Winnie Mitullah

E-governance and governance: a case study of the assessment of the effects of integrated financial management system on good governance in two municipal councils in Kenya

The potential for ICT to positively contribute to good governance has been known for a long time and has been the subject of many articles and reports, but very little concrete empirical evidence of the effects of ICT on governance, and how these effects should be evaluated, exist. The situation is even worse when we consider ICT and governance in local governments. The case study reported in this paper is based on an e-governance outcome evaluation framework that is being followed by Local Governance and ICTs Research Network for Africa (LOG-IN Africa). This framework draws on existing literature on e-government, good governance, and results-based management. Data for the case study was collected through surveys, key informant interviews, focus group discussions and review of relevant documents in two municipal councils in Kenya. The focus was on the perspectives of consumers of the services provided by the councils. Data was analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The preliminary results show that the integrated financial management system implementation had modest improvements in most indicators of the following good governance constructs: participation, responsiveness, transparency, accountability, and efficiency and effectiveness. Given the modest improvements in good governance associated with the implementation of the system in the two municipal councils and the governance challenges in implementing a similar system in central government, the paper recommends, among other things, that local governments could be used to pilot complex e-governance initiatives and lessons learned used to scale up at national level.

Factors influencing usage of new technologies in low-income households in Kenya: the case of Nairobi

Purpose – Use of e‐mail, the internet and mobile phones, collectively referred to as the “new technologies” in this paper, is influenced by various factors in low‐income households. These factors, which range between individual, social, economic, environmental, cultural and knowledge, have not been explored fully, particularly in low‐income households in Kenya. This paper aims to argue that access to the new technologies does not lead automatically to use thereof, since a combination of the factors determines if (and how) the technologies are used.Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses data collected through a survey conducted in 2010, which complemented the 2007 Research ICT Africa (RIA) data. The 2010 survey focused on three clusters based in Nairobi, a subset of RIA (2007). The three clusters are Ofafa 1 (A), Umoja II (B) and Riruta Satellite (C). Data from 40 households are used. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from the households.Findings – Age, income, gender, education level...