Applying on the new “IremboGov 2.0” a product of IremboGov- an online government services platform, will now take only three steps instead of the more than six steps that one had to go through.
The homemade new version of Irembo that was launched on Wednesday will ease the tedious process of applying for government services, certificates, and scrap expiry timelines for certificates.
For example, a Birth Certificate will no longer expire after 3 months meaning citizens can apply for a Birth Certificate once and access it anytime they need it simply by logging in and downloading it.
IremboGov, Irembo’s pioneer product, was borrowed from Singapore and launched in July 2015, but has over the last five years been adapted to Rwandan needs.
Since 2015, the platform has moved from 5 services to 98 digitized public services to date, serving over 8 million Rwandans and foreigners.
Faith Keza, Irembo’s CEO said during the launch, that the choice to adopt a new version (with 22 services for starters) was for self-reliance but also as a result of listening to many citizen complaints and request for improvement.
“We have listened to feedback from users and a government institution on what is working and what is not. Our new and improved version is a culmination of a long redesign process to achieve a more efficient user experience,” Keza said.
Officials at the launch of the Made in Rwanda Irembo platform
Statistics show that the platform has saved the applicants about 23million hours of time they would have spent in applying for the services physically.
“We want to make this better and over the next several months we will enable over 70 more services,” said Faith Keza, Irembo’s CEO.
The “IremboGov 2.0” products was launched this Wednesday in Kigali by the minister of ICT and Innovation, Paula Ingabire and Local Government’s (Minaloc), Professor Anastase Shyaka.
The new Irembo version also comes with new changes and is expected to improve time saving especially for low income earners who will no longer have to worry about some issues from the previous version.
For instance certificates for all the commonly requested government services such as Marriage, Birth and Single Certificates- will now be issued as e-certificates on email (with an SMS alert).
Professor Shyaka said that Rwandans have previously had to go through a long process of applying for these certificates and after three months they have to re-apply for the same document.
“This issue of printing certificates and worrying about expiry dates has stopped today. We are hopeful with more efforts in improving the system it will better our goals of having an ICT based governance system,” Prof. Shyaka said.
The most requested services today, contribute to over 20% of all applications on IremboGov. Yet of 3000 government officials log in daily to IremboGov to serve citizens, 60% are Minaloc officials.
“This means our staff will be handling all applications and serve citizens using our facilities at the district, without moving a step outside,” Shyaka stated
Minaloc statistics show that just last month over 98,300 citizen in 30 districts in one day, logged on to Irembo and 90% of them got the service in one day, except for three districts which served at 70%.
Shyaka said that the Irembo 2 version comes at a time when Minaloc is beginning to implement its own plan to fully digitize its services in which all citizens will have to be served using government facilities at the district.
After almost five years of coming into existence, the Ministry of ICT say it will continue to rebuild and upgrade all IremboGov services to ensure that they are citizen-centric.
“This is expected to be fully operative by July and this is just the beginning as we redesign most of the services to ensure that the end users no longer have to make any journey,” Minister Ingabire said.
For Ingabire, “IremboGov 2.0” will be Rwanda’s starting point towards a journey of cutting dependence on foreign ICT experts and towards exporting Made-Rwanda-ICT solutions to other countries.
Meanwhile, the old and new platforms will keep operating concurently until all the services will have been migrated to the new platform.
The 22 services that were already migrated are related to local government and officials said, the migration should be handled with care.
The new platform is on the bottom of the existing one. You click on Apply for MINALOC Services here—and proceed.
