28 June 2025

0:00 Head of public service, my colleagues, the CEOs. Good morning. Good morning. Um, head of public service, I must be very h say I must say that I'm very happy to be here today. First, because I can see I have several of my CEOs here and to congratulate the CEOs for coming up with such a powerful platform uh to ensure that we deliver services to the people of this country. So a round of applause to yourselves. I want to derail um to move away a bit from uh the norm and I want to talk about the citizen because these people here head of public service

0:47 and when you think about government you're thinking about the delivery of services to the citizens of of the country. Therefore, as a government, we must be able to prioritize the needs, the preferences, and the rights of citizens in the design, delivery, and evaluation of public services. And when I think about that, I'm talking about the emphasis on the services that are given to the people, the accessibility, the responsiveness, the transparent and accountability to the people of this country. So how do we behave when you think about a citizen centric public service and in this room whenever you do something you must remember about impact

1:33 sustainability and visibility of the sim first the accessibility of the services while you are in your agencies how accessible are the services from that agency to the citizens of this country ensure The public service are available to all citizens even the underd marginalized groups through multiple channels such as physical offices, mobile platforms and online portals. It is the high time you thought you think about expansion. Open an office in Mars. open an office in Lamu even in those areas that we never thought that there could be uh a government service to be offered and

2:19 that is why we have kuduma centers across uh the country. What about the responsiveness? How responsive are you from your agency in regards to uh being prompt efficient and uh to the citizen needs and feedback. many a times and coming from the ministry of health I have seen this a lot of times um when we have uh citizens going to facilities and maybe they have a problem and in uh because probably they don't have a channel to get information to us or feedback they end up recording themselves in a very filthy manner and it becomes chaotic something that could have been sorted in in a record time.

3:06 Therefore, um at least from the ministry I come from, I'm sure we are doing the very right thing and that is why we are coming up with the quality of health care and patient safety bill to ensure that the patient is fully taken care care of. Um the members of public out there, they're looking for transparency and accountability. When you start a service, how often do you come out and say this is what we have done? Yesterday just with my CEO from KMTC, we were talking and uh he told me that we have received help money for the patients and I asked him so who have we told that we have received health help money when we

3:54 didn't have it. We were all over in the news making noise that we didn't have this money for the students. But when we got the money, we kept quiet. So I told him, can you go all out and tell the members of the public that what we have been waiting for is already here and the students must apply. Transparency, accountability, and it doesn't just come out of your pen. It can also come out from the verbal um communication that you do on a daily basis. And of course, participation. We already know that public participation in decision making is very pivotal in whatever else that we are looking for. The citizen out there is looking for efficiency and quality.

4:42 Therefore, head of public service, we have seen this in the context of our nation and we would want it to go through to the agencies. We've seen it through devolution. I'm happy to see the CEO of uh uh COG here. We've seen it through the Huduma centers, the expansion of Huduma centers, the public participation laws, digital platforms that we are able to pass information through. And finally, we must remind ourselves that the government of Kenya has five key agenda items in the bottom up transformation agenda. One of it being agriculture,

5:29 digital economy, MSME, housing and health. While you sit in your boots, how many times do you ever think of how to incorporate the agenda of government in your um deliberations? How many times do you go to the public and even talk about Sha when Sha was not working? Everybody was making noise including you. And when it started uh working why are we not hearing the same noise that it is working? It is the collaboration the coordination that we as government can come up with that is going to help the citizen of this country. And I want to

6:17 remind you that anything that we are coming up with in these five sectors it is up to us me and you. Thank you.