Visit from Kenyan Senate to e-solutions in Estonia

In April 2014 a delegation of Senators, led by the Speaker of the Senate Hon. Ekwee Ethuro visited Estonia on a fact finding mission about a variety of e-solutions offered in this small country within European Union. While Estonia might not show up on the average person’s radar, what makes this tiny country interesting in

terms of governance is not just that the people can elect their parliament online or get tax over payments back within two days of filing their returns. It is also that this level of service for citizens is not the result of the government building a few websites. Instead, Estonians started by redesigning their entire information infrastructure from the ground up with openness, privacy, security, and ‘future-proofing’ in mind. Estonia has many accolades in ICT under its belt, Skype being the most well known and most widely used Estonian product.  At the United Nations World Summit the U.N. hailed Estonia’s e-Annual Report as the ‘Best of the Best’ e-Government application over the past 10 years. Estonia has been nominated and highlighted in several competitions around EU. For example: e-inclusion as a nominee, ePractice.eu with Good Practice Label

2007, European Enterprise Awards as a good practice of reducing red-tape , European Business Awards as an Ruban d’Honneur, Estonian nominee for World Summit Awards competition 2009 and our Cross Border eID project was nominated as a finalist of European eGovernment Awards 2009, just to mention a few. Nothing less can be expected from a country with a motto  “do nothing the way it was done before”.

During his trip to Estonia the Speaker was accompanied by Senator Otieno Kajwang, Senator Henry Ndiema , Senator Prof. Wilfred Lesan  and Senator Abdi Bule. The delegation held meeting and discussions with their counterparts in Estonia, the Chairman of the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu) Mr. Eiki Nestor and members of the Parliament with e-solutions being on the top of the agenda. MP Kadri Simson who took part in the meeting explained that digital solutions are based on the trust of the people as well. "If you trust a bank with your money then the next step is trusting the electoral committee with your vote. One out of four voters in Estonia cast their vote electronically," Simson said. MP Kalev Kotkas, who also took part in the meeting, gave an example from the field of agriculture and described how IT solutions allow farmers from the island of Hiiumaa to communicate with central agencies supporting farmers. The two Speakers also talked about digital prescriptions. (Official press statement and photos of the meeting)

The invite to visit Estonia came for the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia Mr.Urmas Paet (Official press statement and photos of the meeting with the minister), who was hosting Freedom Online Coalition annual conference taking place in Tallinn this year where Hon. Ethuro made remarks during the official opening (picture gallery). The event was attended by high level representatives from over 40 countries, including presidents, ministers of foreign affairs, ministers of ICT, etc. Kenya hosted the same conference in 2012. The Kenyan delegation in Tallinn had a chance to familiarise themselves with various e-solutions as part of Freedom Online Conference. These were offered by Estonian e-Governance Academy.

Estonian e-Governance Academy Foundation is a joint initiative of the Government of Estonia, the Open Society Institute (OSI), and the Bratislava Regional Support Centre of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Officially founded in December 2002, to date, eGA has cooperated with more than 50 countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cuba, Georgia, Great Britain, Haiti, India, Iraq, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Namibia, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovenia, Sri-Lanka, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and many others.

Tax declarations in Estonia

Estonia currently leads in the world with its digitalisation of its systems, documents, information registries. While many countries have been implementing similar solutions over the past decade, many still do not have any fully operating and in use systems ten years on, despite heavy investment.  The Kenyan senators saw numerous presentations and live demonstrations of e-solutions ranging from e-business registry, digital IDs for accessing all government services, e-health portals, including e-prescriptions, fully implemented e-population registry with individual files and criminal records making police and court work and systems very efficient.

According to one of the patrons and vocal supporters of e-governance, and a global authority on the matter Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, societies need to “think of legislation as part of the software package.” In order for e-services to function, Estonia first needed to pass digital signature laws, determine privacy protections, and roll out national ID cards for citizens. Many of these prerequisites, Ilves said, are a major challenge in other nations where citizens and lawmakers have strong privacy concerns and cultural traditions.  In regard to concerns of this nature without question, it is always the Estonian citizen who owns his or her data and retains the right to control access to that data. One of the notable benefits of operating registries and information systems for the state and its citizens such as the e-Business Register, the e-Notary system, the e-Land Register, the information system of courts, the Probation Supervision Register, the Prisoners Register, the Punishment Register, and the e-File on each individual, e-health is its full transparency, while providing levels and right of access and a right to privacy. Part of the privacy provision is that each citizen is able to see when any government official, police, doctor or any other authority with right to view his/her details has accessed his/her information and has a right to question or even sue when there is no justification for the officer accessing his/her information. You could say that an Estonian could sue the big brother! When systems are on paper files, nobody knows who has viewed their file, made copies of sections, removed pages, etc. In line with efficiency experienced with e-governance, Estonia hold the World Record in fastest registration of a company, done in 18 minutes, including all statutory registrations, and opening of a back account.

