Integrated Financial Information System (IFMIS) and National and County Government Performance in Kenya-A Critical Analysis
Pages : 1164-1168Download PDF
Due to the current changes in the modern world, ICT adoption is becoming unavoidable integral part in the overall operation of the government for effective public service delivery. ICT has been adopted in Kenya as one of the cornerstones of the government’s strategy for making the services accessible to its citizens. Integrated Financial Management Information Systems (IFMIS) is one such idea which was conceived in 1998 but it was until 2003 and 2013 that it was rolled out in National and County governments respectively. The objective of IFMIS implementation in Kenya is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of government financial management and facilitating the adoption of modern public expenditure management practices. Despite the benefits derived as a result of IFMIS adoption, it has experienced some challenges in terms of the inappropriate implementation strategy, inadequate capacity of human resources and lack of clear government policy for staff training. Politicians are also at the heart of mismanagement of IFMIS project funds and are known to benefit largely through the existence of bureaucratic systems and lack of accountability. Critical reviewed literature shows that most of the studies on IFMIS conducted so far have been carried out in the National government of Kenya with the County government having limited studies. It is also evident from the studies that the aspect of performance in both National and County governments did not come out clearly because correct statistical analysis of inferential statistics was not used thus the researchers limited their studies to descriptive statistics. This does not explain the extent to which adoption of IFMIS leads to national and county governments performance in Kenya. Further study is thus inevitable to find out the relationship of IFMIS on National and County governments performance in Kenya. The researcher reviewed theoretical and empirical literature leading to gap identification by use of desktop research methodology.
Keywords: IFMIS, County and National government, performance, ICT, computerization