Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu.
Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu says she will launch a special audit on the e-Citizen platform to establish the ownership, integrity of the system and amount of money that the government has collected through it since its inception.
Ms Gathungu told the National Assembly’s Finance and National Planning committee that she has raised “very serious issues” on the management of e-Citizen, especially its controls.
“We have just concluded our annual planning for the audit for 2023/24 financial year and we intend to do an in depth audit on the e-Citizen platform as a matter of priority,” Ms Gathungu said.
“I know that after I raised preliminary concerns on the system in my annual audit, the National Treasury is doing something to address those concerns. I will be auditing the system to ascertain the measures the Treasury has put in place to safeguard the system and its integrity,” she added.
Public audit
Ms Gathungu appeared before the committee chaired by Molo MP Kuria Kimani alongside top Treasury officials during a stakeholder engagement exercise on the Public Audit (Amendment) Bill, 2024.
“We have engaged Treasury on who actually owns e-Citizen but they told us the Auditor-General is conducting an audit on the platform. We have not been able to know who owns this critical system,” Mr Kimani said. “The e-Citizen generates significant non-tax revenues but who actually owns this system? Is it government or private individuals?”
The digital payment system was developed to enable individuals and businesses to make payments for government services electronically.
Ms Gathungu told the committee that the platform has serious performance issues, including time lags that deny users, such as university students, certain services.
She said an in-depth forensic audit on the e-Citizen platform has been listed among the tier one audits to be conducted in the next financial year.
Jonah Wala, the accounting services director at the Treasury told the committee that the e-citizen system had 18,000 services that users are able to access.
Proposed law
“We are currently developing a regulatory framework to anchor e-Citizen in law as recommended by Auditor-General,” he said.
But Mr Kimani told the Treasury officials that the committee is not aware of any regulatory framework being developed yet it is the committee that should help the Treasury to fast track the proposed law.
“We need to prioritise this issue of e-Citizen as a committee to give Kenyans the confidence and address any gaps early enough,” he said, adding that they will invite Immigration and Citizen Services Principal Secretary Julius Bitok and the management of e-Citizen to shed light on the ownership of the system.
