Government Services Portal

At the launch in Abuja,on the 16th of April 2013, the Minister said that the launch of the portal is in line with the Ministry’s mandate to deploy ICT to drive transparency in governance and improve the quality of public service delivery. Mrs Johnson stressed that the benefits of the Government Service Portal will manifest in a faster, cheaper and more personalized and efficient service delivery that citizens and businesses can access 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The portal she emphasized will improve efficiency in the delivery of government services to citizens and other stakeholders. It can be assessed in English, French and Spanish.

 Mrs Johnson added that the portal is one of the flagship projects of the Ministry aimed at enabling Nigerians access government services efficiently at the click of a button. The Minister added that Government portal project resonates with the outcome of the survey which the United Nations UN carried out across 48 countries on Innovative E-Government Practices amongst nations. The result of the survey by the UN showed that citizen service delivery is topmost on the government innovative technology adoption all over the world. Thus, governments’ use of the Internet to deliver government services has revolutionized the speed and effectiveness of government service delivery and public administration across the world. She emphasized that Governments increasingly recognize that e-Government offers not just a new technology, but also a mechanism to transform the way government operates. She gave examples of nations that have taken this route of creating government service portal to include USA (www.usa.gov), Britain (www.gov.uk), Canada (servicecanada.gc.ca), India (www.deity.gov.in), Singapore (www.ecitizen.gov.sg), South Africa (www.services.gov.za), Kenya (www.e-government.go.ke) etc. The Ministry she added in recognition of the important role ICT plays in enabling efficiency in governance developed a single point of entry via the portal for Nigerians and other stakeholders to access government services online by creating a location directory of existing government services that are online and working with Ministries of Agriculture, Education, Health, Industry, Trade & Investment and the ministry to automate 10 processes. Some of the processes are Trademark and Patent registration, Registration and Accreditation of Seed companies, Seed Import and Export Permit, Evaluation and Accreditation of Certificates, School Inspection Reports, Acquisition of License for Class type license, individual type license and Spectrum License and Farmer's Registration. She added that the Ministry also developed standard and secure web templates and toolkit for Federal Government MDAs to utilize to re-design their websites in order to maintain a consistent and standardized look and feel for the online presence.