By John Ewah
Since the turn of the twentieth century, governance especially in the developed climes has taken a new dimension.
Nations of the world have embraced technology to the point of birthing smart cities. Man has annexed the ether, the ecosystems and other soliterraneous and planetary compositions, and is now delving into new frontiers of other galaxies.
These have been made possible through technology, particularly by integrating technology into governance mechanisms, culminating in what we now refer to as globalization.
Governments across the world especially in developed climes have come to terms with and accepted the use of technology in the day-to-day running of government, ensuring seamless bureaucratic procedures in governance.
One of the most modern initiatives today to establish not just good governance but also a smooth governing process is electronic governance, simply referred to as e-governance. The features of e-governance are observed in almost all developed or developing countries for fostering effective developmental processes.
In Nigeria, Edo State is blazing the trail in e-governance with the recent onboarding of all 94 live and extant Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs). This is the first time in the history of any State in the Federation that all MDAs of government in a particular State have been on-boarded on an e-governance platform.
In his determination to institute a paradigm shift that leverages Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for easy day-to-day running of government, Governor Godwin Obaseki adopted e-governance which raises the transparency, accountability, efficiency, effectiveness and inclusiveness in the governing process, in terms of reliable access to information within and between governments and their agencies.
Governor Obaseki’s adoption of e-governance is driven by two major objectives, which include the need to ensure transparency in government to reduce corruption to the barest minimum, and the need to ensure efficiency in the bureaucratic process.
The lethargy resulting from the bureaucratic process over time, has created the impression among many public servants that government jobs should be treated with nonchalance and laxity; like they say, you put it on the shoulders so that when it becomes too heavy, you throw it down.
This attitude in the public service has discouraged leaders with novel governance ideas desiring quick and effective results. They are alarmed and frustrated by the bureaucracy or red-tapism within the system. This has often earned civil servants the nickname ‘evil servants’ because of the unduly prolonged processes of governance.
In a media parley with the Edo State Head of Service, Anthony Okungbowa Esq., he expressed Government’s determination to change the narrative.
According to Mr. Okungbowa, “We are changing all of that with the e-governance platform. When we were manually dealing with files, you could send a file to a particular ministry and it would take one week for such a file to be returned. But today with e-governance, I can sit here and send a file which would be worked on immediately and sent back. What would have hitherto taken a week would just take less than two hours to attend to. The e-governance platform makes our work easy and makes us more efficient and productive as civil and public servants”.
With the onboarding of 94 MDAs on the e-governance platform, Mr. Okungbowa noted that the second phase of the initiative, the Edo E-governance 2.0 is now ready to take off.
According to him, “With Edo E-governance 2.0, we will be leveraging the platform to achieve our two set objectives which are; to ensure transparency in government in order to reduce corruption to the barest minimum and also to ensure efficiency in the bureaucratic process. Right now we have initiated a strategic plan of action within a circumscribed timeline that would enable us to benchmark our work and activities against this given course”.
Mr. Okungbowa also noted that a total of 123 staff members have been trained to champion the e-governance process. According to him, “We are taking the message to the ministerial level. We have one hundred and twenty three e-governance champions who just recently completed their training and would be taking the e-governance message to various MDAs in the State”.
He added: “To ensure that various MDAs begin to key into this initiative, as well as to ensure compliance, we will be going on what I have termed ‘ward rounds’, that is, from ministry to ministry, to monitor the extent of compliance by these MDAs. This is a novel initiative; it is something that has never happened before. The civil service, as you know, can sometimes be very conservative and traditional. As such it may seem difficult for some persons to adapt to a new initiative such as this”.
The Head of Service however opined that with adequate and proper enlightenment coupled with the training and re-training public servants have undergone in recent times as regards the use of technology, work on the e-governance platform is expected to be seamless and easy. He stated that all that is expected of staff of the public service is for them to befriend their computers in order for them to get acquainted with the features on the platform.
Speaking on its sustainability, Mr. Okungbowa commented on the beauty of building institutions to drive sustainable governance processes. According to him, “What past Governments did overtime was building individuals. So when such an individual leaves office, a vacuum is created. That has been the wheel which this administration is determined to stop.
“What the Governor is doing is building institutions, especially the inclusive one, which will drive governance and growth as well as its sustenance even when the architect of such initiative is no longer in the system. This is what Governor Obaseki intends to achieve with e-governance. He is giving capacity to the civil and public service to ensure the process runs seamlessly.”
Governor Obaseki’s determination to provide transparent, equitable, and accountable service delivery to citizens of Edo State has evidently birthed the e-governance initiative with the objective to improve the quality of governance to the good people of Edo State.
