Ifmis failure delays county staff salaries

County government workers who have not received their March salaries will have to wait longer following the breakdown of the Integrated Financial Management System (Ifmis).

On Monday, the Council of Governors said the system, used in processing financial transactions, had not worked since April 3, thereby disrupting operations across the 47 devolved units.

This, they said in a statement, had in turn affected payments for crucial services including workers’ salaries as well as leading to a halt in development projects.

IFMIS A PLOY
Governors described the breakdown as a “subtle attempt at slowing down county governments expenditure” as the General Election draws near.

“Delivery of services to Kenyans cannot and should not be pegged on elections or any event for that matter,” their statement read.

It added: “The promise was that through Ifmis, county governments shall have enhanced efficiency in planning, budgeting, procurement, expenditure management and reporting thus ensuring prudent disbursement and utilisation of resources.

"County Governments, when presented with the system, were assured that it was fool proof, which is not the case.”

READ: Ouko calls for overhaul of controversial Ifmis

Launched in 2013, Ifmis has received opposition from the county bosses, who have termed it a ploy by the national government to control disbursement and use of funds in their regions.

LOSS OF FUNDS
Its collapse was last year blamed for grounding development projects and operations in counties, with governors saying they were unable to access funds from their accounts at Central Bank of Kenya to finance operations.

The council’s chairman Peter Munya and Finance Committee chairman Wycliffe Oparanya said some counties were consequently forced to take overdrafts from banks and use locally collected revenue to run their offices.

According to a recent inquiry report by the Auditor-General, the system had been marred by technological loopholes, making it prone to abuse and possible loss of public funds.

The audit revealed that unidentified users were capable of logging into the system remotely while others had multiple identities.

SECURITY MEASURES
The audit report, released in November, revealed negligence on basic system security procedures and lack of data safeguards that made the system easy to manipulate by fraudsters.

“Good practice requires that passwords must be reset at least every 90 days. At the time of the audit, the configuration in Ifmis relating to password expiration indicated the expiry period is set to ‘none’, which means the passwords never expire. This is a potential loophole that can be exploited,” the report stated.

The audit pointed out that those behind the system, which relied heavily on the overall network infrastructure of the government, failed to study and establish the network specifications required to meet Ifmis standard operations before its launch hence the frequent failures.