Beginning next month, Kenyans will be able to access birth and death certificates digitally.
Immigration and Citizen Services Principal Secretary Julius Bitok said the government is planning to phase out the issuance of traditional certificates.
The new digital death and birth certificates will be issued from March 1, in line with the implementation of the Unique Personal Identifier (UPI), which will act as a lifetime ID for newborns.
The UPI will be issued to children who are Kenyan citizens. It will also be adopted for children born outside the country to Kenyan citizens and who are eligible for Kenyan citizenship.
Where death occurs, UPI will also serve as the death certificate number.
“It(UPI) can be used as the school admission number as well as the index number for national examinations. UPI can serve as the ID number on attaining 18 years, the registration number for NHIF, NSSF and driving license number,” Bitok explained.
“An obvious question is how different UPI will be from Huduma Namba. Whereas the latter sought to register citizens afresh under a different system, UPI will repurpose an existing and continuous exercise,” the PS added.
The changes are in line with the Kenya Kwanza government agenda of having 95 percent of government services digitized, as part of enhancing service delivery.
President Ruto set a goal to fully digitalize 5,000 government services by the end of June 2023. So far, Ruto said they have digitized over 500 services.
“In the next 6 months, we will have 5,000 services available in the digital space. I have also asked the Ministry of ICT to also work on a digital identity so that the big Huduma thing (Huduma Namba) that never was… we can finally have as Kenya, a digital identity. I have told my good friend Eliud that by the end of this year, Kenyans must be able to identify themselves digitally,” the President said during the commemoration of Data Protection Day.
