The Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) has emerged the best among Federal Government agencies in the deployment of technologies to ensure transparency, citizens accessibility and participation.
FRSC was recognised on Friday in Abuja, at the official presentation of results and awards for the 2023/2024 Federal Government Scorecard for Ranking the Websites of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs).
The initiative which was conceived and organised by the the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) is aimed at creating an open, accessible, and transparent government in the country.
In the ranking, the Nigerian Content Development Board (NCDB) emerged second position while the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) and the ICPC jointly emerged third position.
Newsspecng.com reports that scorecard is a peer review mechanism designed to promote continuous improvement of government digital platforms.
By establishing clear evaluation criteria and regularly assessing the performance of MDA websites, the scorecard aims to drive significant enhancements and change narrative in the quality of services provided by the government.
Addressing newsmen on the sideline of the ceremony, the Corps Marshal of FRSC, Mr Shehu Mohammed said that the commission is a technology-driven organisation.
He said that the agency had moved from fourth position in previous ranking to first position which is an indication that improvement is the watchword of the FRSC.
“We are going to improve on what we do and invest in technology infrastructure and in our personnel in terms of training and retraining.
“So they can use the technology to deliver services and impart on road users, to reduce road traffic crashes and to create a safe motor environment for the people that use the roads.
“You can now see that our personnel on the roads are now using body camera during their enforcement and that camera is linked to our monitoring dashboard in the office where we watch what they do online real time for supervision and objective services.
“We will continue to invest in that so that all our patrol men will have the body camera all over the federation so that we can monitor them and give effective services to Nigerians,” he said.
He urged Nigerians to download the FRSC mobile App to report road crashes or misconduct of officers for immediate action.
The Director-General of BPRS, Mr Dasuki Arabi said that the initiative began in 2017 after Nigeria committed to Open Governance Partnership and the passage of the Freedom of Information Act.
He said that the initiative seeks to upscale the level of engagement between the citizens and the agencies of government and to improve service delivery.
“Looking at the transition that is taking place all over the world from analog to digital, we identified the websites of government agencies as a means of communication who are service providers and the citizens.
“We came up with four criteria that we expect all MDAs to key in and upgrade their websites. They include one colour of websites for all MDAs, all MDAs must have an interactive portal on their website, all MDAs must have Freedom of Information Act on their portal, all MDAs must have telephone numbers and e-mail addresses on their website that citizens can engage and make inquiries and access services.
“Now you can see that you can access services, register your company online, pay your tax online, obtain your tax clearance certificate online and all that.
“All these developments has gone to show us that we need to upgrade the websites so that we do not have to travel from Bayelsa to Abuja to access services offered by the Nigerian Custom Service (NCS)online, one can digitally access that.
“So far we have seen lots of improvements on the quality of websites of MDAs, the survey we did before released this report showed an improvement of about 75 per cent,” he said.
Mr Mohammed Ibrahim, acting Director Finance and Corporate Services, Galaxy Backbone, described the ranking process credible.
He commended the initiative saying that the more information made available to the citizens by the agencies, the better the service delivery.
“The process is very transparent, the scoring criteria is out there for anyone to see, there is no cutting corners in the process and we are partners with the participants.
“The more we can get out there is the more people can gain access to information and they can have their services at the beck and call.
“We need to have more participation and we need to have people adopt technology as a means of bridging the gap,” he said.
