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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. First, I want to take this opportunity to thank the Government, particularly the Minister for supporting this Motion. Madam Minister, I am very happy for what you have said and for the commitment you have said that already the process is in place to put this infrastructure in place. I, therefore, hope that you will move with speed and have this data infrastructure in place. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this country has never moved forward because we have not taken data and information as the most important ingredients in planning and decision making. We have allocated so much money to various programmes, building schools, roads and health facilities. However, we have forgotten the most important ingredient to planning is data and information. Most of the programmes we have been involved in are donor-funded or locally funded. They have not succeeded because of poor planning. How can we plan without proper information? That is why you will find that most of our projects, even at the constituency level, are not based on information. They are based on personal interests. We want this country to get into the culture of using information as a planning tool in the new constitutional order. As we move towards the county governments you realize as of now the counties have no information. As we chose the governors and the administrators of the counties, we will not be able to come up with a solid programme of development unless we set up a data infrastructure that will describe the potentials of various counties. We need to ask ourselves: What can these counties do? What is available or what is lacking? We need to start to build these data infrastructures, so that as we get into the county governments, we will be able to use information for rational decision-making. We, as a country, must move away from decision-making based on personal interests or personal whims. We should now go to a planning process where we will use data as barometer. Data is the tool that will show us where we should be going. The establishment of a GIS will solve this problem. This is a technology that has been developed very well in the world. In Kenya, we already have so many young people who are already trained in this system. So, we are not saying that this is a technology that we will build afresh. It is technology that is with us. Therefore, what we, as a Government need is to come up with is a policy. We must say that data is as good as building schools and health facilities for our people. Information as all of us know is power and without information you can do very little. Therefore, we need to build an infrastructure of information so that it can be accessible to everybody. As per Article 35 of our Constitution, everybody is now allowed access to information. We shall not be able to access information if the current information is not accessible. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you try to get information on anything, most of the information in various Ministries and departments is in files. You can never get access to it. We must remove this information from the files and put it on a computer- based system. We must put it on a web port so that anybody can have access to information everywhere in the world. If we do this, it is going to improve the marketability of this country. Most investors want to invest in this country but they cannot invest because most of the time they do not have information on this country. They have to come to Kenya to look for this information. With this system, investors will have access to information wherever they are in the world and they will know what opportunities this country is offering in terms of investment. They will come here knowing exactly what it is they can invest in and who they can contact. This is a very important system and many countries that are now developing very fast, be it in the Far East, this is a system they have installed and they are considering information as a major national asset. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my friend and brother Dr. Khalwale here talked about corruption. Let me tell you, we shall not eliminate corruption in this county unless we have information and data available on everything that we are doing in this country. If the information is readily available and everybody can access it, corruption is going to be very difficult to practise. Setting up this information will create a transparent system where everybody can access information and monitor what is going on. Whatever is going on, be it at the constituency level or wherever, people will be able to access it. Now, we can get this information even on mobile phone system. A GIS system can work on a mobile phone system. So people will be able to access information wherever they are. Therefore, they can make decisions wherever they are. Members of Parliament, decision makers whether in Europe or wherever, will be able to conduct the activities and businesses of their Ministries because they will have access to information to make decisions very fast. Finally, this system, if installed is going to improve knowledge creation in this country and knowledge management. Knowledge is now a major commodity of the 21st Century. With the GIS system created and with all this information available, research and development is going to thrive as a business. Our youth are going to get into creation of information as a business. They will use information to create employment. Therefore, information will turn from being a commodity that can only be used for decision making to a commodity that can create employment. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am very happy that most of the Members who have contributed on this Motion have supported it. I am particularly very impressed and happy with the Minister for supporting this Motion and for committing that they are going to bring a Motion on the Floor of this House so that we can discuss it and this process can commence. I am also happy that she has already indicated that the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics has already embarked on this process. It is vetting the team so that they can work on this. With those many remarks, I want to thank everybody who has contributed on this Motion."
}