Why most major IT projects in Kenya collapse or fail to take off

It’s believed that numerous large software projects don’t get completed on time and within budget but the problem is especially acute in Kenya, where over 70 per cent of major computer projects falter.

They either overshoot the budget, sometimes by as much as more than three times, take much longer to complete than projected or end up being abandoned altogether after huge sums have been spent on them.

Examples in the public sector are legion. There are, perhaps, many more in the private sector that never make it to the public limelight, but nonetheless get loaded onto customers as ‘losses’ in the books of account. Many are grossly over-priced. It’s not unusual to find large corporations spending billions on solutions that systems costing Sh100-Sh200 million can accomplish even better.

Sadly, this disease doesn’t preclude the very regulators — and I’m not just talking about one sector — who are meant to safeguard the public good. Hardly any of the strategic sectors of the economy is spared. Perhaps it’s time a credible, professional body undertook an independent audit on all IT projects above Sh1 billion to unearth the deep rot.

Tip of the iceberg

Yet this is only a tip of the iceberg. Kenya is an acclaimed leader in attracting external investments in IT start-ups. But of these, only 15 per cent comes to local companies. We’re basically a supermarket.

Contrast with a country like Nigeria, where about 90 per cent of that inflow goes into and builds local enterprises. Yet, instead of our legislators cushioning local start-ups and micro, small and medium enterprises, they’ve just shot down a Bill that could have given local small-scale suppliers some head-start.

This is unlike almost every other country. South Africa has the Black Economic Empowerment Programme while Tanzania gives up to 15 per cent preferential treatment to indigenous firms in government tenders.

Perhaps the area where poor implementation of large and complex IT projects is most pronounced and topical is elections. Kenya’s cost of election management per capita is the highest in Africa and third in the world. Naturally, a significant portion of this cost goes to technology.

While the jury is still out on why the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) needs an additional Sh40 billion to conduct next year’s general election, it would be interesting to see an independent technical audit of technologies it used in the past two — 2013 and 2017.

It would help if IEBC unveiled — for scrutiny by Kenya’s ICT professionals and professional bodies — the technologies they intend to deploy next year and how the budgeted costs compare with market rates. Security and confidentiality are not excuses; the informaticians and information security experts are well versed with what to publicly query and what not to, to safeguard system integrity.

When the Huduma Namba project was unveiled, some of us questioned the Sh6 billion spending on a new system for a functionality that the government would have simply reused and integrated into existing sub-systems for as little as Sh2 billion.

The bulk of it could be realised using the integrated population registry system (IPRS), IEBC’s biometric data, KRA PIN system and others. The cost then went up to Sh7 billion, then Sh9 billion and counting. The project is yet to be signed off. The school laptop and balloon projects are other white elephants.

This massive waste of public resources through automation is a direct consequence of ill-equipped personnel and lack of professionalism and code of practice for the ICT/IT sector. This makes the ICT Practitioners Bill No. 38 of 2020, by Nominated MP Godfrey Osostsi, crucial and timely. Despite minor gaps, it’s a huge first step to bring order in a sector so crucial as we transcend into the digital economy and the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Tellingly, the very masquerades and opportunists the Bill seeks to contain will oppose it on flimsy grounds.

Dr Ochuodho is the global chairperson, Kenya Diaspora Alliance. [email protected].