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{
    "id": 641436,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/641436/?format=api",
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    "content": "people are much more at home when it comes to information technology than the elderly. Perhaps that might not be a very accurate assumption but we know that younger people at the age of Sen. Cheruiyot were born just around the time when the World Wide Web (www) had been invented. For the information of Members of this House, the www was invented in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. So, it might not be much older than Sen. Cheruiyot. I believe that being a Member of the Committee on Information and Technology, he will add a lot of value and this House will benefit out of it. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, one of the things that I would urge the Senator to undertake is to attempt and define enterprise architecture for the counties, so that you can have one blueprint or template that defines the basic minimum technology investment and architecture that counties should deploy. We are currently seeing a situation where each county is going to the market to get things like revenue management systems or automated solutions. They even want to implement their own enterprise resource planning solutions. It will be important for this Senate to provide guidelines in conjunction with the ICT Authority of Kenya and other relevant bodies, including the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) so that we come up with an enterprise information architecture that counties can deploy and that can reduce some of these costs that we are seeing. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, you have seen Government entities - like what happened to the Youth Enterprise Development Fund - spending hundreds of millions of shillings in defining an information technology strategy or coming up with a design for an enterprise resource planning system. I used to do that in my past life but I never made Kshs100 million out of it. I hope that this Senate Committee will provide guidelines that will be used by counties and state corporations so that we reduce or close the window of corruption that information technology has become. Information technology has now become the quantum channel through which a lot of money is being stolen. I also support Sen. Cheruiyot’s inclusion in the Committee on Finance, Commerce and Budget. You have been present as we have been discussing issues of late disbursement of funds to counties and this is a critical issue. As I mentioned before, suppliers are striking and some workers are not being paid. The question is; is Treasury remitting this money or is this money being remitted to the counties and only favoured contractors are the ones who are being paid? In as much as sometimes we bash the Treasury for not remitting funds on time, there is also evidence that when funds reach counties, it is the politically correct contractors who are paid off. The “big” contractors are paid at the expense of the small- time contractors, the youth, women and persons with disabilities who have taken loans of Kshs2 million or Kshs500,000. You will find it is the “big” contractors who are owed Kshs100 million who are paid. This is because there is that perception that once the Kshs100 million has been paid, some 10 per cent goes back to county functionaries. I hope that this Committee will get to the bottom of this matter, so that our people do not suffer. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I have also noted that Sen. Mungai will be replacing Sen. Sang in the Committee on National Cohesion and Equal Opportunity. This is a Joint The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate"
}