Fix defects to restore the integrity of Ifmis

Kenyans are once again watching in utter shock and disbelief the blame game that has ensued since a Senate committee appeared to reprimand Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu for allegedly allocating resources to tasks that should constitutionally be handled by the national government.

At that point, the public was convinced that Mr Waititu had dipped his hand into the cookie jar and came up with laughable tricks to hide his misdeeds. Serious questions, however, came to the fore once it emerged that audit reports of eight other counties had Sh10 billion of similar expenditure items.

The Council of Governors found that the problem lay in the Integrated Financial Management Information System (Ifmis), which the government uses to track public expenditure. It will be recalled that the very system allowed one person to originate, authorise and execute a transaction multiple times, thereby abetting the theft of money, Sh9 billion, from the National Youth Service some time in 2016. It’s the same system that the Auditor-General Edward Ouko said in May was not efficient in investigating the use of public funds in counties or generating accurate reports.

Calls for the resignation of Ifmis director Stanley Kamanguya have since come from Kirinyaga Governor Anne Waiguru, the person credited with setting up the system when she was at the National Treasury and a suspect in the theft of NYS money through the system. Opposition leader Musalia Mudavadi has asked for Ifmis to be abandoned until an audit establishes its problem.

However, the problems of Ifmis are well known. Auditors and users alike agree that it generates erroneous reports, which cannot be relied upon to detect and stop theft of public funds. The main reason for this, as with most public paperwork, is that it is heavy on procedure and light on controls; a conveyor belt of sorts. That is how a pen that costs Sh10 ends up being priced at Sh1,000 because there is no intelligence built into the system to flag what is clearly abnormal, both in pricing and quantities.

The other challenge has been access, which is password-based and even allows off-site access. In short, the system is not on the cutting edge of technology where biometrics are increasingly being used to authenticate identity.

Its third weakness is that it was designed for a centralised, national, expenditure system — and, with devolution, was not tweaked adequately to accommodate the unique needs of counties.

These challenges call for an urgent audit and improvement to ensure public money does not continue being swindled with no hope of recovery. If, indeed, Ifmis is not as versatile and secure as was hoped, then a more reliable system should be developed.