By:Betty Luke
The government has announced that e-citizen services will be temporarily unavailable for five hours in its bid to facilitate the system’s upgrade for a more efficient service provision.
The scheduled maintenance will run from 7:00 pm to midnight on Saturday, July 18, during which users will be unable to complete payments for any services offered through the platform.
The interruption is expected to affect all transactions processed via the eCitizen payment gateway.
A statement by the Directorate notes that the exercise is aimed at upgrading the platform’s payment infrastructure to improve the reliability, efficiency and overall user experience of the government’s digital services.
Officials have advised members of the public to plan ahead by completing urgent transactions before the maintenance window or waiting until services are restored after midnight.
The government has increasingly relied on eCitizen as the primary gateway for delivering public services online, with more ministries, departments and state agencies migrating their services to the platform as part of Kenya’s digital transformation agenda.
Among the commonly accessed services on eCitizen are passport applications and renewals, national identification and civil registration services, driving licence applications, vehicle ownership transfers, and applications for certificates of good conduct.
The platform also enables users to pay for visa and immigration services, court fines, and land-related transactions.
Businesses also depend heavily on eCitizen for company registration, annual returns, business name searches, permit applications and licence renewals.
With millions of Kenyans using the portal to access government services and make payments each year, the payment gateway has become a critical component of public service delivery, making regular system upgrades necessary to ensure its smooth operation.
Despite the government’s push to digitize public services only 1,695 out of a target of 11,000 services had been onboarded onto the platform by March this year.
