Kenya’s Auditor General Installs A Software To Stop Embezzlement Of Public Funds
Public Funds, Embezzlement, Corruption and lead to new software by Kenya’s Auditor General
Since independence, Kenya has steadily maintained the reputation of being the super power in the East African region in terms of economic performance. This was largely attributed to its economic-conducive government policies that promoted business growth in the Kenya thereby making it the top destination in East Africa for international investors.
However, like most nations corruption especially in terms of embezzlement of public funds, is fast threatening Kenya’s title as the East Africa super power. With countries like Tanzania steadily catching the attention of investors both internationally and locally, at a rate that is exceeding that of Kenya. For instance the United State’s President paid a visit to Tanzania in 2013 Obama’s African Trip in a bid to foster US relation to African nation in terms of economic partnership. In addition to this, other international investors are slowly but surely favoring Tanzania which could easily lead to Kenya losing its title as the economic super power in the East African region.
The corruption in Kenya can be attested to by a survey conducted by Transparency International movement’s 2013 Corruption Perception Index where Kenya was ranked 136 out of 177 countries, with a score of 27% in terms of fight to end corruption. However a new move undertaken by Kenya’s Auditor General Edward Ouko, seeks to curb embezzlement in the public sector, which will definitely be a step in the right direction for Kenya.
The Auditor General has championed a move to install a Sh. 100m (about US$. 1,156,738) worth software that will track all the irregular financial transactions undertaken in the public institutions and thus help the office of the Auditor General in securing public funds and making sure that they are well spent. The Auditor General, said, “The Integrated Financial Management Information Systems (IFMIS) is the underlying and the only financial system that drives all national and county government’s accounting systems… We are investing in necessary software to be more proactive and be able to undertake preventive and effective audits”. The vault will be linked to the government’s IFMIS system to curb embezzlement of funds.
This software will have the capacity to collect and consolidate all public institution audit data online and in real time, giving the auditors the ability to trace all the transactions as they are happening. The audit vault is programmed to create a central depository for securing date of all the transactions being made and will detect any deletions or even attempted deletions and identify the source of such attempts or successful deletions. When fully installed and up and running the audit vault will combat all the unlawful and irregular transactions used by greedy public officials to siphon public funds into their own pockets. It will do this in a continuous auditing process while securing the same data simultaneously.
Mr. Ouko said that the Auditor’s General office and its staff are adapting to changes in technology to help curb the embezzlement of public funds that continuous to eat away the good investor’s confidence that Kenya has for long been attracting compared to its East African counterparts. With this adaption of new technology in Kenya, we hope the Auditor General office will be able to make all the public funds and expenditure is accounted for to down to the last penny.