Nineteen state corporations under the National Treasury have automated procurement, as the first step of implementing the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) to help streamline public procurement.
The rollout of e-Procurement, which has started off on a pilot basis, follows President Uhuru Kenyatta’s directive last August to all public entities to automate their procurement processes using IFMIS e-Procurement component. Currently, state corporations use different systems to manage supplies.
“Let me say that as we roll out e-Procurement to ministries, I expect all public agencies, institutions including public universities and parastatals to be on this system,” said the president during the August 13 launch of the IFMIS e-Procurement system. “They are part and parcel of government, they must be part and parcel of this system. Transparency is not just a factor of ministries but all institutions that are financed by government.”
A comprehensive analysis of the systems used in these institutions reveal 30% of the state corporations have partial automation with only 14% having fully-operational automated procurement process.
Speaking during a consultative forum between IFMIS/National Treasury and state corporations on Friday last week, IFMIS Director Jerome Ochieng said IFMIS /National Treasury will deploy teams to the 19 state corporations to help them implement IFMIS e-Procurement.
“Over the first week of February, IFMIS teams started visiting state corporations that are housed by the National Treasury to begin deploying IFMIS. We need cooperation to achieve this particular objective,” said Ochieng.
“The survey of the state corporations’ current procurement systems has shown what is on the ground. We now know what we need as we deploy the IFMIS e-Procurement system to state corporations,” said Ochieng. The analysis found that half of the corporations are still using manual and labour intensive procurement methods which could be time consuming and prone to manipulation.
The IFMIS e-Procurement rollout to government institutions will be undertaken in phases. The first phase will cover the 19 corporations under the National Treasury. By end of June 2015, all the set ups of the IFMIS e-Procurement system will have been completed in these 19 corporations. IFMIS department will also conduct training for procure to pay officers from these corporations. The Procure to Pay system will be in use by August 2015.
Mr Ochieng noted the Treasury will bear the cost of deploying the IFMIS e-Procurement system, including training officers from state corporations on the use of the system. The corporations will however bear the system’s maintenance costs.
