Handover of the County ICT Road Maps
The ICT Road Map is a master plan that will ensure high productivity; improved internal systems and also service delivery to the citizens. It’s the ICT Masterplan that will steer the march towards the digital future that will transform the country to a regional technical hub and raise the country’s competitiveness in line with vision 2030s ICT goals.
The ICT Roadmap for Homa bay County has been developed by the County Government of Homa bay with help from ICT Authority, World Bank and IPA Consultants, as a guide to how the County designs its ICT services and structures to deliver positive outcomes for its customers – Citizens,
During the handover of the County ICT Road Maps which was attended by Chief Officer Mrs Eunice Owino and ICT Director Mr. Emmanuel K’athoo at Safari Park Hotel. Mr. Nzioka , InfoSys Consultants, CEO and Team Leader noted that most counties lacked data centres and up to 35% of the counties lacked NOFBI connectivity at the County Head Quarters level. He also noted that ICT Departments in the counties was understaffed with the some counties holding a maximum of four staff members. Another problem sited was that even local citizens were not sensitized on ICT projects run by the Government.
However, with every county now having their county roadmaps, the above challenges are set to be addressed. The consultants recommended that in the ICT road maps that every county should include necessary infrastructure to foster connectivity. With regards to human capital, the road maps proposed capacity building in ICT skills for county staff while at the same time institutionalizing ICT training at County levels and also ensuring that people get to understand the ICT Masterplan and work around it.
The road map in policy and legal environment will also offer lobbying of executive and county assembly to allow development of ICT policies. This could only be achieved by lobbying counties to increase their budgets for ICT from the current 1% to 5% while at the same time pursuing private public partnerships.
“Budget allocation for ICT in counties is roughly between Kshs. 3 million and Kshs. 10 million. To achieve the five year project, the counties should be risen to range between Kshs. 0.9 billion and Kshs. 14billion to enable laying of infrastructure,” said Mr. Nzioka.
The road maps also recommended the use of the Universal Access Fund to ensure underserved areas continue to roll-out broadband services. One of the key issues identified with regards to access to ICT revolves around public service delivery systems.
The County ICT roadmap project kicked off in March 2015.This is a project funded by World Bank through the ICT Authority. The project aims at improving service delivery to citizens at the county level through developing their respective ICT Roadmaps. After the launch of the ICT Road Maps, the Counties shall begin to execute their individual plans.