Efforts by the Goodluck Jonathan administration to promote the use of the internet for delivering government information and services to its citizenry is yielding positive results as Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy by GDP, has improved in the latest United Nations (UN) eGovernment Development ranking.

The country moved up by 21 points to 141 out of 193 countries rated in the UN Global eGovernment Development Index for 2014. Nigeria was ranked 162 in 2012. Nigeria also ranked 97 in the eParticipation index, an improvement of 22 points up from 75 in 2012.

The upward trajectory in the country’s ranking is indicative of the progress being made by the government through the Ministry of Communication Technology to enable and promote eGovernance in Nigeria. The Ministry has embarked on initiatives to deploy ICT to drive transparency and efficiency in governance and public service delivery.

To enable internal efficiency in government, the Ministry is promoting Information Communications Technology (ICT) in Government-by facilitating e-Government, which enhances transparency, efficiency, productivity and citizen engagement.

The ’Getting Government Online’ initiative the Ministry is facilitating is geared at ensuring that government deploys technology as a mechanism to transform the way government operates and enhance the effectiveness of government service delivery for the benefit of its citizens.

This has led to the implementation of two flagship projects, namely the Government Service Portal (GSP) and Government Contact Centre (GCC). The Government Service Portal (GSP) provides a single window technology access by citizens and other stakeholders to government services being provided by various Ministries Departments and Agencies MDAs.

It is multi-featured and includes collaborative channels that deliver core content management capabilities. The primary objectives of deploying GSP are to create a single point of entry to Federal Government services, enhance accountability and improve the delivery and quality of public services through technology-enabled civic engagement (mobile technology, social media, Interactive Mapping, Blogs, Wiki etc), transform government processes to increase public administration efficiency, increase end-user productivity by integrating many different services or data access paths of MDAs – under a consistent presentation standard and mainstream some of the government’s non-sensitive datasets on the portal.

The Phase One of GSP included the automation of 10 government processes from the Ministry of Education; Ministry of Health; Ministry of Agriculture; Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment and the Federal Ministry of Communication Technology.

Some of the processes automated are Drug authentication, Farmer’s Registration, Registration and Accreditation of Seed companies, Seed Import and Export Permit, Trademark registration, Patent registration, Acquisition of License for Class type license and Acquisition of individual type license, Spectrum License etc.

The Ministry is currently automating the pre-incorporation and post-incorporation processes of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and online payment on the Government Service Portal. The Ministry is also setting up Government Contact Centres, which will facilitate efficient response to citizen requests through a two-tier response approach.