Effects of Electronic Sourcing On Perfomance of Prcurement Function at the County Government of Nakuru

Public procurement plays a significant role in the efficient functioning any Government in the world since they rely on goods and services supplied by individuals. In Kenya, however there has been major complains on the wastage of resources, corruption and the lack of value for money in many government procurements contracts. Research has shown that, electronic procurement provides an alternative to manual procurement in such scenarios. As a result the government through a strategy paper set to implement electronic procurement in all government functions which incorporates: e – sourcing, e – tendering, e – reverse auction as well as e -payments. However, ten years down, most government procurement transactions remain manual and subject to human manipulation at various stages. The general objective of the study is to assess the role of electronic procurement on performance of procurement function in the County Government of Nakuru. This study therefore was meant to assess the e-sourcing practices at the county Government of Nakuru and how they affect the performance of the procurement function. Descriptive research design was used. The study target population comprised of all the 168 staff of procurement function of the County Government of Nakuru from which a sample of 118 was selected using the simple random sampling technique. The study used questionnaires in the collection of primary data. The resulting quantitative data was summarized using descriptive statistics such as mean, mode, standard deviations, frequencies and percentages. Chi-square analysis was then done to assess the association between e-sourcing and procurement efficiency. The study realized that the concept of esourcing has been adopted in the procurement function of the County Government of Nakuru. However it has not been fully implemented thus the full benefits thus the full benefits of e-sourcing have not been realized. The county government of Nakuru and other state organs should therefore take up the role of ensuring full implementation of e-sourcing and digitization of all government transactions within the county to enhance efficiency in discharge of their duties.