Hubris and milch cows.

How do you build a digital government when the men and women meant to run it have a determinedly analogue version of government and governance? They may have a sophisticated appreciation of digital tools, including digital media, but their instincts are as analogue as electrodes-on-genitals torture methods employed by the colonial era, Kenyatta Era, and Moi Era Special Branch. 

To them, "digital" is simply the application of technological advancements in communications to their communications; it is not the transformation of the peoples' engagement with their government from fear-based to demand-based. It is why leading members of the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit find it useful to use Twitter, Facebook and God-only-knows what else to paint Coalition Era politicians in a bad light while their own Twitterscape lies ashambles because of hacktivists of unknown digital provenance.

Kenyatta the Younger and Anne Waiguru, Devolution and Planning Cabinet Secretary, set off on the right foot with the Huduma Centres. The idea that everyone, regardless of status or wallet-size, is equal at an Huduma Centre is revolutionary. Once you get our electronic token, there are no queues to jump until your number is up. So, if you are a Big Man, you have a choice: sit among the Unwashed Masses or pay someone to sit for you. But there will be no queue-jumping. Sadly, it seems that this is the extent of the Great Digital Experiment. The democratisation of public services is a step to far, it seems, and that is something that simply cannot be allowed to prevail.

If you have ever had the great misfortune of visiting Times Tower you will understand this phenomenon. On the outside, while not exactly beautiful, Times Tower is an imposing, iconic building. It is imposing in and of itself and even without the six-feet high fence, the closed circuit cameras, the private security or armed Administration Police, it is an intimidating building to visit. For years it was also home to the largest group of "brokers" outside Ardhi House's notorious Thirteenth Floor, able to organise the processing of income tax returns to PIN certificates to driving licenses to number-plate issuance with speed - but for a reasonable fee. 

It was a brilliant con by the quick-fingered factotums in Times Tower; they would limit the number of tellers available, slow down their rate of work by simple sabotage - missing paper, missing computer keyboards, and such - and push the desperate wage-earner into the open arms of the broker who, for that reasonable fee, would "facilitate" the processing of your paperwork. The broker would give the factotum his cut and the cycle would be repeated in thousands of transactions every year.

Then one of the factotums came to the same realisation as the denizens of Ardhi House's Thirteenth Floor; since he was in charge of the process, and he had access to all manner of material, why shouldn't he go into the business of manufacturing fictitious documents, records and the like? Suddenly Nairobi was flooded with certificates and licenses and returns which were backed by nothing but thin air. They were not forgeries - after all they were printed on official government paper but they were about as real as the pink unicorns small children are entertained with in their pre-primary education.

The digitisation of the Government of Kenya was meant to wipe the slate clean, clean up the registries and guarantee that what someone claimed was true, what someone presented as proof was genuine, and that the army of brokers that had settled in Times Tower would find new accommodations. And the Huduma Centres were proof that Kenyans would give up a lot of their privileged privacy for certainty and order.

Human idols all have feet of clay. With Team Digital, hubris is their weakness. The arrogance to believe that they alone could change our world, that they alone had the keys to our brighter digital future. They are caught in the same quagmire that demolished the dream that was NARC and poisoned the nusu mkate/nusu mkeka coalition with accusations and counter-accusations that reverberate even today as witnessed between former and present Lands Ministers. Hubris! It is only a matter of time before they shelve all their high talk of change and progress, forget all their promises, and simply set their minds to milking the milch cow that is GoK until its teats are flat as chapatis.