National Government Administrative Officers (NGAOs) on Wednesday transitioned to digital as government launched a digital reporting and monitoring tool dubbed “Project BETA”.
The tool will evaluate and track the implementation, progress, and performance of National Government Development Projects.
Other issues on focus will be priority programs, presidential directives and crime statistics across the country through the National Government Administration Officers system.
According to Internal Security Principal Secretary Raymond Omollo, the tool will ensure the information on government projects and programmes is marked by timelines and credibility.
While issuing region and county-specific tablets to Regional and County Commissioners at the Kenya School of Government, Omollo emphasized that projects from now on will be uploaded and tracked in real-time with the information available at a one-stop dashboard.
"The purpose of Project BETA is to capacitate our officers to better supervise, coordinate and oversee effective implementation of National Government policies, programmes and projects with an emphasis on the lowest administrative unit being the Sub-Location cascaded upwards to the Region level," Omollo said.
Project BETA will be able to appraise ongoing projects and the progress achieved while analyzing budgetary allocations and actual expenditures in the different regions and Counties.
The system has Artificial Intelligence capability and will also be able to evaluate delayed projects and relay feedback on implementation challenges.
Similarly, as the Chairpersons of respective Security and Intelligence Committees at the Region and County levels, crime statistics at all levels will be filtered on the dashboard with criminalities committed in the last hour, 24 hours, a week, or even 1 month easily and instantly retrievable.
"NGAOs being the government’s first point of contact with the grassroots, will play a pivotal role in transforming and maximizing the impact of this targeted investment."
"This digital reporting capability and enhanced oversight capacity move us faster to a more modern, functional, and efficient NGAOs that is highly responsive," Omollo said.
This comes against the backdrop of President William Ruto's directive last week during a two-day National Executive Retreat revealing that the government would launch a tracker that would discharge every commitment made by the Government in the BETA plan.
"Project BETA will not only improve on accountability but will aid in fulfilling NGAOs obligation to residents in their administrative units of quality and timely delivery of National Government policies, programmes and projects," added Omollo.
Among key government priority projects that will be tracked under ProjectBETA include houses built under the Affordable Housing Scheme, farmers registered for the distribution of subsidized fertilizer in support of the Ministry ofAgriculture, trees grown under the 15 billion tree campaign spearheaded by the Ministry of Environment and the beneficiaries registered for the InuaJamii Cash Safety-net Programme among others.