If we cannot jail white-collar thieves, let’s abolish IFMIS

IFMIS is as good or bad as its users: Afya House where Sh500m was stolen by manipulating the system. [File/Standard]

 

With the war on corruption having gathered momentum, let no one lie to Kenyans that IFMIS is a panacea to runaway corruption.

When it was introduced, there were high hopes that we had now found the ultimate solution to prudent financial management.

 Ironically, it is after the introduction of IFMIS that we have witnessed massive theft of public resources. In fact, it aides other than deterring corruption. How and why is this happening? Let me break this down for you.

Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) allows the use of information and communications technology in financial operations to support management and budget decisions.

 It should also aid in the preparation of financial reports and statements. In simple terms, it refers to the computerisation of the public financial management processes.

It was introduced with a view to improving efficiency and controls. More significantly, it was meant to build confidence in mwananchi through transparency, increase government revenue collection and reduce costs.

 If utilised well, it would improve planning and decision-making and promote accountability in the public sector. But at best, it has done the opposite. Why?

In building IFMIS, we forgot to manage the human factor in use and misuse of the system. In other words our system of governance is ideologically bankrupt.

In a recent study conducted in this country, 73 percent of the respondents indicated that there was sabotage of IFMIS and abuse of the system. This is mainly due to security challenges.

Key among these include IT Security and cyber-attacks amongst others. We should have made the system watertight knowing very well that we live in a society with a weak moral fabric.

Many people would rather manipulate the system for personal gain than earn from genuine labour. Ours is nothing but a fraudster nation.

One of our greatest undoing is lack of internal controls that would secure the system from fraudsters.

As configured and administered, IFMIS is open to misuse by cartels who thrive on corruption in government. It appears that corrupt civil servants have conspired to manipulate information fed into the system to give them the results they desire.

 Some people prefer to say that the nation has been captured.

This was authenticated by the Auditor General’s report released last year, which revealed that there was abuse of the system rights by the users through feeding it with manipulated information.

For a system of this nature to function properly, there should be proper monitoring and cleaning of the system. From the look of things, this does not happen.

Take the NYS saga for example. It was reported that some workers continued to access the system and were able to enter information and doctor transactions long after they had stopped working with the organisation.

It is common knowledge that once an employee has been sacked or stops working in a certain organisation, all rights to any system should be withdrawn. Billions of shillings have been lost due to this weakness.

We should not forget that lack of full connectivity and poor network especially in County Governments has also contributed to the failure of IFMS.

There is no connectivity in most sub-counties in County Government. Most of the counties cannot handle Revenue Collection using IFMIS.

There is need  to have IFMIS for National Government (as it was initially planned to be) then design IFMIS for County Governments because County Government have their unique features.

We may then integrate the two systems for monitoring purposes. This will ease management and avoid single point of failure.

I think that for IFMIS to be successful there is need to adopt a common language in the form of unified budget classifications and charts of accounts. This should be done in all administrative units at national, regional and local level. In short, the information generated should be coherent and verifiable.

IFMIS has to be fully Integrated with other third party systems for instance Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA),  Electronic Project Management Information System (E-PROMIS) , Pension Management Information System (PMIS) and Government Human Resources Information System (GHRIS). This will make it easy to identify multiple identities in the system.

True, IFMIS was a good initiative by the government and had the potential of saving billions of public funds. But we have failed to manage it. We have to learn from the wisdom of my grandmother.

She taught me that hyenas cannot be put in charge of goats and goats cannot be left alone with potato vines.

People who belong to prison must be sent there for the sake of our survival.

If we are not courageous to do this, then let us abolish IFMIS.

Harriet Wangui is a Post Graduate student in the School of Computer Science and Informatics at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST) [email protected]