FG partners South Korea on e-government

As part of efforts to actualise the e-Government Master Plan 2020, the Federal Ministry of Communications has concluded plans to train about 22,650 civil servants in the country by a Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA).

The Country Director of the agency,  Jung Sang-Hoon said the capacity building programme is expected to be completed  before 2017.

The KOICA Director, who spoke in Abuja at a workshop on e-government Master Plan 2020,  explained that the exercise would gulp about $8.6million, but promised that exercise would transform Nigeria’s civil service to one of the best in the world.

“ It is a step towards making the officials more effective. Only ICT can bring about positive change in Nigeria. If Nigeria can embrace e-government, corruption will be curbed”, the KOICA country director said in an interview with journalists at the sidelines of the workshop.

In his remarks, the minister of communication Barrister Adebayo Shittu described the programme as part of the positive change promised by President Muhammadu Buhari’s government, which he said was needed to empower the civil servants with requisite ICT skills that will transform the nation’s civil service system.

 “The benefits of speed, propriety, best-option, transparency, accountability and mass-participation in government available only via the e-government framework and platform make it a sine qua non for meaningful and sustainable political and social economic growth and development”, the minister said.

The e-Government Master Plan 2020 was developed by Federal Ministry of Communications as an essential blueprint of modalities and protocols for the adoption of e-government best practices, across board, by all federal government ministries, departments and agencies.

It is also envisaged as a tidy road map for integrating governance in Nigeria into the post-modern global ICT age for the purpose of matchless efficiency, accountability and transparency.