Question

Nowadays the Web has become the primary means by which the government communicates its information resources to the governed. In the initiation phase, government works on providing its constituencies with a single point of access to government information. The initial attempts at information dissemination takes the form of web portals.

Consequently, the Government of Ghana or Nigeria is seeking inputs from its citizenry on how to improve its e-government portals.

a. Explain what an e-government portal is and discuss your recommendations of the steps that the government can take to make its portal more user friendly and effective.
​        [AN] [10 Marks]
b. Referring to question a) above, identify the key technologies that must be implemented by the Government of Ghana or Nigeria to make its portal more effective and user friendly.
       [AP] [10 Marks]
c. E- Application Service Providers are used by governments to serve their IT needs. Discuss the challenges of using e-government application service providers

Answer 1

Answer -

1. E- government portal is an online or the electronic portal through which the government will provide all their services to it's citizen through the digital portal available on the internet. Through this portal the government can communicate and provide the services very easily and fast without the citizen waiting in the government building for many hours for the work to be done. It also makes all the process of completing the service transparent for the citizen as to view their progress on their report or the service that they have requested from the government. This is the portal that can be opened anywhere that is on Mobile, computer, tablet etc.

The factors that the government can take in care to make the portal more user friendly is :

• The first and most important factor is that whoever is designing the portal should keep in mind that what type of user would be accessing to the portal and according to which how open should be the portal or hoe professional should be the portal.
• They should first decide and think of all the services that the citizen require or need in that portal so that they can provide for all their needs in the portal.
• They should also put the security of the data very importantly as all the sensitive and confidential data would be inserted in this portal of all the citizen of the country. So, the security and the protection should be taken care of.
• The delivery and the design of the portal should be kept in a way that everyone can access it and not just the educated or the people in the higher post only.
• The portal should be designed in such a way that they can see all the services on the same page only with their link. The information to guide the people should also be included on the portal so that they can guide themselves if they ever get stuck anywhere.
• There should also a virtual help desk at the portal through the people can enter their querries and the experts can answer them or help them with their problem.
• All the processes should be transparent in the portal so that they can see the progress of the request.