The US has warned that Kenya's Ifmis is vulnerable to manipulation and hacking.
The US has warned that Kenya's Integrated Financial Management Information System (Ifmis) is vulnerable to manipulation and hacking, exposing taxpayers to possible loss of billions of shillings.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) says in a new report that Ifmis faces multiple risks that have been highlighted by American firms doing or seeking to do business with Kenya.
“US companies have expressed concerns about Ifmis due to insufficient connectivity and technical capacity in county government offices, apathy from county government officials, central control shutdowns, and security gaps that render the system vulnerable to manipulation and hacking,” US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in the report.
A review by USTR notes that Kenya is neither a party to the WTO (World Trade Organisation) Agreement on Government Procurement nor an observer to the WTO Committee on Government Procurement.
Ifmis was created to provide audit trails of all financial transactions with details of the person who logged in, the time, the machine used and the action performed to tame graft.
It is the technology through which the government monitors finances, from planning through budgeting to procurement, payments, accounting and reporting.
However, it has been at the centre of corruption claims in some of the largest graft syndicates to hit Kenya, both at the national and county levels over the years, leading to several questions over its safeguards in guaranteeing accountability.
In 2016, senior officials of an agency under the Ministry of Health tried to access Sh30 million by manipulating Ifmis in a case that lifted the lid on an elaborate theft syndicate involving corrupt government officials and crooked suppliers.
The attempted theft in May 2016 was detected and stopped but it demonstrated how fraudsters were targeting billions of shillings from State coffers through this technology.
