Open data and
Open data and E-Government equal Transparency and
Accountability
The overwhelming task of fixing
Nigeria’ s mirage of problems has beclouded a lot of people not to
appreciate the great effort being put in place to reposition
Nigeria as a working country. The pulsating headline in the dailies
dishing out the level of corruption interplaying in the system has
made it easy for some Nigerians to lose hope that the nation will
not attain its rightful position in the comity of
nations.
The number of corruption cases
being exposed and prosecuted in recent time indicates that it is no
longer business as usual as the government would allow corruption
cases to take its natural cause without intervention from any
quarters. This shows that Nigeria is developing into a democratic
space with less impunity in the society.
This is a plus for the
government based on the fact that they are using policies and
strategies that will not create room for corruption through the
adoption of Information communication technology (ICT) to remove
the avenue for people to manipulate the process.
The introduction of Integrated
Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) in all the
Ministries, Extra Ministerial/Agencies (MDAs), expansion of
Treasury Single Account (TSA), deployment of BVN for payroll and
Social Investment programmes, New Whistleblowing policy,
Government Integrated
Financial Management System (GIFMIS), and Voluntary Assets and
Income Scheme (VAID), 24-hour business registration,
Replacement of old Cash-Based Accounting System with an
Accruals-Based System, Reform of longstanding Petroleum Cash Call
Arrangement and Pension administration, as well as Enlistment into
Open Government Partnership (OGP), Nigeria Open Data Policy and
Nigeria E-Government Master Plan have saved billions of naira for
Nigeria.
This endemic situation is a
worldwide phenomenon which other nations had control through review
of their laws and regulations in tandem with present situations.
This is currently been done in Nigeria as part of various reforms
going on in the country. The reform of our laws is sine qua to
compliment the effort of the government to improve the doing
business criteria in the country as well as provide enabling
environment for business and investment to strive.
Nigeria is moving towards
global practice to stem corruption through system restructure and
there is the need for state and local government to take a cue from
these reforms being introduced and support it to succeed.
Currently, Federal Government is
meeting with stakeholders on open data policy and E-Government
Master Plan which are veritable policies to curb corruption, open
sectors to create opportunities for economic growth, investment,
jobs, and information sharing.
Open Data has gained traction in
the global space in view of the awareness of citizens of their
rights and the emergence of the Open Government Partnership(OGP)
and digital revolution as well as the recognition of the economic
benefits of Open Data.
It is common knowledge to everyone
that, Ministries, Extra-Ministerial and Agencies (MDAs) website
generates a lot of data in Nigeria and entrepreneurs can use the
data to create new products and services as well as insight into
the operation of government activities.
It is well known that
Nigeria signed into Open Government Partnership(OGP) in 2016 which
is a new initiatives involving more than 70 countries in the world
and aimed at securing concrete commitment from governments to
promote transparency, increase civic participation, fight
corruption and harness new technologies to make government more
open, effective and accountable.
It is worthy to note that
some states have now commenced their open data initiatives and
portals; there is no hidden place for the start-ups and innovative
Nigeria youths to deploy their knowledge in finding solutions to
the mirage of problems confronting this nation.
They can now develop
applications that would ease traffic jams in our cities. Analysis
data from government website to create applications that would ease
business operation in public hospitals, create software that would
enable students in the secondary and higher institutions to have
less cumbersome registration and creation of applications that
would monitor our environment as well as applications that would
curb our security challenges.
Nigerians need not to sit
at the fence now as the government has provided the necessary
impetus to monitor their activities especially in the area of
projects implementation in all Ministry, Extra Ministerial and
Agencies (MDAs) in the country.
We have to be involved to
monitor the budget preparation and execution as well as monitoring
of contractors working on various projects in the country. This is
an opportunity for our youths in the ICT sector to deploy their
creativity and ingenuity to develop software that would enable
citizens to monitor and report progress of government projects in
the country.
In addition, Nigerians have to be
aware that the Federal Government is committed to the following
actions in concert with the international Open Data Charter and its
principles such as publishing open data in a discoverable,
machine-readable, useful formats, work with civil society
organization to prioritize open data sets for release and support
to innovators and improve open data based on feedback.
In an exhibition of transparency,
Federal Government has intensified effort to make government
business easily accessible to citizens through the development of
Nigeria E-Government Master Plan which overall purpose is to
strengthen the efficiency and transparency of public administrative
service in the country.
As the policy stated that its
vision is “To create a world class open and digitized government
that connects with people to drive efficiency in public
administration, responsiveness of civil services and transparency
in governance leading to improvement of the quality of life of
Nigerians”.
The focus now is on the citizens
not on government as there are ample opportunities for our
digitalize youths to explore and contribute to the development of
the country rather lamenting on lack of formal jobs in the
country.
The onus now lies with citizens to
contribute their positive actions toward making the government a
transparent and accountable to the people. Nigeria youths need to
embrace this opportunity to be innovative and entrepreneurship to
use technology to create jobs, participate in governance, promote
transparency, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to
make government more open, effective and accountable