Ranking Websites’ll Ensure MDAs’ Accessibility–Boss Mustapha

Ranking Websites’ll Ensure MDAs’ Accessibility–Boss Mustapha

The objective for ranking websites of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government is to ensure that they are more accessible to the public on their operations, overall mandates and that information on their activities are made readily available and disseminated widely to the public.

This was the submission of Mr. Boss Mustapha, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, at the official release of the 2019/2020 Federal Government scorecard for ranking websites of federal public institutions.

He said the ranking became necessary in view of President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive that public institutions must work together in synergy and share information in pursuance of the goal to improve Nigeria’s Ease of Doing Business and Freedom of Information (FoI) ratings.

“It is worthy to state that this Peer-Review Mechanism to bring MDAs’ websites to global standard is a panacea for effective implementation of our National e-government masterplan to improve Nigeria’s ranking among the comity of Nations,” added Mustapha.

Earlier in his opening remark, Mr. Dasuki Ibrahim Arabi, Director General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), said the 2019 scorecard evaluation results have achieved the intended significant improvement in the standardization of MDAs’ websites as the Ranking indicated that the number of MDAs fully in compliance with the approved criteria for the Scorecard jumped from 39% to 53%.

“More MDAs are now on .gov.ng domain. There has been remarkable improvement in the majority of the MDAs’ websites colour blend recommended for government websites; most websites contents are now relevant to their mandate as well as to extant government policies.

“Arising from the introduction of the Scorecard, most MDAs now publish accurate, up-to-date information about their operations and services to the citizens. Security, availability, functionality, and accessibility of the MDAs’ websites are at their best.

“The evaluation experience has equally shown that MDAs can be reached on the official emails and phone numbers on their websites, because of good compliance to recommended structure for web contents,” he said.

The duo of Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, and the National Agency for Food Drug and Administration and Control (NAFDAC) came third, while the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) emerged runner up. The first position went to the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).