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PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE QUESTION SOLICITOR GENERAL OVER DEAL BY STATE LAW OFFICE

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE QUESTION SOLICITOR GENERAL OVER DEAL BY STATE LAW OFFICE

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has questioned the Solicitor General Mr. Shadrack Mose over the loss of over Sh6 million in an irregular tender to host Cloud Services by the State Law Office.

A Report by the Auditor General tabled before the Committee that was examining the audited financial reports for the State Law Office for the Financial Year ending June 2022 indicated the public funds were lost in the project the Committee termed as a scam.

The Report revealed that the Business Registration Service (BRS) irregularly procured cloud hosting services for design, supply, delivery, installation, configuration, commissioning, and maintenance.

"Review of tender documents showed that the firm awarded the contract was not among the 10 pre-qualified suppliers for the restricted tendering," the report read in part.

The Committee was told that BRS went ahead to pay over Sh6 million which was 90 percent of the contract sum to the firm in the irregular tender. However, the project could not kick-off, and the State Agency could not benefit from the project due to unaddressed cyber security concerns on the handling of Government data on a private server.

This is after the Ministry of Interior and Coordination rejected a request to operationalise the service citing that personal identification information cannot be hosted on a private cloud since it is in contravention of the National ICT Policy. As a result of this, the State Law Office was advised to set up locally hosted data.

Hon. Mose in his response told the Committee that the tendering documents that justified the hiring of the firm were misplaced by the time of the audit but have since been delivered to the Auditor General.

He also confirmed to the Committee that the firm was among those pre-qualified and has availed documents to prove that to the Auditor General.