Many public institutions in Kenya have not adopted cloud computing solutions due to a lack of knowledge. Those that do have the knowledge are plagued by downtime experienced in online systems, which further inhibits adoption.

This is according to the Public Sector ICT Survey 2016 released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics which states, "Majority of institutions (53.1 percent) did not use cloud computing due to insufficient knowledge within the organisation. Lack of technical capacity was the least cited reason for non-use of the application."

The research also affirmed that 50.4% of institutions did not have any future plans to adopt cloud computing. "However, only 43.3 percent of National government institutions that were not using cloud computing had plans of adopting it."

The government has ploughed millions of dollars into online and cloud-dependent services to support e-initiatives. Services such as renewing driving licenses, passport application and business name searches are now accessible through the ECitizen portal.

However, periodic downtime has been a challenge for institutions that were already adopting e-government services.

In April this year, the Council of Governors, representing county governors, issued a complaint about a breakdown of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) and the subsequent halt of county processes.

IFMIS is used by National and County Governments for planning, budgeting, procurement, expenditure management and control, accounting, auditing and reporting.

"System slowdown was the most common challenge of using e-procurement as reported by 80.4 percent of public institutions that used e-procurement system in 2015. System failure and lack of skills amongst staff was cited by 69.6 percent and 58.1 percent of the institutions, respectively. System maintenance and system incompatibility was not much of a challenge with only 2.3 percent and 0.8 percent of the institutions experiencing it, respectively," the report said.

However, the majority of government institutions (67.4%) conducted businesses such as advertisement of tenders online.

Even with the challenges of using e-procurement systems, 73.1% found that it reduced corruption and fraud incidences. Two-thirds of the institutions also reported reduced transaction time and increased transparency, an impetus for government institutions to push for more adoption of cloud services.