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{
    "id": 1478420,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1478420/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 70,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Mbadi",
    "speaker_title": "The Cabinet Secretary for National Treasury and Economic Planning",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "In part (b) of the question, the Senator wanted to know where the convenience fee charged and all other payments that fail to reflect on the platform end up. This is my response: The e-Citizen platform only collects convenience fee for successful transactions. When a user or citizen makes a payment, the payment will be collected first by the payment service providers’ channels which include mobile money for mobile network operators, Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and e-deposits for banks or wallets for non-bank payment service providers. The e-money is then channeled to the e-Citizen collection account at Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB). If a payment fails, transaction details and monies – that is payment amount and convenience fees – are retained by payment service provider which reverses the transaction and the e-Citizen platform will be notified. The convenience fee is collected by the e-Citizen platform and remitted to the e-Citizen settlement account domiciled at the National Treasury. That is the response on where the convenience fee goes if the platform fails. Part (c) was: Could the Cabinet Secretary report on the safety, efficiency, efficacy and reliability of the e-Citizen digital payment platform in light of the numerous complaints of delays and technical issues that followed the onboarding of a significant number of Government services on the platform? Mr. Speaker, Sir, this is my response. The e-Citizen platform has witnessed tremendous growth owing to the onboarding of over 16,000 services from the previous 397 services, especially with the coming in of the new Government in 2022. The services increased from 397 to 16,000. The rapid growth came with a lot of challenges to the platform which the multi- ministerial team has been able to address. The multi-ministerial team comprises of the National Treasury, Ministry of Interior and National Administration and Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) and Digital Economy. So far, through the Ministry of ICT and Digital Economy as the technology advisor and implementer, the platform information security has been built and implemented to ensure it is secure against cyber terrorism, hacking and compromises, which are likely to disrupt the provision of services to the e-Citizen. The e-Citizen platform has withstood several cyber attempts made by hackers with efforts arising from continuous platform vulnerability risk assessment. The multi- ministerial team has Security Operations Centre (SOC), which continuously monitors status of systems and applications and ensures any attack is responded to immediately. There were some challenges encountered during the rapid on-boarding of the services. However, the e-Citizen has been able to address significant portions of those challenges to stabilise the platform. Currently, the platform is very robust and has immensely improved service delivery to citizens, processing approximately 120,000 transactions daily. Mr. Speaker, Sir, if you look at it in terms of robustness and growth, in the Financial Year 2022/2023, we collected only Kshs26.406 billion through this platform. The following Financial Year 2023/2024 when we moved full blast to the e-Citizen, we The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}