Using Technology for Social Good: How Digital Skills can be Leveraged to Promote Transparency in Governance.
Using Technology for Social Good: How Digital Skills can be Leveraged to Promote Transparency in Governance.
by: Odusami, Oluwadamilare E.
Transparency in the Nigerian economy has been a facade, and seems to be an impossible task. However, with the advent of digital technology, there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel.
Digital innovation and creativity is the hallmark of any economy that will want to strive to excel in the modern day world, and as such, any country willing to gain massive development has no option but to adapt to the evolving realities of the digital sphere.
In digital governance, transparency focuses on how government agencies, ministries, institutions and personnel create an enabling digital environment for openness, clarity and accessibility to information, services and processes that promote national development. This is to help ensure that the necessary national stakeholders like the citizens, industries and services that run within the country are able to get access to high level insights. In addition, they can effectively evaluate all decisions and policies that may affect their wellbeing and development. The different mediums to promote transparency in the modern economy are vast and diverse.
Firstly, let us emphasise the importance of public services migrating to the web interface. With the rise of software applications, government arms and bodies can employ the skills of expert programmers to ensure that all their day to day activities are visible to all members of the public and can be accessed equally by all individuals in any part of the country without the need to visit or know anyone in the parastatals. This will greatly improve the confidence the citizens have towards the running of the service and reduce the time wasted bureaucratic bottlenecks. A very good example of this is the Electronic Tax System, Recruitment Portals of various agencies and even Empowerment Portal raised by several initiatives to mention a few.
Proper data handling procedures are also very important in ensuring that the data of about Two Hundred and Thirty-two Million citizens, are processed in a manner that would be able to generate meaningful intelligence for both leaders and citizens at the various levels of government. This data will help ensure that decisions and policies are not just created, but data driven. Skills, such as data analysis would provide an efficient opportunity for the government to identify counterproductive services, optimize resource allocation, and improve service delivery to its citizenry. This skill can also help the government to evaluate the effectiveness of their policies before and after implementation. Data analytic skills can also be applied in predicting specific behaviors and patterns in some social vices, such as terrorism and kidnapping. In addition, using the resources of a data engineer, government agencies can create pipelines to their database and use this pipeline to support the delivery of their various application services.
In times like this where government trust is of serious concern, we could also adopt block chaining technology to improve the integrity of national processes. The Transparency International’s 2022 corruption perception index reveals that most countries still struggle to overcome the war against corruption. Block chaining could help reduce fraudulent activities in our various national systems by creating a decentralised and distributed digital ledger that records transactions across multiple systems, such that the registered transactions are not easily altered. This solution could help in public procurement, ensure right investments, guarantee even distribution of government resources and reduce loopholes in the purchase and procurement of assets. In addition, we could adopt block chaining into property and registry systems, to ensure proper documentation, ownership validation and reduce the risk of fraud in our various housing schemes across the country. Election processes are no exemption as block chaining can create an effective solution that helps to ensure that all electoral transactions are stored, transmitted and processed in a more secure manner. The chronological arrangement of the various records will also make this system more secure for the various stakeholders that may be using the system.
Government could also employ the use of digital auditing and forensic analytic tools to evaluate budget expenditure, contract transactions and various resource allocation. These tools are widely available to the various sectors and can be used to identify abnormalities in processes or systems. By using these tools, the government would be able to checkmate excessive expenditure of public offices and ensure they comply with best standards in resource transaction and procurement. Auditing should play a major factor in maintaining transparency in ministries because of the share volume of resources and data that are needed to run the government. Auditing also helps government to know the various levels in the chain of custody of a particular resource. This will allow public office holders to remain accountable for their actions and ensure compliance to standards and laws governing their duties.
Social Media Platforms are a major avenue for reaching wide range audience. We cannot overrule the impact that a good public relation system will create. When Social platforms are leveraged effectively by the government, major achievements and milestones become visible and the trust of the public secured. Likewise, by harnessing social platforms, more people have the opportunity to share insights, evaluate policies respectfully and criticise poor performing policies. Social media platforms also pose a good avenue to adopt the whistle-blower initiative which helps fish out malicious insiders in the public sectors and enable them to undergo trial in the presence of convincing evidence laid against them. Although, many individuals may want to compromise this initiative, there are still several controls and preventive measures that such parastatals could use to curtail such malicious attempts.
