Eliud Owalo, Cabinet Secretary for Information, Communication, and Digital Economy, has stated that no Kenyan will be forced to obtain the new Digital Identity cards.
Speaking on Monday while giving the Ministry’s One-Year Status Report, Owalo assured Kenyans that the choice of whether to access government services physically or digitally will be left to them.
According to the CS, digital IDs will be critical in storing individuals’ bio-data as well as reducing the movement and congestion of people in and out of government offices.
“Let me also clarify that when it comes to pass (the implementation of digital IDs), we will not force any Kenyan to take a digital identity. No, the onus will be on you to decide whether or not you want to get government services through your digital identity based on your bio-data or you want to physically visit government offices,” he said.
Owalo cited the success of Digital Identity Cards in various parts of the world.
“We have done quite a bit of benchmarking; it has happened in Estonia, it has happened in Belgium, it has happened in Pakistan, it has happened in India, these are based case global examples that we can benchmark with and Kenya can in no way be an exception in this regard,” the CS remarked.
Owalo dispelled the notion that Digital IDs are similar to Huduma Number cards, explaining that the latter were designed to facilitate the development of an electronic population database, whereas Digital IDs store individuals’ bio-data.
On May 24, at the seventh ID4Africa Augmented General Meeting in Nairobi, President Ruto announced the introduction of the Digital ID, which he described as an upgrade to the current national identity card.
In addition, Owalo addressed a recent attack on the eCitizen platform, assuring Kenyans of the security of their data.
“The recent case we had was not a hacking of the eCitizen platform. It was an attempted attack. But since we had an elaborate risk mitigation mechanism, it was unsuccessful. I want to assure Kenyans that their data is secure. That incident did not lead to infringement of personal data,” Owalo said.
