huduma

One of the masterstrokes of the Jubilee administration was the establishment of Huduma centres across the country. That the centres have brought Government services closer to the people is in no doubt.

For a long time, citizens grappled with poor service delivery from the public service. Past governments had tried a range of interventions to remedy the situation but none succeeded.

One of the painful remedies was the retrenchment of more than 100,000 civil servants but that resulted only in a negligible impact on the effectiveness or efficiency of the civil service.

The Kibaki government even introduced results-oriented management but by 2005, nothing much had come out of it. The Huduma centres have been the game-changer in transforming public service delivery by providing access to various Government services and information efficiently and conveniently for citizens.

It now takes less than two weeks to replace a lost national ID card compared to the three months, or more, it took before. Many other Government services are offered in less time. Staff at the Huduma centres even help citizens to file their tax returns in the shortest time possible. Walk into any Huduma Centre and you walk out wishing the changed attitude could spread across the anachronistic civil service.

By making the Government more transparent and accountable through the digitisation of procurement procedures, and expanding and delivering e-government services through the growing network of Huduma centres, corruption cartels blamed for much of the inefficiency and wastage will be no more.