Includes references

Embrace of IT in the state corporations is among the key factors the government of Kenya has recommended while evaluating performance. IT in this context is meant to not only drive service delivery but is also used to measure performance. As IT gets mainstream, the issue of IT governance becomes very relevant and therefore necessitating a study of the same in the Kenyan context. The study sought to understand the relevance of IT governance for Kenya, the status of embracing IT governance and the effects thereof as far as performance is concerned. State corporations were studied and their scores in their performance contract were related to their embrace of IT governance. The Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT 5) as a framework for the governance and management of enterprise IT was used as the point of departure for this study. The study of the relationship between IT governance and the wider corporate governance issues, COBIT 5, theories that underpin performance evaluation viz: stakeholder theory, agency theory and stewardship theory helped identify Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for IT governance performance. Based upon previous work, the researcher believed a positive correlation between the Critical Success Factors (CSF) and the IT governance performance. Online questionnaires were sent to respondents which were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The characteristic of data was done using frequencies and percentages (descriptive statistics). The statistical association between variables was tested using Chi square. The study shows that there is no significant scientific proven relationship between performance of the state corporations and embracing of IT governance. Although majority of respondents were of the view that state corporations objectives and IT objectives are harmonized and aligned, most of the respondents were not so sure on whether the board was abreast with the latest innovations in IT or whether they get independent assurance on the realization of the predetermined IT objectives. IT training was suggested as the most important element to be considered by the state corporations in order to realize benefit of investing in IT in the Kenya’s state corporations considerations.The study concluded that performance does not solely rely on IT governance. This implies that performance of sate corporations is also dependent on other things but not IT governance alone. It is the first attempt in Kenya to systematically investigate the effects of IT Governance in the performance of Kenya’s state corporations. The results contribute to the body of knowledge on IT Governance on the state corporations and will prompt the management and boards of the state corporations to discern IT governance in their enterprises.