Imports and Exports Permits/Licenses Administration System

Abstract

This research gives a detailed overview of the Imports and Exports Permits/ licenses administration system with the main purpose of identifying and summarizing facts, identifying and analyzing alternatives to solve the identified problems faced at the Ministry of Agriculture Mechanization and Irrigation Development. Different data gathering techniques which include questionnaires, interviews and observations were used and the researcher discovered that the Ministry of Agriculture Mechanization and Irrigation Development has been suffering from data redundancy problems, human errors, fraud and biases from the receiving and processing of applications, to the process of issuing imports and exports licenses. The traditional way of administering the permits was less effective and time consuming since most of the permits were issued after the period in which they were required had elapsed. Operating in this business contemporary environment characterized by the ever changing technology requires an organization to adopt to the new efficient technologies so as to remain competitive and ensure sustainability. As such, the objectives of this research were to develop an online administration system that is more efficient and less prone to errors which allows the online application, processing and issuing of imports or exports licenses as well provide business partners, importers and exporters with real time updates. PHP and MySQL were used to develop the system aligning the objectives to the user requirements of the system. The implementation of the system into the working environment was done after various testing strategies had been carried so as to mirror the system functionality against the user requirements. After successfully going through the testing process, the users were fully trained before different maintenance schedules for the system were put in place. Recommendations were also documented for future development or upgrade which include integrating the system with the existing AGRITEX farmers contracting system among others.