COVID-19: ‘Kaduna fast-tracks e-governance’

GERALD ILUKWE, the Special Adviser on Information Communications Technology and Chief Information Officer of Kaduna State, is the man in charge of the digital aspect of the Governance Continuation Plan of the State, where almost all aspects of the administration are being run on virtual mode.

In this interview, he explained how meetings are held amidst the lockdown and the move towards complete e-governance.

COVID-19 has redefined how businesses, corporations and governments now carry out their day-to-day activities. As someone who hosts virtual meetings for senior government officials every day, what challenges have you encountered as the hub of these meetings?

The primary challenge has been the quality of the network. This sometimes makes it difficult to communicate during meetings. Initially there was also the minor issue of being the host of all meetings, but we dealt with this by enabling more hosts. There has been a good spirit among my colleagues and senior members of government are eager to show themselves as being more “digitally compliant” than their “analogue” colleagues. Participants are also learning the etiquette of video conferencing, such as muting your microphone by default and keeping away from distraction if joining from your home. Overall, it has gone better than was expected as people acculturated quite fast.

So, apart from you, are you saying that there are other hosts?

Yes. We subscribed to 100 hosts. This will be distributed across Ministries Departments and Agencies, the judicial and the legislative arms of government. Each MDA, Council and standing committee has been requested to nominate an individual who will serve as the host for all their meetings and will be independent of the Chief Information Officer’s (CIO’s) office.

Zoom should be seen as a work tool and like Microsoft Office, it doesn’t require any specialized support to use. Our job is to identify simple easy-to-use digital resources and introduce them to government to enhance service delivery through workforce empowerment. It will interest you to know that Zoom informed us that Kaduna State Government was the first public sector customer in Nigeria to sign an Enterprise subscription.

Kaduna state has partnership with Microsoft, why are the virtual meetings held via the Zoom App instead of TEAMS which is owned by Microsoft?

TEAMS is a more network sensitive product. We tried it for four days and it was rather frustrating for participants, so we moved to Zoom. TEAMS is still a good product with some advantages over Zoom, but our users preferred Zoom which they feel is more user friendly. My job as a CIO is to deliver usable technology to my customers. Features such as Zoom’s ability to view up to 49 participants on a call, compared to a maximum of 4 for TEAMS gave them the edge. We also got a great discount from Zoom and we dealt with them directly.

What do you mean by discount, I thought the Zoom app is free?

Yes, but the free version is very limited in application. We subscribed to the Enterprise account. There is a significant difference.

Some experts have criticised the Zoom App as being unsuitable for meetings that require some sort of secrecy, have you put in some security features that will guard against possible leaks?

Yes, as our participants got more used to Zoom, we started implementing the standard security features such as Passwords and the Waiting Room to identify users before admitting them. Zoom is by far the market leader so it’s bound to be the target of hackers. By the way, one of the benefits from our Enterprise relationship with Zoom is that they keep us updated on their security improvements and assist us with security upgrades if necessary.

How many users does it have worldwide as against TEAMS for example?

Zoom has 300 million users to 40 million users for TEAMS. There are other commonly used platforms such as WebEx from Cisco, GoToMeeting and Google Hangouts. Different organisations use any of these tools, but by far the most popular is Zoom.

Another complaint about Zoom is poor audio and video quality, what have you done to enhance them?

This is mainly due to the quality of the network and not the app. One thing we do, is ask participants not to use their video as this is more network intensive. We also ask participants to subscribe with an internet service provider with good network coverage in their location. The timing of the call can also affect the audio and video quality. If possible, try to schedule your calls outside the key working hours between 10 am and 5pm when there’s likely to be network congestion.

What is government doing to improve the ICT literacy of its entire workforce and not just senior officials, seeing that virtual meetings are the new normal?

There is a commitment to this effect from the highest levels of government, led by the Governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai and supported by the Deputy Governor, Dr Hadiza Balarabe, to the Secretary to the State Government and the Head of Service. We are currently procuring laptops for senior government officials and desktops for office use. This will be the primary driver of the digital culture and will be phased as we progressively acquire systems for lower levels of staff. The Head of Service is committed to ensuring that staff are encouraged to develop themselves while the government provides the needed support. Another strategy we have adopted is migrate common employee issuance of such payslips and circulars online. This will “force” employees to imbibe the digital culture. However, the most vital factor for success is leadership commitment and we have that. We have also posted IT support staff to Ministries Departments Agencies to provide onsite support, though we are short staffed.

Don’t you think that organising a crash course on basic IT will help?

Yes, we are working with the Head of Service on this. The courses will be mostly online and will start with basic IT literacy to training on how to use common tools such as Outlook and the Microsoft Office applications.

Kaduna state has been planning to migrate to e-governance even before the pandemic. Has COVID-19 affected the project?

Yes, positively. Now everyone is on board because it is evident that we have no alternative than to go digital. The primary challenge of human resistance has been significantly overcome by the new digital work culture for which there is no manual or physical recourse. Nobody wants to be left behind.

The challenge is to sustain this momentum post-COVID. Even within the context of COVID-19 the evidence from around the world is that the countries that have been most successful in fighting the pandemic, such as South Korea and Singapore, are those that rapidly employed modern IT techniques for Contact Tracing and management of the lockdown.

Are there plans to procure ICT work tools like laptops and ipads etc. for civil servants on a loan-purchase agreement, especially to enable them a seamless switch-over to the digital divide?

We are putting together a proposal for a PC ownership scheme and will present that for consideration in the near future. It should involve government supporting workers with an upfront payment, in whole or in part, which will then be deducted over a period.