WELCOME ADDRESS DELIVERED BY THE HONOURABLE MINISTER OF COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY, MRS OMOBOLA JOHNSON AT THE NEW MEDIA AND

GOVERNANCE: TOOLS AND TRENDS CONFERENCE HOLDING ON THE 14TH AT THE YARADUA CONFERENCE CENTER

Protocols

Today, the YarAdua Foundation is holding a conference on new media tools for facilitating good governance. The proceedings of this conference over the next two days will no doubt stimulate our minds as we focus on how new media tools and trends can help improve governance in Nigerian.

New media facilitates on demand access to content, anytime, anywhere on any digital device and has resulted in what is now referred to as the democratisation of information. This has only been possible through the evolution of ICTs, especially the emergence and the ubiquity of the internet. Innovative new media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs are giving a voice to people who traditionally wouldnt have a voice and enabling people freedom to air their views and opinions on how they are being governed and how they would like to be governed. New media played a critical part in our last elections, the civil unrest that followed the planned removal of the fuel subsidy, the UK youth riots in 2011 and the Arab spring to name a few. Recall that President Goddluck Jonathan made use of this platform and declared his intention to run as president back then on Facebook much to the approval of millions of young and digitally aware Nigerians. These significant events have clearly demonstrated that governments cannot afford to ignore new media. This is becoming THE way in which citizens want to

communicate and engage with government and with the outside world. Its instantaneous, it can be anonymous, you can do it anywhere and at any time and it is cheaper than many other forms of communication. 45 million Nigerians have access to the internet, more than the number of Nigerians that have access to or own broadcasting devices such as radios and television. As ICT infrastructure is rolled out and gets more robust more Nigerians will have access to cheap and fast internet. This is an extremely instructive statistic because what it means is that in the very near future, the cheapest and fastest way for the Nigerian government to provide information to and engage with citizens will be through the leveraging of new media tools. Permit me to dwell for a few minutes on what the Nigerian government is doing to embrace these new media tools. The ongoing Ministerial platforms that are being delivered in the traditional manner with Ministers making presentations is signficantly enhanced by the adoption of new media tools that provide interactive and instantaneous feedback on achievements of government as presented by the Ministers. I understand that even before presentations are completed, the tweets are flying, facebook pages are buzzing and questions are already coming in via email. What an exciting way to engage and dialogue. Federal government, through the Ministry of Communication Technology is committed to enhancing the institutional presence of government on the internetso that all Nigerians regardless of their social or demographic status can have access to government information and services. Today only49% of government MDAs have a functioning publish and inform website. We are currently in the process of developing a national internet based portal that will facilitate easy access to government information through publish and inform websites and we have set ourselves a target of December 2014 for every single FG MDA to have a functioning publish and inform websites domiciled on this portal. This national portal will provide structured information about government activities and services and two way communication on various social media

platforms to facilitate engagement. For those citizens that do not have access to the internet but have another digital device such as a mobile phone, government contact centres are being established primarily as call centres that will provide information on government services to citizens in english and of course a number of local langauages. We will pilot two centres before the end of the year or early 2013. The publishing of the federal budget on the internet led to an unprecedented and informed commentary on the budget and gave Nigerians a real insight into where money was being spent. Not because this was the first time but because digital awareness was greater and access to the internet had increased. But the budget in its raw form can only really be understood by economists and the more financially aware of us. This is where the developer community comes in and I hope that they are well represented in this room today. Youbudgit.com a project of the co-creation hub rose up to the challenge of turning data into information. An internet based application developed by this group of young developers took literally the hundreds of pages and thousands of numbers in the national budget and represented them as pictoral graphs and charts that explained the numbers in a much easier to understand manner than was originally published. Many state governments are beginning to publish their budgets on the internet taking an important step towards financial transparency and accountability. The national assembly recently passed the freedom of information which essentially commits government to providing non classified information to citizens on demand. More data sets will be published on the internet but we need time to convert them to an appropriate digital format to facilitate easy access and manipulation. As we provide data sets we hope that the ecosystem of developers will take up this data much in the way that the co creation hub has done and turn it into useful information for citizens. We are also committed to supporting the developer community in taking up this challenge through the increase in the number of ICT incubation centres in the country. These centres will provide testing support for developers, give them

access to cutting edge market research, provide mentoring and business development advice and importantly grants and see funding to facilitate the migration of an idea to a commercially successful or socially beneficial application. Two incubation centers that will foster innovation and entrepreneurship in the ICT sector will be established in Calabar and Lagos before the end of this year. Beyond providing relevant, accurate and up to date information to citizens, the federal government is also committed to increasing the delivery of government services online.Only about 3% of MDAs allow transactions through their websites eg the Passport office and visa procurement in some of our embassies offshore. A number are in the pipeline income tax payment. We are in the process of identifying 15 20 new services and processes that can be delivered online and will have a major impact on citizen service delivery. These will be the processes that will be piloted this year. Leveraging of and engagement with new media is a powerful new way of improving transparency and governance. I have laid out just a few ways in which federal government is planning to do this. I hope that this conference will result in amongst other things useful, practical and implementable action points for not only government but the rest of society to engage with new media in a way and manner that will encourage transparency, improve governance and make Nigeria the great nation that it deserves to be.

I welcome you all and wish you fruitful deliberations. Thank you

Omobola Johnson Honourable Minister of Communication Technology

May 14th 2012