Minister seeks implementation of e-govt scheme

TO raise Nigeria’s competitiveness in the global community, the full implementation of eGovernment has been described as very important in the country’s scheme of development.

Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, who made this call in Abuja on Tuesday, at the Stakeholders’engagement workshop on ‘E-Government Master Plan 2020’, noted that the initiative was developed by the Federal Ministry of Communications as an essential blueprint of modalities and protocols for the adoption of e-Government best practices, across board, by all Federal Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

Shittu said the Master Plan was envisaged as a tidy road map for integrating governance in Nigeria, into the post-modern global Information and Communications Technology (ICT) age for the purpose of matchless efficiency, accountability and transparency; which, as experience in the developed world has proven, is the exclusive reserve of the carriage of governance on the ICT platform of modern technology.

According to him the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration is keen on the task of improving the capacity of its public sector workforce to match-up in skill and capacity for the delivery of the promised positive ‘Change’ which effectively constitutes the popular mandate given by Nigerians to the administration at the March 28, 2015 general elections.

While calling on stakeholders to see themselves as essential co-workers with the administration, Shittu said positive national ‘Change’ in today’s ICT-driven world is virtually impossible without competence and efficiency in e-Governance.

According to him, the benefits of speed, propriety, best-option, transparency, accountability and mass-participation in government available only via the e-Government framework and platform make it a sine qua non for meaningful and sustainable political and socio-economic growth and development.