Afolabi tasks civil servants on use of onegov.net

Head, Civil Service of the Federation, Prof. Oladapo Afolabi, has urged federal civil servants in the country to take advantage of the onegov.net by making use of it.

This, he said, would boost the delivery of electronic governance in the country thereby working towards the actualization of Federal Government efforts to transform governance through the delivery of professional, timely and cost effective services to the citizenry.

Speaking at the just ended five-day seminar on strategies for e-governance penetration in the civil service organized by Galaxy Backbone for about 500 workers in the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, he said the concept is to promote e-governance among civil servants.

Afolabi noted that by usage of onegov.net by civil servants nationwide especially the newly created official electronic mail (e-mail) addresses powered by Galaxy Backbone, they are bound to imbibe the habit of electronic learning (e-learning).

Also, he said, this would pave the way for the building of a virile workforce with less cost and less stress.

He highlight the importance his office attached to e-governance in the civil service as an avenue for ease of access to government information and enhanced citizen interaction with government services.

Afolabi was also quoted in a supporting press statement by Manager, Corporate Communications, Galaxy Backbone, Mr. Ginger Ekeh as saying that calling on civil servants to step-up their skills on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) usage by “cultivating the habit of communicating their non-confidential documents, letters, minutes of meetings, request for proposals (RFP) etc, first with themselves through their secured website www.mda.gov.ng and then with the public until you graduate to higher levels of usage.”

He pointed out that the National Information and Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has re-positioned itself and is ready to provide the Domain Names and Galaxy Backbone has the mandate to put in place the onegov.net which is a platform for connected government to enable unified communication across government’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

Speaking at the occasion, Head, Federal Public Sector, Mr. Frank Ugbodaga, who stood-in for the Managing Director, Galaxy Backbone, noted that according to a United Nations e-Government Survey, the underlining principle of connected government is to improve the internal workings of the public sector by reducing financial costs and transaction time, to better manage the work flow and processes.

Equally, he said, this would improve institutional linkages between different government agencies, ministries and units as well as enabling a better flow of resources and allocation of responsibilities to promote the delivery of public services.

Ugbodaga described the onegove.net as a single pervasive ICT infrastructure platform (1-Gov) supporting open Internet Protocol (IP) technology (.net) that enables open access and service oriented architecture where functionality could be delivered as services.

The platform, he said, comprises technologies, standards and processes that drive consistency, reliability and inter-operability.

“Thus, it is a ready platform for embarking on all e-Government programs without the technical issues of infrastructure integration and inter-operability,” he said.

Ugbodaga elucidated that the onegov.net portal is a feature of the onegov.net platform and is a secure web portal that could be assessed over the government intranet anytime, anywhere on any IT device.

“It’s the digital workplace for tomorrow’s civil servant. The portal is an electronic mail with capabilities for sharing documents, sending memos, receiving payroll slips and e-learning,” he submitted.

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