NAIROBI, Kenya – The Public Service Commission (PSC) has begun piloting a new digital system that allows real-time verification of academic certificates submitted by job applicants, in a move aimed at curbing widespread credential fraud in the public sector.
The system links PSC’s recruitment database directly with that of the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC), enabling the commission to instantly authenticate a candidate’s primary and secondary school results using their index numbers.
PSC Commissioner Francis Meja, speaking during an interview on NTV on Tuesday, said the initiative is expected to significantly reduce cases of unqualified individuals securing government jobs through forged academic documents.
“We have signed an agreement with the Kenya National Examinations Council. Before your appointment, we will verify your certificates,” Meja said. “We want to interface our systems so that there is no manual intervention… KNEC has given us access to their database so that we just pick information as it is.”
The PSC previously conducted certificate verification manually, often after an applicant had already been hired—leading to lengthy investigations, litigation, and in some cases, dismissal or claw-back of salaries.
The commission is now seeking to expand the system to verify university-level qualifications by partnering with the Commission for University Education (CUE), covering Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD degrees.
“Once we create that database and link it, we will deal with this problem of fake academic certificates once and for all,” Meja added.
The digital verification platform was launched by KNEC in July, with PSC becoming the first government body to integrate it.
KNEC CEO David Njeng’ere earlier indicated that the Ministry of Interior would adopt the system next, before rolling it out to private sector employers.
The move comes amid growing concern over the scale of academic fraud in Kenya’s public service.
Data presented during the 2025 Ethics and Integrity Conference showed that since 2022, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has investigated 549 cases of forged academic and professional documents. Of these, 85 files were forwarded for prosecution, resulting in 13 convictions.
A separate verification exercise across 91 public institutions uncovered 1,208 forged certificates from a sample of 53,000 files.
State corporations and senior government agencies accounted for about 70 per cent of the detected cases, with public universities also recording significant numbers.
The PSC says the new digital verification framework is a critical step toward restoring integrity and transparency in public sector recruitment.
