In its bid to drive Government Digital Service Promotion, which is among the 7 Key focus areas of Pantami’s led administration, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), organised the second edition of eGovernment Capacity Building Programme for CEOs and Head of MDAs which was held today at NAF Conference Centre and Suites, Abuja.

In his welcome remarks, the Director General of NITDA, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami FBCS, FIIIM stated that the aim of the workshop was to support executives/ decision makers in reducing the rate of failure of ICT projects and also to sensitize participants on Nigeria’s eGovernment agenda which seeks to enhance transparency, efficiency and quality of government services.

The DG also informed that the goal of the one day event is to introduce eGovernment and see how it can be implemented in government operations, noting that Information Technology cannot be implemented in silos. He revealed that this compelled the Agency to organise a similar workshop 2 months ago, ‘eGovernment Interoperability Framework’, with the aim to harmonize government digital service and bring about interoperability.

Dr Pantami applauded the role ICT has played to drive government policies as evident in the Treasury Single Account (TSA), Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), Government Information Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), Bank Verification Number (BVN), e-Taxation, e-Passport, e-Wallet for farmers and business name registration automation by Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) among others.

Pantami concluded by calling on participants to see the event as a major step in laying a proper foundation for Nigeria’s eGovernment initiative in order to enhance effective and efficient service delivery to the public.

A total of 4 different sessions were held, Mr Tope Fashedimi, the Director eGovernment, Federal Ministry of Communications, made a presentation on ‘Overview of eGovernment: Vision, Philosophy and Future of eGovernment in Public Sector Administration in Nigeria’; Mr Lukman Lamid of NITDA presented a paper titled ‘Building Foundation for Digital Governance: Adopting a better approach to ICT in Public Sector’; Dr Muhammad Umar, CEO Bright Support Services Ltd made a presentation on ‘Business Process Re-Engineering and Change Management for eGovernment, while Mr Idris Bawa, Deputy Team Lead, Nigeria Policing Program presented a paper titled; ‘Implementation: Legal Frameworks, Policy Challenges and Sustainability’.w