Adoption of e-governance saves FG N120bn

The growing adoption of e-governance by many states of the federation is an indication of government’s continuous effort to not only curb corrupt practices but reduce the rising cost of governance by plugging leakages in government revenue, analysts have said.

This trend, according to them, is further strengthened by recent proclamation by the Federal Government that it had saved about N119 billion through the deployment of e-government systems.

E-government refers to the use information technologies (internet, mobile computing) as a platform for exchanging information, providing services and interacting with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.

States such as Lagos, Cross Rivers, Edo, Rivers, Ekiti, Osun, Kano, amongst others, are making significant headway in e-governance.

BusinessDay further gathered that some state governments are already looking at the prospect of generating sustainable revenue from e-government services. Only recently, the Edo State government launched its Open Data Portal, a single point of access to a growing range of data produced by the institution and other bodies of the state. Interestingly, the direct impact of Open Data on the EU 27 economy was estimated at €32 billion in 2010, with an estimated annual growth rate of 7 percent. Informed sources told BusinessDay that Edo State government is already putting in place the right measures to realise the economic benefits of Open Data.

Ekiti is another state that is showing leadership in the area of e-governance. It was learnt that deployment of robust ICT infrastructure by the Ekiti State to engender electronic payment jacked up the state’s IGR by 466 percent monthly in the last one year. The state’s IGR, BusinessDay gathered, increased from a monthly N109 million in 2010, when the current administration came to office, to over N617 million as at December 2011.

Lagos State has entrenched ICT in the entire state apparatus with significant impact on land management, payroll management, internal revenue, data management, among others.

In 2012, the Rivers State government launched the RivCloud initiative with support from MTN and Globacom. This platform provides storage, application hosting and SAAS (Software-as-a-Service) to both public and private sectors, and will migrate services like tax filings online.

BusinessDay learnt that some state governors have developed a syndicate system that links accounts of all states’ ministries and parastatals to single alarm system that notifies them of withdrawals and deposit of monies. This trap, according to sources, has deterred fraudsters within the civil service from the usual style of broad daylight robbery of the treasury in league with top brass of the civil service.