eGovernment: NITDA begins capacity building for ministries, agencies

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) on Wednesday began a two-day virtual strategic capacity building workshop for federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

The exercise is being carried out to hasten the implementation of the National e-Government Masterplan and inculcate the use of Information Technology in government activities.

The training is in three phases for directors of ICT and heads of procurement, network administrators and domain managers, while the third batch is for the NITDA team driving the digital transformation agenda.

The Director-General of NITDA, Kashifu Abdullahi, who was represented by the Director e-Government Development and Regulation, Vincent Olatunji, in his opening remarks said the training aims at ensuring application of technology in running government activities becomes part of public service, especially in the post-COVID-19 era.

Mr Abdullahi hinted that in line with the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS), NITDA has a strategic road map which it has been implementing.

He said one of the pillars of the policy is to develop quality human capital to drive government initiatives and government plans at the various MDAs.

Mr Abdullahi noted that in line with the National e-Government master plan of the country, a strategy to have institutional framework was designed to implement the NDEPS.

It will be recalled that a DT-TWGS was setup earlier and 442 members from 89 MDAs were trained.

The Director-General also hinted that it is in a bid to spread the training to other critical stakeholders in the MDAs that necessitated the need for the strategic capacity building workshop.

He said participants will exchange ideas and share knowledge on various strategic initiatives put in place for the nation to move forward under this new normal, the post COVID-19 era.

Speaking further, the Director-General said the training focuses basically on three major topics: e-government and National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy, legal framework for e-government and thirdly managing government process re-engineering.

One of the resource persons, Nasir Shinkafi of Backbone Connectivity Networks Nigeria LTD, highlighted the major attributes of e-government as transparency, efficiency and quality service and this, he said, will yield strategic outcomes such as a high performing government with high performance culture, responsible financial management and competent, committed non-corruptible officers.

Speaking on the legal framework, Emmanuel Edet of NITDA explained that for e-Government, the subject matters requiring legal framework are organisational structure, recognition of electronic documents, authentication and e-signature, security and trust.

Others are electronic information management, interoperability framework, privacy and personal data security and funding for e-government research.

The guest presenter, Lawal Zakari, emphasised the need to replace outdated and outmoded work process with effective and re-engineered government processes as a way forward.