The senators and the speaker considered their experience in Estonia highly informative, with issue of cyber security in government offices, the importance to create an e-governance/digital society backbone, similar to Estonian X-Road, and intention to intensify connections and exchanges with e-solution centers in Estonia as their focuses informed by the trip.

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I have been advised that I should add an important note about this visit to Estonia. The programme of 8 days included meetings, visits, presentations, discussions, trips within Estonia, hands-on experiences every single day, with no day left for rest. The delegation was strong to pull through this. 

Jõelähtme will start to sell animals to Kenya

This is a translation of an article that appeared in one of the Estonian newspapers about the visit of Kenyan Senate delegation to Estonia. 

Text: Ülo Russak Photos: Ülo Russak
Translation and links added: Kadri

"Your e-government is working and your cows give a lot of milk. Kenya and Africa should be having stronger links " said Senate Speaker David Ekwee Ethuro Kenya before leaving Estonia. And he wants to enhance these linkages in every way, writes Harju Elu .

From left: Sen. Ndiema, Speaker Ethuro, Kadri

22 April to 30 April Kenya a nine-member parliamentary delegation headed by Speaker of the Kenyan Parliament David Ekwee Ethuro were visiting Estonian at the invitation of the Foreign Ministry. The delegation included four other senators and three officers. Estonia's honorary Consul in Nairobi, Kadri Humal-Ayal had been planning for such visit for years.

"It was difficult to convince high ranking parliamentary and government officers that many of today's internet solutions in the highly interactive world have been developed in Estonia , " said the honorary consul . Kenya’s high -level delegation came to attend an international conference , but also got to see Estonian life in many areas.

"A were very impressed by Estonian e -business registry and e-police records. We want to return to have a better understanding of E-elections, involving a larger delegation and more parliamentary opposition members.  This would ensure support to e-election transition from both - opposition as well as coalition " said David Ekwee Ethuro .

Kenyans also visited the University of Tartu .

" Being a university, where currently only one PhD student from Kenya is studying, it is important that the country supports PHD students coming from abroad. It could mean that Kenya will soon have more students here . The campus of your university left a very good impression , " said Sen. Otieno Kajwang . He asserts that there is a very vital that university research centers and research relates to the practical economic and productive activities.

Visiting the farm

The delegation visited Jõelähtme area, the municipality bordering Muuga port, being guests at private limited company Haljava Tõuloomafarm.

Aavo Mooste (center) with Kenyan delegation

" Muuga port logistics hub is very good, our operators have a lot to learn here" said Senator Abdi Bule

Farmer and Senator William Lesan  was left with a good impression of Haljava farm with its 240 dairy cows . While the farm is about to undergo major reconstruction ( in the near future it will have milking robots and other modern equipment) , the average annual Haljava cows gives 8,300 kilos of milk , which is a good Estonian average .

"Kenya has farms that are focused on high output . These, however have very few cows. Farms that have many cows like Haljavas, give very little milk " said William Lesan . The farmer and senator also thoroughly investigated local feeding practices and and lüpsitehnoloogiat .

Before leaving the farm the Senators exchanged contacts with host farmer Aavo Mooste – the sons of the Black Continent want to start importing the local pedigree dairy cows.

"It 's not impossible , " said Aavo Mooste , Holsten - Friesian cows are reared around the world. " Why wouldn't we sell them in Kenya? "

A simpler endeavour seemed to be Launching in Nairobi, " Let's Do It " clean up campaign . " Out of 10 of the world’s fastest growing economines, 7 are located in Africa. And Kenya is at the forefront , " said Speaker David Ekwee Ethuro . "Yet, we have much to learn from Estonia and Estonians . More precisely in the field of IT. This is an economically and politically very stable environment . "

Peace - absence of war?

Peace is not an absence of war, 

it is a virtue, a state of mind,

 a disposition for benevolence, 

confidence, justice.   

Baruch Spinoza (1632 - 1677)

 

This is how my morning started.

Friend: Hey, how have you been?

Me:  it has been a long week ....

