Assessment Of Compliance Of Budgeting Practices To Established Norms On Budgeting By Government Entities In Kenya (A Case Of The Legislature)

Abstract

The current public finance architecture brought about by the Constitution of Kenya 2010 resulted

to far reaching changes on the management of public resources in Kenya. One of the key

departures from the past is the enhanced role of the Legislature in public finance oversight. The

Constitution empowered the Legislature to provide oversight and accountability over use of

public finances including budget approval for all government entities as well as ensuring all

government entities follow laid down procedures on budgeting. The question is whether the

Legislature, through the administrative arm, Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC), is

employing budgeting practices which are in conformity with the established norms on budgeting

in preparing its own budget in order to be an example to other government entities. Compliance

with government established norms on budgeting by the PSC will to some extent determine

whether the Legislature has the moral authority to demand adherence to budgeting norms by

other government entities. The Legislature will not be able to authoritatively sound alarm on

financial malpractices in other government entities as a result of poor budgeting practices

stemming out from non adherence to established norms if the Legislature itself is not following

the established norms on budgeting. Therefore, the objective of the proposed study is to assess

the compliance of budgeting practices to established norms on budgeting in the Legislature. The

Parliamentary Service Commission, which is the administrative arm of the Legislature, mandated

to prepare the Legislature’s Budget. The proposed study will use a descriptive design. The target

respondents of this study will be employees of the administrative arm of the Legislature, that is,

the Parliamentary Service Commission in the Directorate of Finance and Accounting and the

Directorate of Budget based at Parliament Buildings in Nairobi. These two Directorates are

conversant with budgeting practices in the public sector and are involved directly and indirectly

with budgeting in the Legislature. The data for the proposed study will be collected from primary

source through administration of questionnaires. The questionnaires will seek to capture the

perceptions of the respondents regarding compliance of budgeting practices in the Legislature to

established norms as well as possible remedial interventions. The technique which will be

employed in analyzing the data collected will be descriptive statistical technique since the research intends to describe the existing budgeting practices in the Legislature.