The Bureau of Public Service Reforms(BPSR) on Tuesday in Abuja organised ICT training for members of staff of Ministries Department and Agencies (MDAs), as part of efforts to attaining a world class public service.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the 2-day workshop, which focused on website development and hosting management, was organised in collaboration with Nigeria Internet Registration Association.The Director General of the Bureau, Mr Dasuki Arabi said that the training workshop was to bring about a post COVID-19 digital revolution in the MDAs.He appreciated the association’s support to the Bureau in building the capacity of MDAs and ensuring the implementation of the Scorecard of ranking their websites.According to Arabi, the focus of the collaboration was to have a world class public service committed to the delivery of timely services to the public.“For three editions running now, the Bureau has made tremendous stride towards improving the standard of websites of Nigerian Government.“This is made possible through the instrumentality of the Scorecard, with majority of the MDAs attaining global level in the quality of goods and services rendered to the public.“
While this is an impressive achievement and worth celebrating, our findings has equally shown that there are challenges of skill gap, which must be adequately bridged for the success of the Scorecard to be adequately consolidated and sustained,” he saidArabi further said that the 2021 Scorecard was paramount to the new breed of public service the Federal Government was innovating in this era of post COVID-19 digital revolution.
He stressed that the challenges of the pandemic has pressed the fast-forward button on the global shift to e-government.The director general added that by extension, the pandemic has pushed the e-government transition forward at great speed, shifted many workers to work from home and made government to understand who the essential workers are.“Institutional websites, which provides the digital space to keep government business up and running in the face of the pandemic must be kept at optimal standard to ease intention and readiness to adapt the new normal“It will as well drive investors’ and citizens’ confidence in terms of ease of doing business, Open Data and Freedom of Information Act.“It will place all Federal MDAs on the same level playing field.“
The training programme was required to equip all relevant desk officers managing government websites to be fully accustomed with and appropriately apply the criteria of the Scorecard,” he noted.The director general further added that the Scorecard was an important index, the National e-Government Masterplan employed to determine the Nigeria e-Government Status.He explained that the expectation was that, when websites of the MDAs are fully standardized, it would help to improve access to government information and online services.Arabi noted that it would also reduce man-to-man contact and eliminate corruption in public financial transaction, as well as curb online scams including identity theft associated with government websites.“
There are fourteen strategic thematic areas by which MDAs’ websites must show compliance and are adjudged by the Jury constituted to coordinate the evaluation process.”He said they included: gov.ng/ng domain string and local website hosting, Look and Feel, Content, Relevance to MDAs mandate and government policy, Structure, Device Compatibility, Security.He listed others as: Load Time, ease of navigation, Availability or Uptime, Functionality, Interactivity, Accessibility and Capacity Building.He also said that consistent application of these criteria to government websites will foster the aspiration of government for MDAs to make information available to the citizens and involve them in governance process.The Director General told the participants that the capacity building programme will provide them with the opportunity to refresh knowledge and learn new techniques in web development and hosting management.“Learning through a training programme like this provides participants with an improvement in their capacity to be fully accustomed with and appropriately apply the criteria of the Scorecard for larger development impact.“I believe, this effort will lead to creating a pool of experts that can sufficiently support government who volunteered to address various sessions of the training.”He thanked the Nigeria Internet Registration Association led by its President, Mr Mohammed Rhodman for accepting to partner with the bureau in organising the workshop.(NAN)