Remmy Nweke:
THE Federal Government (FG) has recovered an estimated
sum of N154 billion by deploying Information and Communication Technologies
(ICT) on its Government-to-Government (G2G) platforms.
G2G is an inter-agency relationship that makes governance
more friendly, convenient, transparent, and inexpensive.
Out of this N154bn, DigitalSENSE Business News, reliably
gathered that through the deployment of Government Integrated Financial
Management Information System (GIFMIS) the sum of N34bn was recovered from
illegal accounts, while the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System
(IPPIS) saw to the discovery of about 46,000 ‘ghost workers’ thereby saving the
government approximately N119 billion.
These were disclosed to DigitalSENSE Business News the
Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson in her key note
address to the 2013 international conference of the Nigeria Computer Society
(NCS) in Osun State, recently, on “e-Government and National Security.”
“GIFMIS has so far identified and recovered about N34 Bn
in illegal accounts,” she said.
GIFMIS, she said, manages the budget execution process
and helps identify and address sources of leakage in
budget execution, whereas
IPPIS is a personnel management application.
According to her, IPPIS aided the discovery of 46,000
ghost workers, and saved the government almost N119 Bn, so far, stressing that
215 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) have been captured onto the
IPPIS system and another 321 intended to be added before December 31, 2013 with
more savings expected.
She pointed out that currently only about 60 per cent of
the Federal budget is managed by the platform.
CommTech Minister emphasized that IPPIS and GIFMIS, are a
clear demonstration of the transparency and cost reduction benefits of
egovernment.
She decried that at present, the Corporate Affairs
Commission (CAC), which is the first Government to Business (G2B) service that
any newly formed company will experience, is a typical example where multiple
forms could be downloaded online, but the most elementary service, a name
search has to be done manually.
What is now needed, she posited, is a more holistic and
comprehensive approach to delivering egovernment and reaping the full benefits
for businesses, for government and for citizens.
The Ministry’s approach to egovernment is in a sense a
building block approach, which comprise that the ongoing development of a
robust, secure and shared IT infrastructure managed by Galaxy Backbone plc,
serves as the platform through which egovernment services are deployed.
This infrastructure, she said, has been certified at the
ISO 27001 standard in information security management and enables us to take
advantage of economies of scale – removing the duplication in IT
infrastructure, especially data centres, across MDAs and creating centres of
excellence for skills.
She pointed out that Galaxy Backbone’s shared
infrastructure recently won first place at the 2013 UN public service award in
the Promoting the “Whole of Government Approaches in the Information age”
category – a testimony and a validation of the appropriateness of this
approach.
The second building block, she said, is skills and talent
to manage the effective and efficient deployment of a substantial IT budget,
noting that government is not immune to the poor supply of skills and talent to
the industry.
This challenge, Mrs. Johnson said, is further compounded
by the dispersal of our IT skills and talent across the various MDAs with
little knowledge of the available skills and capacity and few opportunities for
taking advantage of inherent IT synergies.
CommTech, she said, is now working to professionalise the
pool of IT skills in federal government, an ICT cadre has been established to
be domiciled in the Ministry of Communication Technology, allowing for the
development of a highly qualified IT workforce within government.
More importantly we have created a Council of ICT Heads,
that meets monthly to ensure synergy and collaboration across Ministries and
reduce duplication in applications and deliver more value for federal
governments IT spend,” she said.
This Council of IT Heads, as said by her, would now be
the key drivers of the egovernment agenda for the federal government and are
charged them with the delivery of two immediate priorities.
“First of all, the rollout of a customised and
standardised template for all federal government websites to set citizen and
customer expectations better when interacting with MDAs online and the hosting
of all websites on the .gov.ng domain.
“Secondly, the rollout of email addresses to all federal
civil servants (yourname@fedcs.gov.ng) for internal and external communication.
These two actions will give citizens confidence they are dealing with bona fide
government officials and build trust and confidence in egovernment applications
and systems an important factor in implementing an egovernment agenda and of
course reducing the well publicised “my oga at the top” syndrome and other job
scam syndromes,” she said.
Johnson recollects that her Ministry recently deployed
the services portal – services.gov.ng; offering a limited number of new online
services from the Ministries of Agriculture, Communication Technology,
Education, Health as well as Industry, Trade & Investment and also
providing a ‘single window’ through which existing egovernment services could
be accessed.
Traffic to the portal, she noted, is still low but it’s
expected that with the deployment of a number of high traffic services, such as
some of the services of the corporate affairs commission, increased awareness
of this portal and increased confidence of citizens to transact their business
with government online we should begin to see some efficiency and transparency
gains. We will continue to build on the services available on this portal.
She said that in order to professionalize and better
manage possible first-level telephone contact between government and citizens,
a 150-seat call centre will be commissioned later on this year. While the call
centre is fully outsourced to the private sector, 250 Servicom staff from
Ministries have been trained to provide second level assistance in the event
that the call agent at the call centre cannot address the citizen’s enquiry.
“I would also like to touch briefly on our Open
Government Initiative where we plan to release non-sensitive and non-classified
datasets online in a pro-active manner and under the Freedom of Information
Act. These data sets will be turned over to developers to mine and create
relevant and customized applications that will ultimately benefit the citizenry
and boost our job creation efforts,” Mrs Johnson said.
Deploying egovernment services on a robust and secure
platform, the Minister pointed out, is one thing but the success of any
egovernment agenda is also premised on an additional critical success factors.
Adding that the issue of ease of use of delivery
platforms that facilitate acceptance becomes quite important, just as literacy,
conventional as well as digital is now more important than before and it is the
government’s responsibility to ensure that citizens are given every opportunity
to participate in the language and format most appropriate to the environment
where services will be accessed – internet, voice, short messaging service
(sms).
Local language options, she said, have to be added to the
services portal as digital penetration is improved so as to ensure optimal
citizen acceptance. Local language call centre operators, customized touch
screen terminals or appropriate interface will be provided to ease access.
“To make our e-government initiatives successful,
citizens must also be confident about transacting their business over the
internet or other ICT channels. The internet must be considered a safe and
secure place with citizens confident to provide sensitive information online,”
she submitted.
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