Claims by governments across the country about their commitment to using IT driven platforms to enhance governance appear to be mere slogans. Investigations show that most MDAs’ websites that should keep the citizens informed about government policies and programmes are either nonexistent of malfunctioning. Staff reports.
In the first quarter of this year and before the exit of the former Minister of Communication Technology, Dr. Omobola Johnson, a report she credited to the bi-annual United Nations e-Government Development Ranking index stated that Nigeria has moved 21 places in the ranking.
However, assessment of some government websites does not reflect the indices that gave e-governance in Nigeria that ranking.
According to the ranking, there was said to be standardisation of all MDA websites and deployment of ICT in all government parastatals while daily routines had become seamless.
Nigeria in the ranking pooled a total of 190 points to climb to 141st position in 2014, from 162nd in 2012, thereby moving to 21 places from the previous ranking in 2012.
How investigation revealed that a lot of the MDAs websites far from what should be regarded as standard websites.
Our investigation, which was narrowed to key areas such News and Media menu, and the link of such websites to the social media as well as social media activities on some selected MDAs website reveals a sad state.
Our investigation particularly examined how often news and development are updated on such websites. It also examined the news update from national dailies posted on
the website.
A visit to the website of the Ministry of Communications Technology revealed that the last posting made in the News and Media menu of the website was in March 2015 while most of the photos posted on the photo gallery were photos of 2013 and 2014.
The last posting of daily newspaper report posted on the Daily News Report menu of the website was made in March 2015 while the last tweeting activities on the Ministry’s tweeter was June 24.
It was gathered that even in the use of the social media, the Ministry of Communications Technology was far behind global standard.
For instance, the last post on the Facebook of the Ministry was in April 2015 while only 144 people of the about 80 million Nigerians that visited the page which was created in 2012.
The Ministry has five departments under its supervision namely: Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, Nigeria Technology and Development Agency, NITDA, NIPOST and Galaxy Backbone Plc but of all, the most active of them is the NCC.
It was discovered that NITDA has no news event menu that captures development and trends in an agency that is supposed to technology development in the country while the last news item posted on its latest news menu was in April 2015.
Investigation further revealed a dormant social media presence for NITDA as the last post on its Facebook page was in September 29, 2014 while the page, which was created in 2001 so far had only 3,566 likes.
Its tweeter account revealed that NITDA has only one tweet, five following, 25 followers and one favourite.
As for the Nigeria Postal Service, its website has no posting on its News and Media menu and there was no link to any Facebook and Tweeter accounts while the only post made was on its photo gallery, which was a 2013 photo award ceremony.
For NIGCOMSAT, the story was the same with no link to a Facebook account except for Tweeter account whose last tweet was in June 15, 2015 while the last time its News menu content update was in June 8, 2015.
Also a visit to the website of Galaxy Backbone Plc., a company that is a key driver of telecoms infrastructure in the country revealed that the last news update concerning its online activity was in May 2015, besides there is no news update of national dailies its the website.
A look at the Galaxy Backbone Face- Book page showed that the page, which was created in 2006 had only 384 likes while the last post on the page was in June 18, 2013.
However, it discovered that the Galaxy Backbone appears to be current with global trending events and news as indicated in its Tweeter account although the news item tweeted on June 29 2015 reported on June 18 on a telecoms news websites. The last tweet was tweeted on June 29, 2015 at the time of filing in this report.
But the account, which was created in 2010, has only 176 tweets, 45 following and 316 followers.
So far in the entire MDAs websites visited, only that of the NCC has a Norton security protection while none of them have the security key icon meaning that they are not secured and are vulnerable to the least experienced hackers.
Commenting on our investigation, software developer for the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, Mr. Emmanuel Amos disclosed that it is a reflection of the infancy state of e-governance in the country.
He noted that an efficient government website must not only be functional but should start and end a process for the common citizen, which should indeed reflect standard e-governance.
According to Amos, most of what is hosted today as websites by the MDAs in the country are just screen paintings with no effect saying that the cheapest service such drivers licence application or immigration service cannot fly on those websites.
While expressing worry about the kind of websites qualified platform for e-governance he stated that “to a great extent our people contribute to these failures because they want to truncate standard best practice processes and give room for human circumventions for corruption.”
He noted that these websites are not up to standard because of lack of readiness and enforcement to do the right adding that “Why do they work in other countries. We are simply corrupt.”
Amos observed that Nigerians are a major problem of e-governance and that technologies have always been in government stressing that the people do not want the government to get to the level of deploying technology for everything due to corruption.
While revealing that government automation process lacks auditing, he said that there are evidences that every aspect of governance requires technology to be effective saying that even the “Our health system needs data. The power supply we all worry about need data to enable proper planning.”
Notwithstanding the poor standard of most government websites, Amos noted that there good efforts made in many areas of e-governance saying however that they are all work in silos which reduces our egovernance next to nothing.
He explained that “you can see the National ID thing, e-voting system deployment, the banking BVN, the XoXo try ‘ s Credit Bureau responsibility has gone into oblivion.”
According to him, that is one reason government cannot function well and thereby satisfy the citizens in the current dispensation.
Managing Director, Internet eXchange Point of Nigeria, IXPN, Mr. Muhammed Rudman however said that there areas that these MDAs have done well besides the current state of their websites stating that there are challenges in the country as far as e-governance is concern.
He explained that the challenges of e-governance was what gave rise to the Nigerian e-Governance Forum so that issues that security and how to protect children and youths online.
He added that there are still challenges as to why Nigeria cannot share telecoms infrastructure with neighbouring West African countries so that regional traffic will not be a problem to the citizens of the region.
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