Kenyans will not be forced to take Digital IDs, CS Owalo states

While giving a One-year Status Report for the Ministry on Monday, Owalo assured Kenyans that the decision to access government services physically or digitally will be left in their hands. 

The CS said the digital IDs will be fundamental in storing the bio-data of individuals and also reduce 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 made reference to the successes of the Digital Identity Cards from different 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 cleared the assumption that the Digital IDs are similar to the Huduma Number cards, saying the latter   was meant to facilitate the development of an electronic population database, unlike the Digital IDs which store the bio-data of individuals.

During the seventh ID4Africa Augmented General Meeting in Nairobi on May 24, President Ruto announced the introduction of the Digital ID, which he termed as an upgrade the current national identity card. 

Additionally, Owalo addressed a recent attack on eCitizen platform, assuring Kenyans of the safety 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.