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The initiatives of Bayelsa State Government to deploy e-government resolution to promote good governance as informed by the vision to work proactively with other sector is not only to accelerate the benefits but also to deepen citizen’s participation in governance.

The Director-General in charge of Due Process and e-governance Bureau, Mr. Dimieari Von Kemedi stated this during the commencement of a seven-day computer training programme for civil servants in the state.

All is set for the roll out of the final chapters of Nigeria's Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) Action Plan by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) which hosted an all-stakeholders' meeting last week in Lagos to articulate views on the draft and forge Nigeria's roadmap to be among the world's 20 leading economies by year 2020.

The World Bank had projected last year that information technology would be responsible on a scale of 70/30, for determining real growth in most countries from 2015 and that by 2020, the most critical factor that would separate developed economies from non-developed ones would be hinged on whether a country would be an ICT have or ICT have-not country.

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) will this month host an all stakeholders' meeting to articulate views on the draft of the country's Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) Action Plan. Input from stakeholders drawn from various sectors of the economy is expected to help beef up Nigeria's work plan for full integration of ICT in achieving its development goals and positioning it among the 20 leading economies in the world by year 2020.

A statement made available to THISDAY disclosed that the stakeholders’ meeting will include leaders in the country's financial, technology, educational and health sectors, among others who will offer NITDA a good ground to strengthen the link between ICT integration and the achievement of President Yar’Adua’s Seven- Point Agenda for meeting the Millennium Development goals (MDGs).

For an agency that was created about seven years ago, the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA could not be said to have achieved enough.

This could apparently be because it was struggling under no legal backing to its operations and activities.

However, the agency got a life line last year when the National Assembly passed the Act backing its operations and activities into law.

Nigeria had in the recent past recorded a phenomenal growth in its telecoms sector due largely to the unprecedented upsurge in demand for wireless services delivered on the platform of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). The major impetus that propelled that growth was the government's deregulation of the telecom industry spearheaded by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) as well as the keen participation of both domestic and foreign telecom firms supported by local and foreign direct funds in what was tagged "the fastest emerging telecom market in the world".