Nigeria Garners 21 Points in UN eGovernment Development Ranking

Nigeria has improved in the latest United Nations eGovernment Development ranking by moving up by 21 points to 141 out of 193 countries rated in the UN Global eGovernment Development Index for 2014. Nigeria was ranked 162 in 2012.

Nigeria also ranked 97 in the eParticipation index, an improvement of 22 points up from 75 in 2012.

The upward movement of Nigeria in the 2014 ranking is a welcome development that shows that progress is being made in the efforts of the Nigerian Government through the Ministry of Communication Technology to enable and promote egovernance in Nigeria

According to a statement by the Ministry of Communication Technology led by Mrs Omobola Jonhson, read that the Ministry had embarked on initiatives to deploy ICT to drive transparency and efficiency in governance and public service delivery.

To enable internal efficiency in government, the Ministry is promoting ICT in Government-by facilitating e-Government, which enhances transparency, efficiency, productivity and citizen engagement.

The  ’Getting Government Online’ initiative the Ministry  is facilitating  is geared at ensuring that government deploys technology as a mechanism to transform the way government operates and enhance the effectiveness of government service delivery for the benefit of its citizens.

This has led to the implementation of two flagship projects, namely the Government Service Portal (GSP) and Government Contact Centre (GCC).

The Government Service Portal (GSP) provides a single window technology access by citizens and other stakeholders to government services being provided by various Ministries Departments and Agencies MDAs. It is multi-featured and includes collaborative channels that deliver core content management capabilities.

The primary objectives of deploying GSP are to create a single point of entry to Federal Government services, enhance accountability and improve the delivery and quality of public services through technology-enabled civic engagement (mobile technology, Facebook, Twitter, Interactive Mapping, Blogs, Wiki etc).

Other objective is to transform government processes to increase public administration efficiency, increase end-user productivity by integrating many different services or data access paths of MDAs – under a consistent presentation standard and mainstream some of the government’s non-sensitive datasets on the portal.

The Phase One of GSP included the automation of 10 government processes from the Federal Ministry of Education; Federal Ministry of Health; Federal Ministry of Agriculture; Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment and the Federal Ministry of Communication Technology. Some of the processes automated are   Drug authentication, Farmer’s Registration, Registration and Accreditation of Seed companies, Seed Import and Export Permit, Trademark registration, Patent registration, Acquisition of License for Class type license and Acquisition of individual type license, Spectrum License etc

The Ministry is currently automating the pre-incorporation and post-incorporation processes of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and online payment on the Government Service Portal.

The statement also affirmed that the Ministry is setting up Government Contact Centres, which will facilitate efficient response to citizen requests through a two-tier response approach.

The Contact Centre, which will be located in the six geopolitical zones of the country is planned to house robust databases as well as accommodate 150 operator seats.

Before the creation of the Ministry of Communication Technology in 2011, most MDAs did not have domain names. In line with its mandate to improve the quality of public service delivery, all websites of Ministries across the federation have been migrated to a standard domain name at ‘.gov.ng’.

To maintain the relevance and efficiency of these websites, the Ministry has issued web standards and guidelines that ensure uniformity across all MDA websites.

The guidelines ensure quality of each website, its relevance and accuracy of information.

A corollary to the implementation of websites is the official email addresses to enhance service delivery and good governance within MDAs.

It will also lead to accountability and transparency in official government correspondence.

The Ministry through one of its agencies Galaxy Backbone won first place in the UN Public Service Award for 2013 for its ‘1Gov.net initiative’ and approach to providing safe and secure IT infrastructure for the delivery of e-government services.

The 1Gov.net is a shared service platform for raising public sector productivity and efficiency using technology.