Friend: I tell you, it wasn't exciting. Am glad we are peaceful

Me: peace is just on the faces, not in the hearts ... people's expression is suppressed, people are not given an outlet to vent

Friend: truly that's a good way of putting it. Majority of people are not happy with the current results but we are all afraid of expressing our views, am just hoping people will find ways of overcoming this issue before it eventually explodes like in 2007

Kenya is right now a country that is trying hard to put out the smoke, trying to making everybody comfortable that there is no fire. 

In fact, you can not mention the word FIRE without somebody quickly shouting "No fire in Kenya! Not this time around!" PEACE is key.

Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has had a generous budget for running infomercials. These were initially about voter registration, about voting and eventually they ended with "We will accept the results. We will maintain Peace"  Peace has been the bread and butter of many advertising agencies, civil society groups and NGOs. They seem to have done a good job. (Tense) peace has been the order of the day for the last one week, with virtually no outbreaks of violence. But has it crossed the line of what can be done, what is acceptable to achieve peace?

 

Acceptance of official results promotes peace. Really? Even if there are blaring irregularities in calculations, when the commission ignored faults in its systems? Freedom of speech, ability to ask questions, diversity of opinions are key to modern democracy. The peace and acceptance messages actually have a anti-democratic strap line. The country has been subliminally hypnotized to believe that Accepting results=Peace ...

The red warning light for me was switched on when 2,700 comments, suddenly got deleted from one of IEBC's Facebook pages on Saturday shortly after Raila's press conference. Yesterday Nation deleted an article with views of US president Obama with about one hundred published comments on it  ... Decisions are made about what is safe for the population to hear and what needs to be kept from people at large - they might not be able to handle it ....   GSU (FFU) patrolling the streets of Kisumu, Kibera and Mathare ... While autocracy is required from time to time, we just need to be conscious of it happening.  We must acknowledge that suppression of people's voices is a step off the usual track of democracy.

In a heavily polarised country like Kenya, a level of maturity is needed. When people actually say "Only two groups celebrating the 'won election' this is not Kenya anymore", it must be take seriously. No matter what the outcome of the next few weeks, polarity will keep increasing, yet, unity in Kenya must be restored. In life we can not always have what we want. As adults we must learn how to deal with disappointments and how to move on. No matter what the outcome, there will be people who will be happy and there will be people who will be disappointed. Hence the need to start actively and strategically building unity NOW.

Rwanda Genocide Archive

Kenya has had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission with no results. I guess it takes more than truth. Unity, it seems, requires acceptance of mistakes, accepting the people around us, accepting the situations, respect, forgiveness, effort to understand, pardon, letting go and a promise not to repeat the mistakes. Also, there must be possibility for people to say how that have been wronged, a concerted heeling process. Lessons learned - five years since the post election violence, twenty years since Rwanda genocide - time and silence do not heal injustices. There is massive amount of research, case studies and methods that have been developed, that have heeled a nation where victims are able live peacefully next door to perpetrators of violence. The knowledge is there. We just need to will to implement. Can we start by measuring the situation at hand (e.g. South African Reconciliation Barometer (SARB), in use since 2003, the Rwandan Reconciliation Barometer (RBB) in use since 2010) as clearly the temperatures, tempers and volumes evident in social media communications are hot, unpredictable and blaring? We could at least watch this, even if not all of us can do the three day workshop.

Rwanda have done something right to feature as Most Likely to Feel Safe country in the world as measured in October last year. And the country where one is most likely to feel love!!! While it can be a great job by branding agencies, there has got to be something more to it!

Justice be our shield and defender
May we dwell in unity
Peace and liberty
Plenty be found within our borders.

Justice comes first, even in the anthem. Followed by all good things in abundance!

My view on My Kenya

What we see depends mainly on what we look for - John Lubbock

Minu Keenia - My Kenya

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  Rääkimata Lugude Maa - The land of the un-told stories

Author Janika Tamm

http://petroneprint.ee/minu_keenia.php

Back cover:

In Kenya the question is not what your parents do, 

it is if they are still alive. You are not asked what

your favorite food is, but if you can afford one or

two meals per day. Nobody supports the voice and

the rights of the poor. Thousands of tragic stories

are shoved into silence as they are too common.

In Kenya every person has their own story.

Kuka, who was diagnosed as HIV positive at 4,

Rael who was raped at 7, Freddie who was thrown

out of his home as a teenager, and a lady who was

dying of cancer and of AIDS, just to mention a few.

This book contains twenty something stories that touched

me most during my work in Kenya as a volunteer.

Country that lies on the equator, where the sun rises

every day at half past six and where every child wants

to become a doctor or a teacher and where time and 

promises have a different meaning than in Estonia.

