KIA: Mimiko’s latest in digitalised service delivery. http://tribune.com.ng/news2013/index.php/en/component/k2/item/7956-kia-mimiko-s-latest-in-digitalised-service-delivery

Impressive development! Hope other states including lagos will take a cue from this.

We wish you the strenght to do more for ondo state and our people.
Mimiko ..the IROKO...a true omoluabi.

KIA: Mimiko’s latest in digitalised service delivery

Written by Sina Adepegba
Saturday, 23 March 2013 00:00
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“With all sense of humility, you are witnesses to the fact that I have worked for you. I have worked with you. Together, we have posted great accomplishments. But the work remains unfinished. We must acknowledge that the good of all translates into the good of the individual and not necessarily vice versa. In this context, the central purpose of our involvement in politics and governance has been and will continue to be what government policies and institutions can make available to the collective and not what each individual politician or government official can corner for himself or herself,’’ the Ondo State governor, Dr Olusegun Mimiko, had observed while delivering his inauguration address at the Democracy Park, Akure last month.

Central to the governor’s speech were two key concepts of “working for the people,’’ which implies that governance is service delivery, and “working with the people,’’ which fits in into the social democratic mantra of placing the masses at the apex of governance and actualising their desires.

Already, Ondo State has been acknowledged worldwide as setting a benchmark for governance through its Abiye programme, urban renewal (which won the state governor the UN Habitat Scroll of Honour Award in Naples, Italy) agro-business, sports and education, but sustaining and significantly transcending these landmarks is a key task which the state government is pursuing with renewed vigour.

Certainly, good governance is impossible without proper planning, facilitated by a functional database of the beneficiaries; one that is, for instance, dynamic enough to exclude those who do not provide their residency status. Given the renewed influx of Nigerians from different states of the federation into the state, people who have decided to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed rights both to enjoy the huge social services climate in the state and to be part of its drive to be one of the country’s leading economies (Ore Sunshine City is already a budding massive construction site), there is a very urgent need to accelerate service delivery in the state. This is why a key component of Mimiko’s second coming as Ondo governor is the digitalisation of service delivery and access to social services.

If experiences the world over in the over 30 years’ existence of smart card technology are any indication, provincial identifications cards enjoy greater acceptance than national identification cards which are felt to facilitate unwarranted intrusion into citizens’ privacy, group profiling, and criminal misuse by anti-democratic agents in government. On the other hand, state/provincial ID cards, because of their utility as social welfare, health and educational subsidy cards, etc, have tended to enjoy positive rating from social commentators.

On another plane, arguments to the effect that funds deployed in smart card technology could have been expended on other things are deflated by the fact that the cost of deploying a properly designed service management programme, as research has shown, is actually less than 10 per cent of the improperly budgeted allocations that the programme will manage.

Certainly, government has to know who the targets of social services are, provide a means of identifying such targets at the service points and audit the quantity and quality of the consumed services, which are dictated by simple principles of economics and resource management.

In its drive both to sustain and surpass the gains already recorded in various sectors, therefore, the Ondo State government will, on Saturday March 26, launch Kaadi Igbe Ayo (KIA) (Card of joyful living), a smart card deployment for multi-purpose government social services management, facilitating a higher level of service delivery through greater linkage between government and the people. Among its unique qualities are its platforms for monitoring government-to-citizen non-financial transactions in the health, agriculture, educations, sports and social support sectors.

Indeed, Kaadi Igbe Ayo (KIA), evolved through partnership with international agencies such as UNDP, DFID, UNFPA, UNDP, has the advantage of being the first database of its kind in Nigeria which provides an interactive platform through which third parties can explore at no cost, although the data available online is naturally protective of the identity of individuals through non-disclosure of full names, telephone numbers or addresses, offering at the same time a variety of report options which are valuable for small and medium business planning.

Initiated to facilitate efficient service delivery, security of lives and property, provision/management of welfare services, project monitoring and feedback, as well as transparency and accountability in governance, KIA will make the identification of all residents in Ondo State possible, facilitate the collation of information vital for planning and executing people-oriented projects, serve as a medium for interface between government and the people and as public-private transaction points in the state. That is not all: it is intended to allow all citizens equal access to social welfare services, assist government in monitoring the distribution of such services in the remotest parts of the state. Seen against this backdrop, KIA promises to enhance the capacity to minimise corruption. In this connection, a recent example will suffice: the Federal Executive Council (FEC) recently revealed that under the Federal Ministry of Finance Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System, (IPPIS), a total of 45,000 ghost workers had been discovered during in 251 Federal Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). Ondo’s KIA project is targeted at eradicating vices such as the ghost worker syndrome, which threatens to cripple the delivery of social services. It would, in addition, facilitate tax projection, payment, monitoring and evaluation. With the KIA, the benefits of e-governance suites will be optimized for government and the citizenry, as the suites will include e-Health, e-Education, e-Tax, e-Land Management, e- Workflow/Project Management, geographic information systems (GIS), state-wide call centre and MS exchange, among others.

Orientated towards service delivery rather than enumeration, KIA would provide, for every Ondo citizen, a unique means of personal identification, facilitate the monitoring of government-assisted programmes (to prevent their hijacking by a criminally-minded few), proper management of primary health care projects, systematic deployment of databases for security/surveillance purposes, provision of basic information to local/international aids organisations, as well as the use and management of public facilities and categorisation of Ondo citizens for employment and financial assistance. It is in this connection that experts say that Ondo’s Kaadi igbe ayo is bound to be replicated in other states of the federation for sustainable national development.

Adepegba is an Akure-based lawyer.
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