@ Ali,
This gist of my blog below is written within the existing or prevailing context.
We already have an IFMIS Director, always had since almost ten years ago when former CS Anne Waiguru was I believe the first IFMIS Director? So it is a position that is unlikely to disappear soon, superfluous or otherwise. So how can we harness it?
So my hypothesis was that to begin with, it is wrongly placed. By having strong administrative reporting lines to the PS Treasury, the IFMIS Director loses some technical 'independence' at the expense of this 'administrative' dominance from the PS Treasury.
The same way an ICT Director who reports to the Finance Director would have his or her technical independence severely degraded and restricted within one department rather than the whole organisation. My submission is that such technical independence is necessary in as far as ensuring that IT controls are enforced, regularly checked and regularly reviewed.
Very true, Finance or Treasure is the PROCESS owner, but the TECHNICAL owner should be someone else - segregation of duties is one way of clearing conflicts of interest. The moment Finance or Treasury is both the PROCESS and the TECHNICAL owner, then you run into the problems we are seeing.
Treasury has no business dimensioning the technicalities of IFMIS e.g. the specs, costs, implementations and other project related issues of the ERP. It is similar to asking HR department to do the same for their Payroll system == Shida mingi sana.
My submission is that, Treasury is a just a client of IFMIS. ICT Department (ICT Authority in this case) should stamp its technical role and authority with respect to IFMIS. If they mess up, we can know where to place the blame. At the moment, the reporting lines for IFMIS are just too fluid to blame anyone - I do hope that this is NOT by design :-)
The idea of a Government CIO fits into this thinking. As per the current statutes /laws, ICTA is the closest animal to this CIO thing.
walu.
From: Ali Hussein via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>
To: jwalu@yahoo.com
Cc: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke>
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2017 9:45 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] ICT Authority, not Treasury, should oversee IFMIS
I fundamentally disagree with this assertion.
First,y, the role of a CIO is to support the enterprise. I have never heard in my life of an ERP Director. This is just adding a superfluous layer of useless bureaucracy.
The owner of an ERP is the business with each department taking ownership of their components:-
1. Financials - CFO
2. CRM (Commercial/marketing/sales)
3. Procurement - Procurement which sometimes comes under Finance
Etc.
The CIO takes ownership to ensure that the company is well oiled to execute on its mandate. This in my humble opinion goes beyond ERPs and talks to aligning the Technology Strategy with the Business Strategy. For example in the banking sector where increasingly the more savvy banks are taking a 'Platform Thinking' approach. This allows partners to plug into their core technology through APIs to enable them extend capabilities and hence offerings to their customers.
The role of a CIO has fundamentally changed to speak to the need for using Technology as an accelerator to successful business models.
Secondly, I don't see how the ICT Authority would be better in managing the monster that is IFMIS. Let them first learn the basics of communicating effectively with the community before taking on this elephant in the room.
Ali Hussein
Principal
Hussein & Associates
+254 0713 601113
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit." ~ Aristotle
Interesting comments...ICT Authority, not Treasury, should oversee IFMIS
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