I had a privilege of chairing the panel of speakers on Impact of e-Governance Strategy on Service Delivery in Nigeria during the recently concluded National Stakeholders Conference on Public Service Delivery in Nigeria organized by the House of Representative Committee on Governmental Affair and African Development Studies Center recently held in Arewa House, Kaduna State.
The Director General of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami) FBCS, ably represented by Dr. Amina Sambo-Magaji, the acting National Co-coordinator of Office for ICT Innovation and Entrepreneurship, unveiled a new e-governance strategy as an antidote for transforming public service delivery.
The representative of the DG exhaustively informed the stakeholders at the event of the strategic roles and contributions of NITDA to the national development. However, her presentation became the subject matter of analysis and dialogues among the panelists and the stakeholders.
There are 3 key points that seemed relevant to the Nigeria public. i.) the awareness that NITDA is working, ii) the challenges of NITDA amidst the growing discontentment of the participants, and iii) the unveiling of NITDA e-Governance strategy seeking for the public cooperation. But a thought ran through my mind quickly, ‘’how can the public stakeholders cooperate with NITDA when there’s an obvious discontentment and murmuring among the participants?’’ The goal of the session is to find a common solution to improving public service delivery, my role as the chair is to attain that goal, not to manage the perceived stakeholders’ discontentment.
Many stakeholders seemed to have had so many questions thrown at the DG representative within the extremely limited time allotted.  At this junction, I carefully sought the permission of the participants (roughly over 400 in a hall) to propose for a new social contract between NITDA and the stakeholders. (in this case, the Nigerian citizens), Thankfully, it was approved.
Then I turned to Dr. Sambo the DG representative, who nodded her approval. I, then pressed further to secure her commitment to communicate this social contract to the DG for his immediate consideration and action.  Leveraging on these approvals, I proposed a new social contract between NITDA and her stakeholders on the Stakeholders Ownership of e-Governance Strategic vision unveiled by the DG. The proposed social contract was overwhelmingly accepted, endorsed by the stakeholders, the panelist and the representative of the DG. It involved joint ownership of the e-governance vision and implementation mechanism, and commitments to work together to transform public service delivery through the adoption of technology, allowing stakeholders to be part of the process of developing, implementing, monitoring and engaging in e-govt strategy built on mutual trust.
No longer project contracts in isolation.Furthermore, I made a solemn declaration on the multi-stakeholders ownership of the NITDA new e-gov strategic vision, where every stakeholders group should have a vital role to play, and a commitment to make it work through bottom-up approach. The good news is NITDA DG representative and the stakeholders accepted the proposal. Now we should be committed to do the following up collectively, reminding NITDA of the significance of this new social contract towards her success, and her timely response to this commitment before it is too late.
However, what factors come to mind when considering “enabling multi-stakeholders policy environment for the e-governance strategy” ?An enabling multi-stakeholder policy environment balances considerations in four dimensions. First, regulatory intervention considerations about how to further empower NITDA through IT regulations for development and innovation. This involves the whole of government  assessment, standardization, and enforcement of compliance of MDAs to e-governance technology adoption for e-Public Service Delivery, using technology innovation or intervention that can be positively impacted in partnership with the industry stakeholders. For instance, the Treasury Single Account powered by Remitas became a huge success with the full support of key decision makers, the Nigerian public, and other strategic stakeholders from the industry.
Secondly, Citizens’ social and cultural considerations about how to infuse digital culture and foster digital literacy skills in MDAs to enable digital re-transformation of operational lifestyles and attitudinal response to change process  brought by the e-governance operational culture. This involves the creation of relevant e-awareness, institutionalizing e-content with standardized e-services, and friendly applications for the MDA communities with respect to citizens’ rights to understand the operational framework of such applications for public service and information delivery.
Thirdly, technical considerations that are important for building inter-operability networks, maintaining a safe and a secure platform, resilient for local and global interoperable infrastructure that supports the existing systems familiar to the MDAs stakeholders. This should be implemented with inclusive deployment and migration that will not necessarily lead to job loss but transformation of routine tasks into a digitally enabled system. The point is, technical considerations should not constitute a threat for losing jobs within the MDAs.
finally, governance approach that empower multi-stakeholder ownership induces public trust. Therefore, public policy makers should leverage the unique contributions of each stakeholders group, including government, industry, civil society and the technical community, while addressing concerns of stakeholders and the different considerations that are required to achieve sustainable service delivery mechanism, with consideration on MDAs interoperable policy frameworks.
Why are these important when considering how to leverage on IT for transforming Public Service Delivery?
IT is an essential foundation for transforming and enabling e-Public Service Delivery, but not sufficient without a multi-stakeholders policy environment that can help enable trust and confidence into its development and deployment across the government.
My Recommendations:i. NITDA should develop holistic multi-stakeholder ownership framework to support the evolution and the success of the new e-governance strategy.
ii. NITDA should create a Multi-stakeholders Working Group (MWG) to help develop the requirements for assessing implementation and monitoring of e-governance strategic initiatives.   iii. NITDA should create awareness for e-governance policies impact on the citizenry, government, infrastructure, applications, services and user-engagement layers of the National e-Public Service Delivery ecosystem. All this equips stakeholders and policymakers with ability to identify appropriate measures in which they can support NITDA in her quest to digitally transform public service delivery.
iv. Government through NITDA regulations should enable strategic partnership with the industry to stimulate investment at all layers of the e-governance ecosystem for Public Service Delivery, addressing needs on both the supply and demand sides.
v. NITDA should embrace multi-stakeholder support and advisory mechanism, recognizing that each stakeholder contributes a unique perspective to the issues that can help develop more effective and practical policy frameworks. Government should see every stakeholder as an integral part of the e-governance vision.
vi. Stakeholders should respond to NITDA partnership requests to foster e-public service delivery.
vii. IT Industry also has a vital role to play in improving the understanding about how e-governance actually works for the benefit of the masses. As technology often evolves faster than regulation, industry must innovate faster, and move investment in the direction that will best impact the government and improve accountability for the sake of Nigerian stakeholders.
viii. Industry should demonstrate dynamic knowledge of technology that can fasttrack responsible deployment of technology and contribute to the evolution of e-governance strategic vision. It is my earnest opinion, that a forward-looking and flexible collaborative approach will lead to better outcomes, meet national objectives and ensure that the societal benefits of e-governance are not lost through policy of exclusion of key actors.
Amb. Olusegun Olugbile is the Chief Executive Officer of Continental Project Affairs and the President at Global Network for Cybersolution.