The Kenya Kwanza government promised to build a highly-skilled, agile and responsive public sector workforce with appropriate roles for civil servants and other service providers.
The Permanent Secretary for Public Service and Human Capital chaired discussions on proposed activities and work plans to attain the goal.
A Departmental Unit was also established under the Office of the Chief of Staff and Head of Public Service to support reform interventions in public service.
The government also commeneced the development of a Civil Service Strategic Capacity Building Plan in 2025 to ensure that public servants have the appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to deliver government programmes. The plan covers the wider public service and is intended to improve service delivery.
The government launched Training Needs Assessment (TNA) Guidelines in February 2026 to identify skills and competency gaps among public servants and use the findings to guide training. The aim is specifically to create a “highly skilled, agile and responsive” public service. Moreover, government agencies worked together to review and harmonise the performance and productivity training curriculum for the public service, with the aim of improving productivity and service delivery.
However, a government performance assessment found that only 62.5% of officers identified for training actually received the training, while 69.5% of institutions had not undertaken skills and competency audits. Performance management was also weak: only 59.6% of employees who had set targets were appraised. The overall performance-management score was only 50.5%.
