Why Auditor-General is not popular among eating chiefs

If there is an enduring lesson we have learnt from the upsurge of new corruption, it is that the graft game is these days played mainly by manipulating the Integrated Financial Management System, better known to Kenyans by the acronym Ifmis.

I will attempt to describe Ifmis in simple terms for the readers of this column who may not understand computer jargon. I will then enter into a discussion on the undercurrents that explain why the Auditor-General, Mr Edward Ouko, is becoming more and more unpopular with the powers that be.

Firstly, what is Ifmis? Simply put, it is a computer application the government uses to keep track of its financial transactions.

To run your Ifmis system, you have to instal an engine called a database. This is why we acquired Oracle, which underpins our Ifmis system. Put in a different way, our system has two parts: Ifmis and Oracle. We do not own the Oracle database and have no control over it.

We, therefore, only use and access the database under annual licences purchased from Oracle Corporation, the world’s leading vendor of software used by large corporations and institutions.

What then is the basic problem with our Ifmis system and why is it so vulnerable to manipulation by crooks? Our problems stem from the fact that we have not implemented a fully-functioning Ifmis system that can enable us to realise the full potential of the Oracle database. This is very much like buying a six-litre engine and using only one cylinder to power the vehicle.

WORK WELL

Indeed, Ifmis systems, or enterprise resource planning (ERPs), work very well for many large companies and institutions. The reason is simple — these entities have implemented fully-functioning systems.

What has Ifmis to do with the increasing unpopularity of the Auditor-General among the eating chiefs? Everything.

Allow me to explain. Having realised that the Ifmis system had long been captured by corrupt networks, the Auditor-General concluded that the best way to interrogate and get a full view of the government’s financial transactions was to acquire software that could go behind the corrupted Ifmis. He wanted a tool to take him straight to the Oracle database, where he can examine and analyse the raw data.

Consequently, Mr Ouko purchased two software programmes, namely Oracle Audit Vault and Oracle Business Intelligence.

I had to borrow several past issues of the magazine, Profit, which is published by Oracle Corporation, to understand and appreciate the power embedded in the software programmes that the Auditor-General has purchased. They go to a phenomenal level and can trawl very deeply into the database. With these tools, Mr Ouko can interrogate the entire financial audit trail of any government transaction.

I read in a past issue of Profit how these software programmes can allow the Auditor-General to carry out a real-time audit on transactions taking place within Ifmis.

The programmes will allow the Auditor-General to dive as deeply as necessary into the database to collect data and information, which he can use to conduct forensic analyses.

FINANCIAL INFORMATION

They will also allow him to see and recover any financial information and data that may have been deleted by crooked government officials.

Whichever way you look at it, the capability the Auditor-General has acquired is unlikely to make him popular with the well-connected tenderpreneurs who, acting in cahoots with top government officials, have turned Ifmis into am enabling tool for corrupt dealings. If you think that I am making a sweeping statement, go back to the National Youth Service scandal and you will see how the Ifmis regime was so easily manipulated to raid the public purse. Those behind the corrupt networks in control of Ifmis must be shaking in their shoes.

The context I describe is how conspiracy theorists are explaining the recent move by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to open new investigations into how Oracle Vault and Oracle Business Intelligence were acquired.

Indeed, Mr Ouko has been a man under watch. Just the other day he was publicly rebuked by President Uhuru Kenyatta for daring to extend investigations into the Eurobond saga to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Last week, we read that an official of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission had secretly obtained an ex parte court order to snoop into Mr Ouko’s personal bank accounts going back to 2012.

It is an open secret that Mr Ouko has been under pressure from the authorities to remove the disclaimer of opinion on the Eurobond transactions in the current report of the Auditor-General. He is expected to table a special audit report on the Eurobond transaction before the Parliamentary Accounts Committee. In corruption-ridden Kenya, auditors are not popular.

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