Analysing Factors in ICT Integration among Staff in Tertiary Academic Institutions:A Case Study of Machakos Town

Abstract

Organisations and the government have been trying to promote ICT integration among staff to enable them use ICT tools at the place of work. Enormous amount of resources have been spent to improve productivity by promoting ICT usage. However, general observation shows that with all this effort, ICT integration is still at a low level although the number of computer users appears to be on the increase. The purpose of this research therefore was to investigate the factors influencing ICT integration among staff in tertiary academic institutions. Specifically, the research sought to identify; clusters of variables which measure similar underlying dimensions in ICT integration, the individual factors in ICT integration, and the institutional factors in ICT integration. The research was a case study of institutions in Machakos Town that used survey design procedure where multiple sampling techniques were used to cater for the heterogeneity of the target population. Data was collected through questionnaires administered directly to the staff. The research used two statistical techniques in the analysis of data: principal component analysis to reduce the number of explanatory variables, and the ordinal logistic regression to extend further to estimate the parameters and to model the response variable to enable statistical inference be drawn on the data variables. The following variables were found to be statistically significant in ICT integration: age, mode of ICT training, e-mail use, possession of a smart phone, access to a projector, and availability of all the required software. However, the following variables were found not to be statistically significant in ICT integration: gender, staff category, job satisfaction, access to a desktop PC, and availability of only some of the required software. Stakeholders in ICT should allocate resources towards provision of facilities that enhance ICT integration such as application software required by staff, projectors, Internet access and local area networks, and promotion of formal training in ICT as formal training has a significant impact on ICT integration. Also more resources should be directed to training of the young staff. Policies and programmes should not focus on the gender as part of affirmative action to promote women, as gender was not found to be statistically significant. ICT skills should not be made a mandatory requirement by employers at the time of recruitment.