In its continued commitment towards the implementation of the present administration’s Renewed Hope Agenda, particularly in the area of improving governance for effective service delivery, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), is intensifying efforts to create a one-stop-shop portal for all government services.
The initiative aligns with the President’s directive to digitise 75% of government services by 2027, a target that is now actively being pursued by various stakeholders.
This was made known when Kashifu Inuwa, the DG of NITDA, and his team played host to a delegation from the Ukrainian Embassy in Nigeria led by its ambassador, Mr Ivan Kholostenko to the Corporate Headquarters of the Agency in Abuja to discuss possible areas of collaboration between the two countries on ways of enhancing productivity, transparency and trust in government processes.
Despite efforts made for several years at establishing a centralised e-government portal such as the OneGove.net, the NITDA DG noted that the Agency has been playing a pivotal role in shaping the design, standard guidelines, and implementation strategies towards its establishment.
He however stated that renewed commitment and extensive research into global best practices have reignited the drive for pursuing the agenda.
While stating that the Agency has been doing research on how other countries have been able to implement the unified digital government services platform, the DG said, “We have been doing research on how UK, Kenya and other countries have achieved this, so I believe we can learn from you as well to see how we can build our own.”
“While such models are not entirely transferable between nations, we can learn from their experiences to develop a framework that works for Nigeria,” he added.
Proposing an introduction of legal frameworks to back up the initiative, Inuwa disclosed that NITDA has identified multiple models from other nations that allows government agencies to provide services through an Application Programming Interface (API) while other countries provide services exclusively through designated portals backed by law.
“If we want to achieve this, we need to have these laws in place and kickstart the process of enacting the laws in other to facilitate a smooth and effective digital transformation,” he averred.
Inuwa also disclosed that the agency is engaging with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to ensure alignment with global digital governance standards and the engagement is expected to provide valuable expertise and insights into structuring Nigeria’s digital transformation roadmap.
“This initiative is seen as a critical step towards enhancing efficiency, reducing corruption, and promoting transparency in government operations. By leveraging global best practices in alignment with national policies and digital transformation goals, Nigeria will have a smart, seamless and citizen-friendly government service experience, “he concluded.
In his remark, Mr Kholostenko said that Ukraine runs a digital platform known as the Diia application which is an ecosystem that encompasses all of the state registers, databases and can perform all the state and government services for citizens in one place.
He disclosed that it is the intention of his country through its Ministry of Digital Transformation to expand the reach of this initiative and provide full support for other countries to create such kind of system.
“I want to note that we are interested to expand and help other countries to make a digital state, reduce bureaucracy, reduce time for getting state services and of course, to reduce corruption risks, because human-to-human interaction is minimal,” he said.
