President William Ruto Friday morning launched the Digital Government Services, Gava Mkononi (eCitizen Mobile App), and the Gava Express at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC).
The improved platform will bring over 5,000 crucial government services under one roof for Kenyans.
The Gava Mkononi application is a phone-based app set to make the services available for smartphone users.
The Gava Express is a replica of Huduma Centers. The platform will provide services at the grassroots – unlike Huduma centers which are primarily based at the county headquarters.
According to the Head of State, Gava Express will be driven in partnership with the private sector and targets the establishment of over 300,000 outlets.
The move by President Ruto aims at ensuring Kenyans access crucial services more conveniently and cutting out social interactions which result in corruption cases.
The Kenya Kwanza government also through the program seeks to achieve increased revenue collection by minimizing leakages that are witnessed during manual collection.
Among other objectives is the creation of employment by incubating innovations and projects.
The most popular services on the platform include; National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) (Provisional Driving License), Business Registration Services, Police Clearance / Certificate of Good Conduct, Civil Registration Services (Marriage), Foreign Nationals Initial Registration, Directorate of Immigration Services, Kenya Ports Authority, Kenya Revenue Authority, HELB, and MSMEs (Hustler Fund).
Meanwhile, Kenyans will pay for government services through an official pay bill number 222222 as directed by the president.
“There is a dedicated government pay channel, 222222. The expectation of the government is that all government revenue must now use the pay channel so that Treasury can have sight of every government service that is paid for,” he said.
Over 1,000 PayBill numbers used for the collection of payments for government services will now be shut down within the next 90 days.
“I am going to be making an announcement here that in the next 90 days, all other pay bills must be shut down because we have a problem with some of the PayBills that we cannot account for. We have close to over 1,000 PayBills some of which we don’t have sight of. They must now be closed.”