Huduma Centre staff have now been urged to familiarize themselves with the e-citizen services that are relevant to Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) and digitally challenged people.
This follows the government’s plan to establish 290 Huduma centres in all constituencies in a bid to bring services closer to every Kenyan.
According to Cabinet Secretary (CS) of the Public Service, Gender, and Affirmative Action, Aisha Jumwa, Huduma Kenya in its digitalization plan has earmarked to roll out 290 Huduma Centres in 290 constituencies following requests from citizens and leaders.
The CS said the centres will help save millions of shillings citizens use to access Huduma centres as most of them are located in county headquarters except Nairobi and Kajiado which have five and two centres respectively.
“This year we will construct a number of Huduma centres and should seek additional funding to roll the construction of sub-counties Huduma centres to bring services closer to Mwananchi,” said Jumwa.
The Ministry of Public Service is exploring the possibility of collaborating with the National Government- Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) for funding the establishment of some of the sub-counties Huduma Centres.
Jumwa spoke in Mombasa Friday when she closed the first annual Huduma Centres manager’s conference in Mombasa. The managers were advised to reposition themselves and embrace the digital era.
“Huduma Kenya is known as the trusted interface between the citizens and government services and that’s the reason Huduma is here to stay. Huduma Kenya must find its definite place to take digital services to the people,” said the CS.
On digitization, she commended Huduma’s leadership for being innovative and embracing the digital era, which resonates well with the digitization pillar of the Bottom Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA).
Some of the technologies are the service by appointment (digital queuing and customer feedback system), track my service, virtual desktop infrastructure, Internet Protocol (IP) phones, CCTVs, and LAN-connected printers.
The technologies, Jumwa said, have eliminated queues at the centres and reduced the waiting time for service and Kenyans only visited centres, when documents were ready and received a confirmation message.
Jumwa said Universal agents’ now renamed BETA agents will augment the centres by offering multiple services from various ministries, departments, and agencies.
“The BETA agents should reduce the congestion at Huduma centres and reduce the cost of deploying services to Huduma centres.
The BETA agents will play a critical role in supporting access to the over 5000 digitized government services by citizens,” she said.
SOURCE: KNA