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NITDA says MDAs work in Silos, neglect eGovernment

By Bankole Orija
25 May 2018   |   4:16 am
Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government in the country are operating in silos, thereby making nonsense of e-government policy...

Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Dr Isa Pantami PHOTO: TWITTER?NITDA NIGERIA

Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government in the country are operating in silos, thereby making nonsense of e-government policy, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, director-general, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has said.

Pantami, at the opening ceremony of the Stakeholders’ Engagement on Nigeria’s e-Government Interoperability Framework (Ne-GIF) in Abuja, said that ‘’Silo e-Government systems would not help government deliver public services efficiently. Advanced phases of service innovation cannot be achieved without integrating many back-office functions.

‘’For instance, registering a Limited Guarantee Company in Nigeria requires visit to at least three institutions: CAC, FIRS, and Attorney General of the Federation physically and/or through their portals. However, the Nigerian government is becoming more complex and wide-reaching than ever before and citizens believe and expect that public services must be delivered effectively and at speed. This is inefficient, inconvenient, time consuming and makes citizens pay more’’, Dr Pantami said.

He said through robust e-Government applications, it is possible to make the transactions and get the service delivered on a single portal, adding that citizen-centered service delivery involves breaking up silos, integrating across agencies, innovating new ways of doing business, and creating a service-focused culture.

According to him, it has been proven that one of the strategic directions for e-government is to adopt a Whole-of-Government (WoG) approach for deriving expected value from IT.

He said WoG involves back-end offices re-engineering, consolidation and integration of business processes across government agencies to deliver effective and consolidated services through the front-end offices at an affordable cost.

‘’WoG is a deliberate path to attain Government Digital Transformation (GDT) we desire. GDT views Government as an entity by promoting the idea of ONE GOVERNMENT but still respect individual MDA’s mandates while providing government digital services.

‘’Fundamentally, e-Government or digital service delivery has three models or approaches: Government-to-Government (G2G), Government-to-Business (G2B) and Government-to-Citizens (G2C).

‘’Transforming G2G is the foundation for providing efficient digital services. It enables and drives the other delivery models.

‘’However, the workability of any G2G is determined by the level of IT systems integration and standardization considering the social, institutional, legal, economic and political systems of a particular country.

‘’The main difficulty in achieving advanced G2G is the interoperability requirements of IT systems of various government agencies. For instance, compliance with Executive Order 001 requires advanced G2G,” he said.

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