Kenyan status is expected to be ranked highly globally after the Principal Secretary for Immigration and Citizen Services, Amb. Prof Julius Bitok and Director General of Immigration Services,  Evelyn Cheluget deposited Kenya’s electronic signature for the e-Passport into the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Public Key Directory (PKD) database.

The two led a delegation of Kenyan officials to ICAO PKD Ceremony in Montreal, Canada which will be crucial step towards facilitating electronic validation of e-Passports globally.

The move by the government officials will make Kenyan ranked highly and its credibility status of the Kenyan people will go high.

“This significant event involved the depositing of Kenya’s electronic signature for the e-Passport into the ICAO PKD database, a crucial step towards facilitating electronic validation of e-Passports globally,” stated Cheluget at the ceremony.

The ICAO PKD is a central repository for exchanging the information required to authenticate electronic Machine-Readable Travel Documents (eMRTDs) such as e-passports.

The benefits of an e-passport can only be realized when border control points can authenticate the chip.

To authenticate the e-Passport of a foreign traveler, the receiving State must have access to certain information from the issuing State. This would require states to exchange information through bilateral agreements.

If bilateral agreements were to be used, the volume of information being exchanged would result in a highly complex and ineffective system. In recognition of this complexity, ICAO PKD provided a platform where states upload their own information and download that of other States without going the bilateral way.

Each State issuing an e-Passport establishes a single Country Signing Certification Authority (CSCA) as its national trust point in the context of e-Passports.

The CSCA certificate containing the CSCA’s Public Key for verification of Document Signer Certificates (DSC) and other PKD contents must be distributed securely to ICAO and all Participants of PKD. The CSCA will be securely stored within the ICAO PKD System.

The CSCA is updated every three to five years but the formal ceremony is only done on initial submission, the subsequent updates are carried out by designated technical personnel of the state and ICAO PKD staff,

During the occasion the senior government officials had the privilege of paying a courtesy call to Juan Carlos Salazar, the Secretary-General of ICAO where they discussed about Kenya’s active engagement in global civil aviation.

In attendance were Immaculate Wambua, the High Commissioner to Canada, and Ms. Charity Musila, Kenya’s Alternative Representative to ICAO, alongside other technical officers.