Data collection, which has been a major problem among academics, researchers, journalists and economic analysts can be solved by integrating various data sets from various government bodies. The integration of dataset can be published on a government database or application, to monitor and license how this data is processed and used. This will help researchers and professional analysts effectively evaluate all decisions that may evolve around various dataset. Such platforms can be built and accessed through the internet to allow a variety of custom modifications by educational bodies, researchers, journalists and other private organizations who may need them to enhance their analysis. In return, this will help the government detect irregularities, corruption and propose solutions to them.
Cybersecurity policies and measures can also be leveraged to promote transparency in our various institutions. There are various cybersecurity policies and controls that government institutions can adopt to ensure that they are accountable for every action they take towards the storage, processing and transmission of data that will be of credible intelligence. By subscribing to policies and standards, agencies will have to ensure they handle data by ensuring they always remain confidential and released on need to know basis. These standards will also ensure that data is also made available to all those who own them, and is handled with upmost integrity and accountability. Cybersecurity measures will also ensure that identities are not tagged to institutions alone, but can be traced to individuals who carry out activities in those intuitions. This can be done by using various access controls and authentication mechanisms. Automating will also help detect and prevent cyber related crimes, manual exfiltration or modification of data in sensitive systems.
Finally, nothing beats the creativity of the young entrepreneurs and citizens. These young minds are desperately looking for solutions to develop the economy in all sectors and by creating a conducive environment where their ideas are valued, nurtured and improved upon, these young personnel can virtually create platforms that will aid digital transparency in governance. This is why it is important to constantly listen to their creative ideas and give them opportunities to showcase their creativity. This can be done by organizing conferences that captivate their attention, or organizing hackathons so they can show their skills and how it can help aid and improve governmental processes. Digital education and skill empowerment would also be a very good initiative towards promoting transparency. This will ensure that all young individuals irrespective or tribe, gender, culture or religion can have equal access to unprecedented resources that would help make them contribute more efficiently in the economy.
Transparency is real and achievable through digital innovations. However, there still lies a stronger vulnerability in the system, which is the humans. We have to work on ourselves first, before our digital assets can effectively help us achieve accountability, integrity and openness. Nevertheless, technology can always be creatively used to aid the discovery of loopholes that may want to surface in the presence of the human weakness.
References
(i)Nigeria’s movement for transparency and accountability. (n.d.). United States Institute of Peace. https://www.usip.org/publications/2018/10/nigerias-movement-transparency-and-accountability
(ii)Transparency International. (2024, January 29). 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index: Explore the results. Transparency.org. https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022
(iii)Holzman, B., & Mugabi, D. (2024, March 16). Nigeria takes a significant step toward greater accountability with a new financial transparency portal. World Bank Blogs. https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/governance/nigeria-takes-significant-step-toward-greater-accountability-new-financial-transparency
(iv)Puckrin, N. (2024, May 14). Applications of Block chain in Government: transparency and accountability. Coin Bureau. https://coinbureau.com/analysis/applications-of-blockchain-in-government/
(v)Using digital tools to promote transparency and accountability. (2024, July 30). IIEP-UNESCO. https://www.iiep.unesco.org/en/our-mission/using-digital-tools-promote-transparency-and-accountability
(vi)Megas, K., Smith, A., Newton, E., Elazari, A., & Cuthill, B. (2023, April 3). The importance of transparency – fueling trust and security through communication. NIST. https://www.nist.gov/blogs/cybersecurity-insights/importance-transparency-fueling-trust-and-security-through
(vii)Bashir, I. (2024, June 6). Cybersecurity considerations 2024: Government and public sector. KPMG. https://kpmg.com/xx/en/home/insights/2024/06/cybersecurity-considerations-2024-government-and-public-sector.html