Early in December last year I received a note from a young Kenyan born architect in USA. It started “Tere hommikust” (Good morning, in Estonian). The reason for the Estonian greeting and the communication was his Estonian girlfriend, living in Tallinn, who was reading the book “Minu Keenia” (My Kenya). The young man needed to convince the lovely lady in Tallinn to move with him to Kenya. She was in the process of forming her opinion about Kenya and was using the freshly published book as one of the methods. Does it give a true picture of Kenya? Does it influence her view positively? Will it help in bringing a new Estonian to the multicultural scene of Kenya? These were questions that I could sense in his writing.

I could not answer. I had not read the book. The years that I had lived in Kenya I had never met Janika. I had heard about her from two other Estonians. All I knew was that she was a volunteer in a village somewhere in Western Kenya. The question remained with me – what would she write about Kenya?

A then the day arrived when I was holding my copy of “Minu Keenia” and I was burning with eagerness and anticipation to dig in and read. That eagerness disappeared very fast. It was a difficult book to read. Emotionally hard and difficult. The person who was staring at me from the pages of the book was hopeless, sad, a looser in life, starving, deprived and without any future. His and her name, age and personal details kept changing, but not his/her situation in life. Is that who a Kenyan is?? Is that what Kenya is??

No! No way! NO! That is NOT Kenya!!  … Yes … oh .. yes, that is indeed Kenya …

It IS NOT Kenya. Kenya is multifaceted, with more aspects to it than just village life. Kenya is vast, rich and full of diversity. Majority of Kenyans cope with their day to day life. They are not particularly rich, in a material way, but they are happy and thankful for what they have. What they have is very often a good and supportive family and possibility to look after one another, to bring up the next generation and hope that they will have a better, easier, richer and more beautiful life. Kenyans are always ready to help. I don’t know any Kenyan who does not regularly support financially the education of the grandchild of one or an other aunty or uncle, the food needs of some unemployed relative, the hospital bill of a sick or injured friend or relative, who has not provided a roof for a few month to a few years to some relative or a child, etc. When there is harvest, it is normal to give some to those less fortunate. That is the normal way to live as a Kenyan. And that is what gives Kenyans the strength to get up in the morning, to look for opportunities, to create solutions that work right here and to be happy and content with life.

YES, there are many families in Kenya  for whom putting food on the table is difficult. Of those there are many for whom it is nearly impossible to feed all the hungry mouths regularly and reliably. As part of Rotary projects and during my other travels, I have been to many poor homesteads. I often ask to see what food there is in the kitchen. It is sad to see an old sufuria holding barely a cup of plain uji that needs to feed the family with many children for that day. There are many children whose families can not afford “free” education, sometimes for financial reasons, sometimes for cultural reasons. Majority of Kenyans can not afford good quality health care. Janika in her book talks about a counterfeit mobile phone and Chinese bicycle that break down the day they are bought. What is even scarier than her scenarios, is that pharmacies across Kenya, with very clear consciousness, sell medicines that contain no active ingredients, have no medicinal value. A corrupt society, like Kenya, indeed is hopeless. It has indeed been deprived of its future!

The most important part that Janika’s book has, in my view, is to draw a picture for Estonians about the work and life of a volunteer. It requires a way bigger person that most of us, with even the best intentions, could ever find within us. To distribute money, that has been collected through massive work and major effort, while feeling the angst of ‘it is never enough’. There are more and more people who want more and more. Everybody is asking, hoping, begging. And to be conscious of the fact that the people who are asking for more and more are in reality capable, smart, skilled and talented. In Kenya there is a lot of talk about addiction foreign aid. So, where do you draw the line? How can you be a responsible donor?

The book also allows one to look at their own life from a different perspective and to review one’s own value systems and priorities. The pain and suffering and problems of people, children who are very far away have been brought into the homes of Estonians. How do Estonian react? Is the picture painted in the book convincing? Interestingly enough, I am already aware of people in Estonia, who after reading the book, have found a way to manage all their other commitments AND take on responsibility for the education of a child in Shianda village. However, does providing an education set that child on a path to become self-reliant?

Having finished Janika’s book, I must say, Kenya is still the land of untold stories. There are very many stories, happier, more colourful, more joyful, more beautiful, filled with fun, wondrous, rich stories that describe Kenya and Kenyan people, people who are open, good-willed, curious, respectful, who crack jokes and who love laughing.

The lady from Tallinn will, for sure, find here what she is looking for, no matter what it is as Kenya has EVERYTHING!

In Estonian with Comments