State officers to have mandatory digital training, Senator Nyamu proposes in new Bill

Nominated MP Karen Nyamu has proposed a bill that seeks to have all government employees undergo mandatory digital training.

The Bill dubbed Digital Literacy Bill, 2023, wants digital training incorporated into Kenya's education curriculum and also made a requirement for new entrants to public service to have basic digital certification to get jobs.

"There exists a strong digital divide in Kenya with 44 per cent of the urban population having access to the internet as compared to only 17 per cent of the rural population," Nyamu said.

"The huge number of citizens lack basic digital skills yet they should be main consumers of digital government services and thus risk missing the benefits of efficiency that come with digitization."

The Bill also proposes a framework to train and equip all public servants with basic digital skills.

It also seeks to provide them with a globally recognized certification.

The Bill further proposes the establishment of Community Digital Hubs in every county to facilitate digital training communities.

In the Bill, Nyamu wants county governments to come up with programs to recruit youths as Digital Literacy Cohorts to provide training to communities at the grassroots levels.

"Currently, every government ministry is spending huge amounts of money in offering Digital training to their workforce in order to equip them with digital skills," Nyamu said.

Nyamu said offering government services digitally will be an uphill task if the civil servants are not digitally savvy.

In order to strengthen devolution, Nyamu proposes the creation of a Digital Literacy Committee that will incorporate CECs in charge of ICT to advise the CS and the National government in regard to the ICT policy.

The Bill comes at a time when the government is rolling out a plan to digitize all government services by the end of the year 2023.

So far, over 5000 government services have so far been digitized.