM STATEMENT

One of the major categories of e-Government is Government-to-Citizens. The G2C category includes all of the interactions between a government and its citizens that can take place electronically. We believe that the application of e-Government will grow and prosper if it has achieved the requirements of users, also, the services are provided through e-Government must be consistent with the needs of citizens. If the citizens achieve their needs, the level of satisfaction for e-Government will increase.

To explore the research problem we will take it apart to fully consider both the supply and demand side of Huduma Kenya programme. The demand side comprises the following attributes, usability of Huduma Kenya platform, language of the content, such as Citizen’s literacy and skills level, e-Participation rate, time it takes to receive feedback and accessibility of the centers. On the supply side the following attributes are considered: availability of appropriate ICT infrastructure, Huduma Kenya strategy and policies, Huduma Kenya task force team, design of Huduma Kenya frameworks and human resource to drive the Huduma Kenya agenda.

To find out the opinions of citizens about the Huduma Kenya programme, we will distribute 300 questionnaire to citizens in three Huduma centers, in order to determine their views and sense on many issues concerning the programme. We will also interview staff members of Huduma Kenya and analyze secondary data gathered since the programme started in 2013.

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PURPOSE OF RESEARCH

The purpose of this study is to determine the challenges, opportunities and impact created by the e-Government initiatives in Kenya and we will perform a case study of Huduma Kenya programme in Nairobi County.

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RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

General Objective

Challenges, opportunities and impact of e-Government initiatives in Kenya.

Specific Objective

- To determine the challenges experienced in Huduma Kenya programme

- To determine the opportunities for improvement in the Huduma Kenya programme

- To evaluate the impact of Huduma Kenya programme in delivering e-Government Services

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RESEARCH QUESTION

Objective 1: To determine the challenges experienced in Huduma Kenya programme

Question 1: What challenges are being experienced in the Huduma Kenya Program?

Objective 2: To determine the opportunities for improvement in the Huduma Kenya programme

Question 2: What opportunities for improvement exist in the Huduma Kenya programme that have not been tapped into?

Objective 3: To evaluate the impact of Huduma Kenya to the delivery of Government Services

Question 3: What is the impact so far since the launch of the Huduma Kenya programme?

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SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study will focus on understanding the challenges, opportunities and impact in the Huduma Kenya programme. For this to be achieved staff members and citizens in the 3 Huduma centers located in Teleposta Towers, City Square and Makadara will be used as a study sample to answer the research questions above.

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SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Since the launch of the Huduma Kenya programme only 19 centers are operational in 17 counties. The strategy is to have centers in 47 counties by the year 2016 (Ministry of Devolution 2013, p.103). The recommendations from this study will help in informing the strategy and adoption model to be used by Huduma Kenya in implementing the Huduma centers across the remaining 30 counties.

The study will also be of importance to other developing countries especially in Africa looking into developing or improving their “one-stop shopping” e-Government strategies.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter will establish different e-Government definitions as viewed in different perspectives. Reviewed also will be the potential benefits, challenges and opportunities of e-Government implementations and potential negative implications especially in developing countries. The levels and scope of e-Government will also be highlighted and a summary of e-Government initiatives in Kenya provided.

Introduction

E-Government is a wave