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With the coming launch of e-government in a few weeks by President Olusegun Obasanjo, Tayo Ajakaye previews its functioning

E-government is all about getting government services online. It is about government agencies working together to use technology so that they could deliver services more efficiently, transparently, and effectively .

Ina situation where it works, e-government will deliver enhanced services to citizens and provide a better environment to build a knowledge-based economy. E-government makes it easier to do business with government. It also makes it cheaper.

The Minister of Science and Technology, Professor Turner T. Isoun has stated that the Nigerian e-Government initiative is aimed at building a partnership model in accordance with the National Policy for Information Technology.

He explained that e-Government is the use of information to improve efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability of governance.

The minister who made this assertion through his special Assistant, Dr. Emmanuel Denenu in a special paper delivered at the Nigerian e-Government high level capacity building seminar for Federal ministries and agencies in Abuja said implementing the programme in Nigeria "is a tool for good governance."

Information in the hands of the wrong persons could be very dangerous. That is what recent series of data theft in the United States has taught the world.

It would seem however that in Nigeria there are no data protection laws. There is even no requirement that data must be properly stored. If data gets lost during a fire incident, just too bad. It ends there. Records may be lost forever in that process. Where some even have backups, the backups are stored in the same locations as the main data. The backups are frequently not updated.

The Obasanjo administration believes so much in the use of e-Government tools as a means to deliver on the social development programmes, the Chief Economic Adviser to the President, Prof. Ode Ojowu has said.

And towards the successful take-off of the e-Government initiative of the National e-Government Stategies (NeGSt) Limited, the partners met last week to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and to admit new members.

An entirely revolutionary project that would help Nigeria run its life on the platform of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) is ready and would be launched, May 29, this year, Champion Infotel has gathered.

The project, e-Government initiative is designed to put the running of government on auto-pilot through the use of modern technologies and make the system crime free.