Execution and delivery of government online services is set to exhibit more efficiency after the government awarded Chinese telecommunication firm Huawei a tender to construct a Kshs 6 billion fiber optic infrastructure in the country. The tender, which covers other e-government projects as well, is expected to begin in August. The Multi-billion shilling project is aimed at linking Nairobi with various other towns within the republic through WAN (Wide Area Network).
Kenyans will have services such as registration of Personal Identification Number (PIN), filing tax returns, monitoring of processing passports and birth certificates done faster and more efficiently following this development. At the treasury, the infrastructure is expected to enhance swift rolling out of services such as Integrated Information System (IFMIS) software, which is a program that combines budget preparation and execution, accounting, financial management and reporting activities. This will further strengthen public financial management systems in a bid to enhance transparency, accountability and responsiveness to public expenditure and policy priorities.
An administration report from the School of Computing and Informatics in University of Nairobi by Joseph Onnyango and Eugene Waluvengo indicates that 86% of Kenya Revenue Authority‘s Road Transport Department (RTD) customers rate service delivery by the department as either average or poor. Long queues, fragmented services and poor automation which have been a big problem will not be expected once the project is completed. The current systems are said to be poorly integrated with some processes being partly automated as they are still running on obsolete technology. Upon full adoption of this ICT project, government systems are expected to be updated and more secure while bearing sufficient data intergrity to achieve faster and reliable service delivery to Kenyans.
However according to Information Parmanent Secretary Bitange Ndemo, awarding of the ICT contract was made under a mutual condition that ,China would give out a Kshs460 million loan if the contaract was given to Huawei . Previously, the National Optic Fiber Backbone Infrastructure (NOFBI) terrestrial tenders had been awarded to three companies. Two of them (Huawei and ZTE) were Chinese whilst the other (Sagem) was French.
Huawei has previously completed successfully several contracts in the country. On November 4 2004, the Chinese firm won a $34million (Kshs2.76 billion) bid from Safaricom to reconstruct and update Safaricom’s Intelligent Network. Telkom Kenya Limited (TKL) also chose Huawei to implement both phases of its National Fixed Intelligent Network, a project that was basically meant to enable TKL deliver more value-added services for its customers across Kenya. The services include prepaid card service (PPS), prepaid phone service (PPP), free phone (FPH), premium rate (PRM), virtual private network (VPN), universal personal number (UPT), and others.