The EACC has called for a shift from the current handling of wealth declarations to a fully digital system, saying better access to information on public officers’ financial interests could help address conflicts of interest linked to corruption.
EACC Chairperson David Oginde said automating the Declaration of Income, Assets and Liabilities (DIALs) would give authorities a more effective way of managing the financial disclosures while improving monitoring of public officers.
He said the proposed platform should be designed to securely exchange information with other public service digital systems. Such an arrangement, he said, would strengthen oversight and help stop public officers from using their positions to pursue private interests.
“The highest number of corruption cases that EACC deals with are as a result of conflict of interest. If we deal with this thing called conflict of interest, 90% of corruption cases will be gone forever," he said.
Oginde made the remarks in Naivasha, Nakuru County, during the opening of a two-day capacity-building workshop involving the Chairperson, Vice-Chairperson and members of the Public Service Commission (PSC).
The meeting is seeking to help the PSC develop practical ways of putting the DIALs process on a digital platform. The planned system is expected to improve the submission and management of declarations while ensuring the records remain secure and can be accessed more easily when required.
PSC Chairperson Francis Meja said the large volume of wealth declaration records makes automation necessary, particularly at a time when technology and Artificial Intelligence are becoming part of public service operations.
“We are in the era of AI, and therefore wealth declaration form automation should be a simple issue. Once in a while, we get requests for retrieval of the DIALs forms. You can imagine the difficulty of going through over 300,000 forms just to pick one," Meja said.
Meja said an integrated system would provide a secure way of keeping the declarations and make it easier for officials to locate individual records without having to manually search through the large number of forms.
The discussions come after the enactment of the Conflict of Interest Act, 2025, which strengthened the legal framework governing conflicts of interest and financial disclosures within the public service.
The EACC and PSC are therefore looking to digital technology as a way of improving adherence to wealth declaration requirements while putting stronger preventive measures in place to deal with corruption and conflicts of interest.