Assessing the effectiveness of IFMIS in county governments of Kenya (case study of Nyamira County Government)

Abstract

This study assessed the effectiveness of IFMIS in county governments of Kenya using Nyamira county government as the case study. The study was guided by objectives which included establishing current status of IFMIS utilization by the county government of Kenya, identifying the causes of IFMIS ineffectiveness and devising strategies that can be used to improve IFMIS effectiveness in Nyamira county. The researcher used case study approach and sample of 68 respondents out of a population of 82 people who use IFMIS on a day to day basis were selected using Tara Yamane formula as participants for this study. The selected participants were from the department of finance and planning which is made up of six directorates. The study considered both quantitative and qualitative approaches and questionnaires and interviews guide were data collection instruments employed. The collected data was analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS, Version 25) and results presented using tabular frequency Tables. The study findings revealed that network connectivity challenges, resistance to change by users and lack of capacity were the main causes of IFMIS system ineffectiveness in Nyamira county government and were further categorized as technological, user and technical causes respectively. The key strategies proposed to improve on IFMIS effectiveness at Nyamira county government were capacity building, networking improvement through deployment of secure wide area network infrastructure, user acceptance through change management initiative programmes and adoption of modest legal framework. The study recommended that the national treasury and planning ministry being the owner of the system should be advanced more funds through a policy legislation so as to improve on the network connectivity in county governments through installation of more network boosters that support 4G especially in counties that are far off the major urban areas or cities such as Nyamira county as this will solve the issue of network downtime. The study further recommended that the management of Nyamira county should provide support to IFMIS users by ensuring that they have allocated them more time to attend to IFMIS training which are normally conducted by the IFMIS academy as this will ensure that they are well skilled and updated on new modules and hence improving their capacity to do their tasks efficiently and effectively