E-Citizen portal gazetted as government’s official digital payment platform
Regards.
On Sat, 31 Dec 2022, 16:46 James Mbugua via KICTANet, <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> This country just when you think you’ve heard it all, you get shocked.
>
> The convenience fee of Sh50 seems to be everywhere coz I’ve noticed it
> when registering my clients with the Office of the Data Protection
> Commissioner. There is a 50 bob that appears upon receipt generation.
>
> JG
>
> On Sat, Dec 31, 2022 at 3:20 PM Odhiambo Washington <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 31, 2022 at 1:11 PM James Mbugua via KICTANet <
>> [email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> What were the disputes?
>>>
>>
>>
>> nation.africa/kenya/news/e-citizen-scandal-webmasters-the-dci-probe-that-never-was-and-what-omtatah-wants-in-court-4062006
>>
>> —
>> Best regards,
>> Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
>> Nairobi,KE
>> +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223
>> “Oh, the cruft.”, egrep -v ‘^$|^.*#’ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 🙂
>>
>
Cannot find this notice either at:
kenyalaw.org/kenya_gazette/gazette/month/12/2022/
Hopefully, if this was not a roadside announcement, the full notice will
clarify “official government digital payment platform”.
Direct payments on e-citizen are handled by a third party payments provider.
In addition to the third party payments processor currently being used
in e-citizen, there are a number of companies and banks that provide
payment options such as mobile payments, credit cards, direct deposit etc.
Will e-citizen issue payment slips and check against deposits?
Will county governments be forced to use e-citizen thereby preventing
development of other infrastructures and broadening the pool of local
people with expertise and experience that can provide such services?
What happens if there is a cyber attack on e-citizen? Will all
electronic government services be shut down?
As noted by Alex Watila, e-citizen has serious shortcomings. Preventing
creation of spaces for development of alternatives is short sighted.
e-citizen is of course helpful for verifying persons and possibly also
companies in Kenya. While it can be used as an authentication service,
other government functions should be handled as much as possible by the
relevant government departments on separate infrastructure with
information communicated on a need to know basis after appropriate
authorization (which can be electronic).
The tendency towards centralization and “Big Brother knows everything”
is quite alarming and a threat to national sovereignty.
A design of e-citizen that enables others to extend upon it accessing
information they need seems more useful. In particular one that allows
for protection of data, citizen privacy and also allows for information
correction. It would be good for ODPC to do an annual audit of
e-citizen, and release the resulting report publicly.
On 1/1/23 20:53, Johnsey Kivoto via KICTANet wrote: