By Joshua Cheloti

Cabinet meetings have now gone paperless.

President William Ruto on January 31, 2023, chaired a first-ever paperless cabinet meeting in the history of the country at State House Nairobi.

The past meetings of the Cabinet Secretaries are usually punctuated with huge bundles of papers, but that will now be a thing if the past.

The State House in its update noted that the decision to go paperless for Cabinet meetings is part of the government’s effort to create efficiency in service delivery.

“President @williamsruto chairs the first paperless Cabinet in line with the government’s efforts to create efficiency in service delivery,” State House said in a tweet.

Similar sentiments were shared by State House spokesperson Hussein Mohammed.

Mohammed said the move is a step towards digitising government.

“H.E President @WilliamsRuto is currently chairing the first Paperless Cabinet in line with the President’s goal of digitizing Government,” noted the State House spokesperson.

Since his inauguration, President Ruto has been vocal about the need to ensure all Government services are available digitally.

He had early this year promised that all his cabinet meetings would be paperless, a promise he has now kept.

“From the next cabinet meetings, Mercy Wanjau has assured us that our meetings are going to be paperless. We are going to run our cabinet on the basis of the digital space,” President Ruto said.

He further indicated that going forward, he expected other government departments to leverage technology for them to be more effort.

Printing letters and physically delivering them has been a government practice since independence but that seems to be coming to an end under the Kenya Kwanza government.

“Sending a letter takes longer than sending an email. The email arrives instant, the letter tells us we have to get a messenger and another motorbike and another messenger on the other side, a receptionist on the other side and all manner of bureaucracy,” the President said.

The government has been working in ensuring all it’s over 5,000 services are available online.

Recently, the Head of State said they have already increased the number of services that Kenyans can access digitally to at least 600.