The case filed in court by a man claiming ownership of the National Education Management Information System (Nemis) has, once again, cast the government in a bad light over its procurement procedures. Five years ago, in 2018, another man had claimed that the Nemis idea was stolen from him.
The current case is not the only one involving the government and service providers. There is another active dispute over intellectual property involving the government and developers of the e-Citizen portal, a platform for public services.
Both platforms have a lot of private data on the citizens and it is worrying when such disputes crop up. For people to have trust in personal data submitted to the government, it should be safeguarded. Owing to technological advancements, it is not hard to foresee a future where most interactions with the government will go digital. As such, it will procure services from the tech industry as it cannot have experts in every field.
For that reason, officials should tighten procurement procedures to make them foolproof and above board to protect the citizens, government and service providers. Tighter controls will dissuade officials from getting into situations that can embarrass the state and keep opportunistic litigants at bay.
Court disputes are expensive and time-consuming for the parties involved, whether they win or lose the case. Where huge amounts of personal data is involved, like in these cases, the risk is higher if it doesn’t favour the state. A case also has the risk of denying a genuine innovator the opportunity to earn from their honest work if they lose the case.
There is, therefore, an urgent need for the government to review how it deals with service providers to avoid litigation, whether justified or not. That will also save the country millions of shillings that could be awarded by the courts as damages, funds which can be channelled to development projects.
