Nairobi County government has made the cut to the list of nominees in this year’s CIO 100 awards, thanks to its electronic payment system which allows citizens to pay for various council services online.
The awards recognise organisations, public and private, in East Africa based on their ability to effectively integrate technology in service delivery. The top 100 will be announced later in the week during the CIO100 Annual Symposium and Awards scheduled for November 13 and 14 at the Enashipai Resort, Naivasha.
The list, the organisers say, was arrived at after weeks of sifting through the applications by a PwC-led panel. The Kampala Capital City Authority also earned its slot courtesy of its smart city project e-citie, which focuses on improving institutional staff efficiency through collaboration of the Management Information System and the Microsoft Lynce project server.
“It is clear that if East Africa wants to expand the economic successes then there must be an improvement to the services offered by various organisations. Application of manual service, as it were, cannot effectively meet the demands for the growing populations,” observed PwC’s Muchemi Wambugu. CIO’s Director Andrew Karanja said that adoption of technology is quickly spreading with better support systems being put in place.
“This is encouraging as technology is becoming more basic each day and the public sector is even more receptive of the trend.” Innovation is on an upward trend as over 60% of the organisations that took part in CIO 100 survey indicated that the technologies used in their projects are being deployed for the first time.
The applicants listed IT Operations, Customer Support and Accounting and Finance as the business departments that benefit the most from the IT related projects. From the same survey, technologies most important to the execution of the projects include mobile or wireless technology, Databases or data warehousing and virtualisation of servers, reinforcing the importance of mobile technology. Big data, which most consider an important driver in businesses, is yet to get a footing.
This year’s submissions came in from Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and Congo.
