IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

The need for government to concentrate on the overall value of application programs and platforms over and above other areas of information technology in its bid to achieve the much touted e-government strategy, has been described as ‘‘necessary’’. Making this declaration recently at the just concluded national E-Government Stakeholders’’ conference organized under the auspices of the National IT Development Agency (NITDA) in Abuja, was the managing director of one of the participants at the event, ProGenics Corp limited, Mr. Tony Udoh.

In his speech presented at the event titled ‘‘Application Programs and Platforms As a Pre-requisite for national e-strategies; Mr. Udoh described application programmes as the engine behind the e-government revolution and a crucial part of any attempt by government to define e-strategies. He described them as, “the basic ingredients that must be implemented to bring the strategy into reality based on the fact that they provide the technology that will be used to implement any e-government initiative and as such contribute directly to either the success or the failure of the strategy”.

Listing the individual components for developing an e-government application program, which he later defined as the actual software that the end user will use to perform the day-to-day operations, the Progenics boss mentioned such key points as:

• Database design, form preparation, data capture/import.
• Storage, management and control of data.
• Execution of transaction processing requests.
• Inquiring the report processing/information presentation.

These key points would ultimately determine choice of the ideal application programs and platforms (hardware and communications) that can contribute to the entire e-government strategy. According to Mr. Udoh, determining the choice of application program for software strategy can:

• Help reduce cost of training, as the choice has to be those that suit the needs of the Nigerian user in general and the Nigerian Government in particular
• Boost local manpower development, as the choice of appropriate applications and programs also improves the ability of local manpower to properly oversee the project
• Promote interoperability between systems, as the choice of application platforms and programs will also determine the level of integration, if any, which will be possible between different initiatives under the entire e-government strategy.

According to Mr. Udoh: “The inability of government to define application programs and platforms that meet these criteria could, at best, introduce significant delays and set backs to the entire project or, at worst, scuttle the project in its entirety.” He went further to enumerate the features of the application programs advocated as one that satisfy the needs of posting of received revenue in a financial environment, posting of personnel and payroll information in establishment, and posting of information regarding the agricultural output of certain areas in an agricultural setting.

It is on record that ProGenics Corp limited recently launched the first-ever complete E-Government application software in Nigeria called GovAc, which has modules to handle such areas like Budgeting, Revenue Collection, the Accountant Generals Office and Establishment and is currently implemented by the Akwa Ibom state government. The ProGenics boss concluded with a counsel that, “Without application programs suited to each particular environment and built to meet specific standards the full benefits of the National e-Government strategy may not be met.”

Quelle: Vanguard, 21.04.2004