A new Public Service Commission (PSC) report finds that the overwhelming majority of Kenya’s public institutions have failed to automate their services.
At the same time, one in seven continue to pay employees outside the government’s official payroll system, creating conditions for fraud that has already cost taxpayers billions.
The PSC’s 2024/2025 compliance evaluation report, covering 511 public institutions, found that only 81 institutions (15.9%) had automated and migrated their business processes to e-platforms by the June 2025 deadline.
430 institutions, representing 84.1% of the evaluated public service, had not.
According to the report, “166 other institutions that indicated they had done so failed to provide the correct supporting documents.” The documents either lacked dates, were unsigned, were marked as drafts, were dated outside the evaluation period, or were irrelevant.”
| ICT Compliance Indicator | Compliant | Non-Compliant |
| Automated & migrated to e-platforms | 81 (15.9%) | 430 (84.1%) |
| Developed an ICT equipment framework | 56 (11%) | 455 (89%) |
| Operational digitisation committees | 64 (12.5%) | 447 (87.5%) |
The June 2025 deadline was set in the previous evaluation cycle, itself anchored in the National Digital Master Plan 2022–2027. It means Kenya has been reiterating the same digital transformation goals with little to show for it.
The Ghost Worker Problem
Payroll non-compliance stands at 14.1%, with 72 institutions failing to use the centralized Human Resource Information System (HRIS), undermining efforts to standardize salary payments and eliminate ghost workers.
Despite a clear mandate from the head of public service on December 9, 2024, for a full HRIS migration by June 2025, various institutions are bypassing the system to maintain off-platform payrolls.
READ: IMF Forces Kenya to Implement iTax-Linked Payroll and IFMIS-Linked e-Procurement Platform
PSC established that “the highest number of officers paid outside the payroll was drawn from the public universities sector (3.3%), followed by state corporations and semi-autonomous government agencies (SAGAs) with 2.6% and statutory commissions and authorities at 2.5%.”
The consequences of operating outside official payroll systems are well-documented. A 2025 audit found 22 counties spent KES 6.5 billion in nine months paying ghost workers.
In 2024, then-Public Service CS Moses Kuria acknowledged that the country was full of ghosts. “We are paying ghost civil servants and ghost teachers and spending capitation on ghost students,” he said.
Ghost workers have contributed to the growing public wage bill in Kenya, which audits indicate has since reached KES 1.25 trillion annually.
The cost of neglecting digital infrastructure is not abstract. The report specifically cites ICT system downtimes as among the most cited barriers to service delivery.
At the NSSF, system outages following cyberattacks directly caused a KES 2.23 billion shortfall in pension payouts during FY 2024/2025.
NSSF had publicly denied any breach, but its own audited report confirmed the attacks caused backlogs that crossed into the next financial year.
Overall, these ICT automation delays and system failures were among the factors that contributed to the decline in the overall service delivery performance index, dropping from 53.6% in 2023/2024 to 32% in 2024/2025.
A third deadline of June 2026 has been established for non-compliant institutions, superseding previous targets set for June 2024 and June 2025.
