‘We have all payment records’: eCitizen developers address accountability concerns

The developers' consortium that developed and maintains eCitizen, the government’s online portal for all State services, has defended its accountability amid repeated concerns about the accuracy of records of revenue collected through its platform.

Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu previously flagged eCitizen’s revenue accountability statement for the year ended June 2023, questioning the accuracy of revenue receipts amounting to Ksh.15.5 billion, which she said could not be confirmed.

Additionally, Gathungu’s office flagged discrepancies in the actual balances recorded by several ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) in the year ending June 2024, and the amounts shown by the digital receipts generated by eCitizen.

ECS (Electronic Citizen Services) LLC, the three-member consortium behind the platform, says all the transactions processed through eCitizen are verified before the company invoices the government monthly for maintaining the platform.

“Parliament has questions to ask the government department handling eCitizen, which is in the Interior Ministry,” David Kiprono, ECS’ Director of Government Relations, told Citizen Digital in an interview.

“Every end month, we invoice for every transaction that has gone through our payment gateway; on the government side, they have to verify that all the transactions were made. We can pull all the data from our system and verify down to the phone number, service sought and ID number.”

Kiprono is a founding director at Webmasters Kenya Limited, the company providing eCitizen customer care and related services in the consortium. He said the questions the AG’s office and Parliament have raised “are towards the government side of things.”

“As a vendor, we deploy and manage the system. It is very foolproof. You cannot falsify a transaction. Sometimes, when there is a lack of clarity, they say they’ll hold on, and we let them do it, and later they pay us once they have clarified things.”

Several legislators have also raised concerns about the Ksh.50 ‘convenience fee’ one is charged when paying for services on the platform.

The charge was introduced to cater for the convenience of not having to visit a government office for a service, explained Kiprono, and it’s the only source of money that keeps eCitizen afloat.

“To date, eCitizen has never been funded by the exchequer. The convenience fee is what we pay for cybersecurity licences, certifications, bandwidth, salaries and the company’s bills,” he said.

“In the end, we never even get the full Ksh.50 because of budgets for the departments maintaining the platform,” added Kiprono.

Webmasters developed eCitizen in 2014, and then-President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government adopted it as part of its push to digitise county and national government services.

It has since expanded to be the main gateway for over 22,000 services by agencies like the National Transport and Safety Authority, Kenya Revenue Authority, and the National Registration Bureau.

Webmasters ran into tussles with the revenue collection from all services procured through the platform, which saw the function eventually given to the National Treasury, leaving the private company to invoice the government each month for their ‘convenience fee’ bill.

Since eCitizen’s launch, Webmasters had contracted Goldrock Capital to handle cash collection for all services on the platform through the M-Pesa Paybill number 206206.

But Goldrock’s work faced legal challenges, as there were no contracts between the company and the government for the collection or management of funds paid by Kenyans.

The auditor at the time said the situation meant a private firm was illegally collecting money on behalf of the government.

Goldrock was eventually kicked out, and the government directed that the 206206 Paybill number be under Treasury’s control.

Asked about the controversy, Kiprono told Citizen Digital: “Goldrock had been contracted to collect this convenience fee on behalf of ECS. If it had any regulatory issues with the government, that is not on us.”

Pesaflow was then incorporated to take over from Goldrock Capital, and some of its shareholders are previous workers for Webmasters Africa.

eCitizen was fully run by ECS until the Kenyan government acquired it in 2023, which saw the consortium get into a three-year contract with the State to maintain the portal.

It is now domiciled under the Department of Immigration and Citizen Services.

According to Kiprono, the platform is currently collecting Ksh.1 billion daily for the State.

“We grew from making Ksh.100 million a day to Ksh.1 billion. It oscillates such that on some dry months we go to Ksh.900 million,” he said.