A thesis submitted to Strathmore University in partial fulfillment to the requirements of the award of Master of Science in Information Technology (MSc.IT).

.

ABSTRACT:
The effects and contributions of adopting Information Communication Technologies (ICT) by organizations have been on a rise in recent times. However, the anticipated end results are most often not realised due to automation challenges which include resistance from employees, lack of standards and policies that govern the automation process. Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) embraced IT as an enhancement of revenue collection strategy since the year 2005. The general research objective was to establish improved KRA operations as a result of adoption of IT; other specific objectives were to find out the challenges faced and possible solutions during the process of automation. The research was also to come up with a conceptual model that can be used for automation of business processes in revenue collection agencies and organizations. A descriptive survey design was adopted utilizing both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The approach aimed at getting information that describes a situation, behaviour, attitudes of the individual and the community in revenue collection environment hence the target population of this study was the staff at KRA. Both qualitative and quantitative data was collected for the four objectives. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to aid the analysis of quantitative data.
Qualitative data was analyzed using thematic method by grouping the information provided by respondents into similar themes. In terms of the findings, about 71.1% of the operations e.g. communication between KRA and CBK, tax collection, vehicle registration, filing of tax returns were recorded to have greatly improved. About 18.4% of process have not improved and about 10.5% remaining the same. About 75.7% of the respondents felt that the adoption of ICT had a remarkable change in revenue collection efficiency. Some conclusions made from the study was that improved revenue collection was highest by 22% translating to about Kenya shillings 12.53 billion in 2009/10, followed by 20% in general authority's operations as a result of automation. There was also improved audit trail at 19% while staff effeciency15%. Some improved factors were international trade and relations at 14% and 10% respectively. This research developed an effective automation model that described how best the automation can take place in a revenue collection environment.