MPs demand audit of NEMIS after inaccurate data revealed » Capital News
NAIROBI, Kenya, June 10 – The status of the actual number of learners in public schools in the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) remains uncertain, with MPs demanding the conclusion of the special audit of the system.
In its recommendation, the National Assembly Public Accounts Committee directed the audit of the system.
The system manages data used to allocate school capitation funds annually and is under scrutiny for inconsistencies, system flaws, and possible manipulation.
In the Auditor General report for the financial year 2022/2023 which the house team was considering showed unconfirmed capitation for free primary education and secondary education as the system configuration has no continuous updates on the disbursed funds.
Disclosures by the state department of basic education showed that the current data cannot be relied upon, following details of loopholes in the system that has led to manipulation by institutions and cybercafes.
“So, we noticed that our schools quite shared their credentials to the system with many others, either teachers or cyber cafes attendants and some of the cases we have handled,” Head of KEMIS Fredrick Muchumba stated.
“We have noticed that some of these learners have been deleted from various points, just not necessarily at the school level. You get even some cases where a cyber cafe has removed learners because they were not paid for the work that they did.”
Flawed System
MPs lamented the system’s vulnerability to interference, which has led to cases where capitation funds are withheld or misallocated because learners’ details disappear from the digital register overnight.
“It would then seem at this particular moment in time, the State Department does not know the number of learners in our schools. It would seem so. Because if NEMIS is the primary data, we do not know with precision the number of learners in school,” said Funyula MP Wilberforce Oundo.
The Funyula MP highlighted concerns about missing documentation related to copyright, system architecture, and technical instructions of the NEMIS system following reports it was fully developed in-house or engineered by an external party.
“If the system was developed internally, was it re-engineered by an external party? Because the reference was in the tender documents, that this was engineered by an external party. So just because it was engineered by an external party, there are some things that follow naturally, like copyright, all those kinds of things,” Oundo noted.
Mathioya MP Edwin Mugo emphasized that despite the Ministry of Education efforts to transition to a new system it will be impossible to address all the concerns without an in depth audit on the failures of the current system.
“A comprehensive system audit on nemis needs to be done, so that we can be able to answer some of the queries we are asking. Was it handled internally? What was bought? How much was spent on the updating? Which features were updated? How are the roles assigned to the different users?” he posed.
“Does the system log all these things? So, Chair, probably we can rule on another query, a system audit, probably even this, Chair. We require a system audit so that we can get a comprehensive report.”
Turkana Central MP Joseph Emathe pushed for expediency in the special audit by the Office of the Auditor General following persistent complaints of unknowns individuals handling NEMIS manipulating the data to intentionally deprive schools their capitation allocation.
“It is very unfortunate to hear that your officers who are handling NEMIs are sometimes manipulated by institutions. It is very sorry for me to say that, but those are things that we need to avoid. And some have even ended up not getting their capitations,”
“That’s because either they circumvented the system or don’t know what happened, and they ended up not getting their capitations. That’s because they did not do their NEMIS properly,” Emathe stated.
Lugari MP Nabii Nabwera about the effectiveness of the system and its implementation since inception given the myriad of complains over the system that have largely remained unheard.
“If you asked teachers and principals, they would say scrap NEMIS. You close school with 300 students in the evening. By morning, the system shows 100,” said Nabwera.
Committee Chair Tindi Mwale (Butere) urged for the conclusion of the special audit of the system before the transition of the new KEMIS system which is taunted to mitigate the loopholes in the current system.
“The Auditor General must go back and do a proper analysis how much was spent, who did the upgrades, and whether the system logs are reliable. That’s in our report,” he said.
The Principal Secretary for Basic Education Julius Bitok insisted that the ministry has accurate data of learners in public schools using both manual and digital system for tracking learner data.
“We have 6.4 million learners in primary school, 2.9 million in junior school, and 3.3 million in senior school a total of 12.6 million. We verify these numbers monthly through sub-county and county education offices,” said the PS Bitok.
KEMIS SYSTEM
PS Bitok acknowledged the system’s age and limitations, noting that the government is now transitioning to a new platform ,KEMIS (Kenya Education Management Information System) with an architectural design to capture leaners data in all level of education.
The transition to KEMIS was occasioned by the recommendations of the Presidential Working Party for Education Reforms to address systematic flaws raised by stakeholders on the NEMIS system.
“We will be able to deal with some of the issues on the agenda that the members of parliament are talking about. We are upgrading the system from what we call NEMIs 3.0 to KEMIs 4.0, which really has a very accurate identity, and it’s very agile and technologically advanced,” he stated.
He explained that the Ministry is working with CONSA, a government ICT agency, to oversee the upgrade with initial steps having commenced to request clearance from the Attorney General and Treasury to proceed under special procurement guidelines.
The Director of KEMIS admitted that NEMIS lacked interoperability and suffered repeated system failures due to poor hosting infrastructure. Cases of cyber cafes or untrained school staff deleting learner records over unpaid fees were also cited.
“We need a solution that protects data from third-party interference. That’s why we are building KEMIS with secure identity verification and outsourced data management,” the director said.