" ITREALMS: Cross River kicks-off enrolment for SmartCity project

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Cross River kicks-off enrolment for SmartCity project

Head of service in Cross River State, Mrs. Mary Olayi, has said that all is set to kick off its enrolment exercise for over 20,000 civil servants in the state through Smartgov.CRSG Limited.

Olayi said in a press statement made available to ITRealms Online that the exercise would cover over 74 ministries, agencies and departments (MDAs) in the state.

She outlined some of these MDAs to include ministries of information, finance, health, justice, education, transport and internal revenue to name a few.

She explained that this would allow government to identify all MDAs properly and provide the opportunity to track and monitor usage of social services and enhance internally generated revenue.

Mrs. Olayi said that at the end of the enrolment exercise, civil servants would be issued biometric-based identity SmartCity card under the smartgov project.

“The card would contain cardholders’ information, and would enable cardholders to have access to healthcare, pension, transportation, educational bursaries, social amenities and benefits,” she said.

As said by her, the SmartCity card would serve as civil servants identity card and could also be used across multiple payment channels such Automated Teller Machines (ATM), online and Point of Sale (PoS.)

Additionally, she elucidated that the card would afford citizens to have access to the potential to increase manifold qualitative and quantitative contact with various government socio-economic services such as smart economy, smart mobility, smart living and smart government.

Further, she said, the exercise would give citizens unrestricted access to government and government initiatives, allowing them to be part of the efforts to make the state the first smart city in Nigeria.

The Governor of the state, Mr. Liyel Imoke and his cabinet, he said, would be the first to participate in the enrolment exercise, which would be supervised by the Mrs. Olayi.

Commenting on the implementation strategies, the special adviser to Cross River State Government on Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Mr. Odo Effiong, said the exercise would ensure transparency in government, bring governance to the people, create state-wide identity management and e-payment backbone and provide adequate social welfare and infrastructure, which would improve the quality of life of the citizenry even at the lowest level.

Smartgov.CRSG Limited is a joint venture company between Interswitch and Cross River State government with a mandate to oversee the design, deployment, management and operations of a statewide identity management and e-payment backbone infrastructure for the state.

Smartgov would enable the state government to automate processes such as revenue collections, salary payments of civil servants and contractors thereby making government activities transparent.

The project is expected to implement automated fare collection systems for public buses, electronic tolling and an integrated electronic parking system.

Remmy Nweke
ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D

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