How Digi Records took a Nairobi government office from paper-only files to a secure, searchable digital registry — the situation we found, the work we did, and how it operates now.
A constituency development fund office in Nairobi held years of project files, bursary records, financial returns, and correspondence entirely on paper — spread across several filing systems with no shared structure, no digital backup, and recurring accountability reviews that demanded fast, complete document retrieval.
The office managed documents across every ward in the constituency: project proposals and completion reports, Project Management Committee (PMC) records, bursary applications, financial returns, and inbound and outbound correspondence. There was no agreed filing scheme and no naming convention, so retrieval depended on the memory of long-serving staff. Preparing for an Office of the Auditor General review meant days of searching, and the standing risk that a required document simply could not be produced in time.
Our records audit confirmed the picture and put detail to it: active and archived files were interleaved with no separation; several document categories had gaps for earlier years, some predating a past office move; there was no offsite or digital copy of anything, so a single fire or flood would have been unrecoverable; and responsibility for the records sat informally with one or two individuals rather than in a documented system.
We designed a records taxonomy built around the office's ward structure and document types, then physically sorted, weeded, and labelled the paper files against it. We configured our EDMS platform with the same taxonomy, scanned and indexed the active records into it with full-text OCR, and set retention rules aligned to the periods that apply to constituency fund records. Automated daily backup to Kenyan cloud infrastructure was switched on, and we ran a full-day hands-on training session with the whole office team, followed by a period of post-training support.
Staff retrieve a document by searching for a name, a project, or a keyword rather than remembering which cabinet it lives in. Bursary verification that used to mean pulling physical files is now a lookup. Every view and change is logged, so the office can show not just a document but its handling history. When an accountability review is scheduled, preparation is a matter of assembling an evidence folder from records that are already organised, rather than reconstructing them under pressure. Because more than one person now knows the system, a staff absence no longer stalls the office.
“A fully structured, searchable, audit-ready digital registry, built for the realities of Kenyan public sector records management.”
The same approach — audit, organise, digitise, set retention — adapts to the records challenge specific to each sector.
Five years of financial records that must stand up to a KRA audit — often boxed and unsorted since the last office move.
Explore services →Donor accountability and grant audit trails that get reconstructed under deadline every funding cycle.
Explore services →Public expenditure files that must be retrievable within the response window when an OAG query arrives.
Explore services →Member KYC and loan files under SASRA supervision, where one misfiled document becomes a compliance finding.
Explore services →Matter files that have to be produced by case number years later — complete, and in order.
Explore services →Student, membership, and financial records scattered across registers, cabinets, and personal drives.
Explore services →Request a confidential consultation. We will review your records situation and provide a clear recommendation with no obligation to proceed.