Kenyan govt mulls ICT master plan

The Kenyan government is drawing up an ICT master plan, following a report released last week by consultancy Accenture revealing misallocated resources, incorrect priorities and inefficiencies in the public sector's IT use.

The study was done in collaboration with Kenya's e-government directorate and the Kenya ICT board in order to assess the government's IT spending, technology, capacity, priorities and key projects.

The report found a mismatch between the funds allocated to ministries by the treasury and the amounts actually spent, with ministries struggling to disperse their IT budgets due to capacity issues.

It noted low levels of IT staffing in the civil service; lack of standard processes across ministries, which led to inefficiencies and duplication; outdated technology; incomplete systems; and a gap in cross-government IT projects, resulting in misaligned objectives with low success rates.

The research also revealed the government spent a disproportionate amount on hardware compared to software, with 68.5% of its ICT budget going to hardware, 18.5% on IT staff, and 12.6% on software.

Global ICT consulting group Gartner gives the global average breakdown in ICT spend as 18% on hardware, 38% on staff and 19% on software.

“Low software spend reflects the dominance of manual processes within Kenya's ministries. The Kenyan average IT worker salary is relatively lower compared to other governments,” says Jessica Long, head of IT and strategy at Accenture. “Attracting quality personnel becomes a challenge for the government, as it has to compete with the private sector.”

Although the government has been spending significantly on technology - Sh35 billion on more than 80 projects across 39 ministries - most projects are held up within ministries and do not reach completion, while few have been launched at cross-government level.

“Few processes are fully automated, resulting in a heavy manual process, increasing user errors and longer times to complete,” adds the report.

Accenture has been engaging the government for the last three years, with a view to improving the IT environment in the country. The consultancy has been particularly keen on working with the public and private sector to bring Kenya's infrastructure and knowledge up to international standards in business process outsourcing.

The consultancy's new study also asserts that the prevailing culture in government does not support the country's growth and strategic goals.

While technology is viewed as an important enabler of Kenya's growth, IT is still struggling to be a priority for many ministries. This conclusion was reached after the research team met with 250 staff in central and local government, collected IT budgets, spending records, workforce and project information from 42 ministries and 175 local authorities, and held 10 workshops with ICT heads and officials between April and August 2010.

Accenture recommended the shared services master plan to consolidate government IT rollouts, to boost operational efficiencies and reduce costs. If implemented, the master plan will see the convergence of IT support functions, such as human resources, finance, IT and procurement from different government departments blend into a single, standalone organisation, whose only mission will be to provide these information services as efficiently and effectively as possible.

The report presented a draft master plan with implementation milestones and a business plan for establishing a shared services centre, in line with global leading practices, and the development of an integrated application architecture for the government.

If implemented, the plan will mean citizens will be able to access ministry Web sites, and many processes will move online, such as applying for passports and driving licences. Currently, Kenyans can wait up to two years to get a birth certificate, because they have to obtain the forms from Nairobi, fill in the application and return the papers which the ministry processes.

Government employees would also benefit from the shared services by accessing operational applications with a single version of the data at any time, while other publicly-owned bodies could access operational applications and retrieve reports.