THE Communications Technology Minister, Omobola Johnson, has re-iterated the desire of the Federal Government to run a more open and transparent government by opening up its activities for public scrutiny.She said beyond providing relevant, accurate and up to date information to Nigerians, the Federal Government was committed to increasing the delivery of government services online.In a welcome address delivered at the international conference on the New Media and Governance: Tools and Trends' in Abuja on Monday, Mrs. Johnson lamented that only about 49 per cent of government ministries, departments and agencies have a functioning, publish and inform websites, noting that the government was currently in the process of developing a national Internet-based portal that would facilitate easy access to government information through publish and inform websites.Accordingly, she said, government had set December, 2014 deadline for all MDAs to have a functioning publish and inform websites domiciled on a national portal, which would provide structured information about government activities and services in such a way that the two-way communication on various social media platforms could facilitate engagement.For those, who have access to Internet, but have other digital devises such as mobile phones, the minister promised government's contact centres would be established primarily as call centres that would provide information on government services to citizens in English and a number of local languages. Two of such pilot centres would be in place before the end of the year or early next year.According to her, New Media facilitates on demand access to content, anytime, anywhere on any digital device, which has now resulted to what is referred to the democratisation of information. 'This has only been possible through the evolution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), especially the emergence and the ubiquity of the Internet.'New Media played a critical part in our elections, the civil unrest that followed the planned removal of the fuel subsidy, the UK youths riots in 2011 and the Arab springs to name, but a few. Recall that President Goodluck Jonathan made use of this platform and declared his intention to run as president back then on Facebook much to the approval of millions of young and digitally-aware Nigerians.'These significant events have clearly demonstrated that government cannot afford to ignore new media, because this is becoming the way in which citizens want to communicate and engage with government and with the outside world. It is instantaneous, it can be anonymous, you can do it anywhere and at anytime and it is cheaper than any other forms of communication.'Presently, the minister said about 45 million Nigerians have access to the internet, with more than the number of Nigerians have access to or own broadcasting devices such as radio and television. 'As ICT infrastructure is rolled out and get more robust, more Nigerians will have access to cheap and fast internet. This is an extremely instructive statistics because what it means is that inn the very near future, the cheapest and fastest way for the Nigerian government to provide information and to engage with citizens will be through the leverage of new media tools.'According to her, the publishing of the federal budget on the Internet led to an unprecedented and informed commentary on the budget and gave Nigerians a real insight into where the money was being spent.'Not because this is the first time, but the digital awareness was greater and access to the internet had increased. But the budget in its raw form can only be understood by the economists.'This is where the developer community comes and I hope that they are well represented. Many state governments are beginning to publish their budgets on the Internet taking an important step towards financial transparency and accountability. The government is also committed to supporting the developer community in taking up this challenge through the increase in the ICT incubation centres in the country.
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