The Public Service will be taking stock of the achievements made in the past 10 years during this year’s Africa Public Service Day (APSD) under the theme ‘Celebrating Public Service Transformation: Ten Year Journey and Beyond’.
Public Service Principal Secretary (PS) Mary Kimonye said that the celebrations will be held from June 21 to 23, 2022 under the theme which is premised on the government’s deliberate efforts to transform the Kenya Public Service in order to ensure effective and efficient service delivery to the citizenry.
Speaking in Nairobi on Thursday during a media briefing, Mrs Kimonye said that they will be having a three-day event since this year’s celebrations coincide with the end of term for President Uhuru Kenyatta who for the past 10 years has been leading reforms in the public service sector, transformation within the infrastructure sector and many other achievements which is what they will be celebrating.
The PS said that they will be rewarding exemplary civil servants who have used innovative ways to serve the citizens and use the rewards as a momentum to create new innovations in the civil service.
She explained that they will have a curtain raiser event at the Ngong forest where they have adopted an eight-acre piece of land and have already planted trees in five acres leaving three acres to plant.
“We shall also have exhibitions at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) dubbed Kenya House 2022 where over 100 Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) are going to have stands to showcase to the public their achievements in the 10 years,” said Kimonye.
She said that at the KICC they will be having Huduma mashinani where members of the public can collect their birth certificates, register their IDs, check if they have unclaimed assets and many other services.
“We will be having a speed dial on mental health with instant mental health services being offered by people from our mental health department,” said the PS.
She said that during the discussions they will be looking at the future of work and the public service of the future and how to embrace the new generation of young civil servants who are challenging the status quo with technology and are questioning the need to be in an office whereas one can deliver the set targets while working from any location.
“The government is open for proposals from the youth on how to digitize services. There are many functions we do as a government where we have registries, records keeping, transport management and we are doing them manually which creates room for the youth to come up with innovations like the ones we have seen youths digitize agriculture programmes,” said Kimonye.
“We will have around five young people who have been going through an accelerator programme with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) who will be showcasing some of the things they have done in the area of digitization,” said Kimonye.
The PS said that they are opening up the public service to public scrutiny which will help to develop solutions which are citizen centric adding that they will be seeking a replication of the best services where digitization has succeeded in one ministry it should be replicated to the others.
“At the state department for public service we are currently working on digitizing records and correspondence management and once we have done that it can be replicated to the rest of the public service,” she said.
She added that they have already started the digitization of fleet management which will help in controlling usage of fuel, repair and maintenance as they will be able to track a vehicle in real time because they have had cases where government vehicles have been involved in accidents where work tickets were not assigned to go.
“Records management and movement of correspondences is another area we are working at digitizing where if you send us a letter it does not need to go physically, we can scan it and send it to the officer who is supposed to take action even ahead of the physical letter which means that the turnaround time for decision making is much faster,” explained Kimonye.
By Joseph Ng’ang’a
