MDAs work in silos, neglect e-government, NITDA says

Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government in the country are operating in silos, thereby making nonsense of e-government policy, the National Information Technology Development Agency, has said.

The NITDA’s Director General Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami disclosed this at opening ceremony of the Stakeholders’ Engagement on Nigeria e-Government Interoperability Framework (Ne-GIF) in Abuja yesterday.

“Silo e-Government systems would not help Government deliver public services efficiently.

“Advanced phases of service innovation cannot be achieved without integrating many backoffice 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 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 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. said servicefocused