Effectiveness of Integrated Financial Management Information System (Ifmis) Strategy Implementation by the Kenya National Treasury

Abstract

The Government of Kenya (GoK) through Ministry of Finance and National Treasury is tasked by the Constitution of Kenya (2010) to carry out Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms through development of fiscal policies and implementation of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS). It is then expected to roll out IFMIS and subsequently deploy it to line ministries (LM), government agencies and county governments. IFMIS system has faced a number of challenges which has prompted the Ministry of Finance to initiate several re-engineering measures in 2011 as a way of addressing those challenges and to create a financial information system that has inter-phase integration, efficient and reliable. The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyses the effectiveness of Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) strategy by the National Treasury of Kenya. Several studies have been done on IFMIS Implementation and challenges in county governments but there have been no studies on the National Treasury. The National Treasury of Kenya is the custodian of Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) and is responsible for formulation, implementation and monitoring of macro-economic policies, which is a very supreme task in country’s economic management. The study collected primary data using a questionnaire administered through drop and pick later method to respondents in IFMIS department. Analysis of the results was done based on the research objectives using descriptive statistical tools such as frequency tables, percentages, mean and standard deviation with the aid of SPSS software. The results showed that IFMIS strategy implementation and its effectiveness was on course in the National Treasury. The study established eight groups of factors that were in critical in the implementation of IFMIS strategy: organizational planning, leadership, adequate control mechanism, resource allocation, sound institutionalization, and strategy operationalization, political and strong technical support. Further, collaboration between heads of department, experts’ availability, sufficient learning resources and system pre-testing were established to have an addition to the accomplishment of the implementation of Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS).