7th June 2018 By Cheruiyot Korir/Emmaculate Muia
The government will carry out registration of citizens through biometric system and generate unique identifiers for individual citizens to facilitate provision of educational and health services, ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru has said.
Mr Mucheru said, use of biometric data would ease storage, retrieval and sharing of medical records of patients by health personnel for effective treatment and control of diseases while the data can also be utilised for planning and development for improved lives.
Speaking at the Norfork hotel today, during a meeting with university dons under the umbrella of Kenya Education Network (KENET), Mr Mucheru said the government was exploring possibilities of riding on the vast network of universities across the country to facilitate attainment of universal health care and farmer registration exercise.
On machine learning and artificial intelligence, Mr Mucheru challenged the academia and other innovators to develop software that would preserve Africa cultural and linguistic heritage.
The Cabinet Secretary regretted that Africa cultures and languages are being left out of the artificial intelligence machine yet it had huge populations and had the potential of generating employment through interpretation.
Mr Mucheru assured public institutions under KENET that the government will give the exemption to the institutions on the directive to consolidate ICT services and equipment in the Ministry of ICT.
Among those present in the meeting were cabinet secretary for Education, Amina Mohammed, Principal Secretary for ICT Jerome Ochieng, Principal Secretary for Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET), Mr Kevit Desai among others.