Interactivity In E-Governance

This article references the report of the research project carried out by the students of Media and Journalism and Digital Department of the Centre for International and Advanced Professional Studies, CIAPS released on the 26th July 2019 in a press conference. The report provided information on the Nigerian states that were e-governance compliant based on certain criteria that meet international best consideration. Among the 10 criteria listed that judgment was based upon, Interactivity suffered some level of deficiency.

The world has become digital than one could imagine in the scheme of communication. If there are no communication channels, it is as good as there is no more life in the world of today. One thing that shows there is life in this digital ecosystem is communication which involves two or more parties interacting to have the understanding of whatever point is being made in this case on government policies.

Interactivity has been defined in various ways on different background or subject, our understanding of the word interactivity will be defined on the premise of communication.

According to IGI Global, interactivity is a two-way communication model providing users with power over presented content. It is a degree of several communication parties acting on each other. It is a dynamic communication process that allows modification of a massage based on the choices made by the users. Lastly, interactivity involves being reciprocally active as in responsive decision-making where one initiates and is responded to, and in the process, the interaction changes the course of an act.

E-Governance assessment is a process by which governance is measured across the 36 states of Nigeria through their website. The ten criteria include:
Updated
Interactivity
Content relevance
User-friendliness
Updates
Empowerment/opportunities
Directory
Policies
Accountability
Call-to-action

Out of the 36 states, 5 of the state had no working or active website at all as at the time of the research.

These sites were updated with some relevant contents. Some were user-friendly with regular updates, there were some empowerment opportunities. Some sites had a directory with clear governmental policies, there were various current accountable programs and their call to action was well defined. However, interactivity was missing in all.

These state on their own provided a channel through which citizens and any other person can reach them on their web. A citizen can decide to ask questions on various governmental policies, projects, empowerment and opportunity, contents, direction and what to do by providing their personal information. During the exercise, we communicated virtually to all the 36 states and there was no response or feedback which defined interactivity as at the time of the e-Governance research. If a state that created a website as one/major way of communication cannot interact with her citizens, how can the state be held responsible and accountable? The modern world is a digitalized village. Every act of governance has become electronic. The researchers were able to use the same platform to communicate with other states of a few countries like Johannesburg, New York, London etc. and there was a prompt response from these state or cities. But back here, it was an effort in futility.

Governance has gone beyond what it used to be before. It is the high time people starts engaging our government through this medium to know the relevance of the content they claim to have.

Often, what you see on these sites are ongoing projects, completed projects, MDAs, site scenes etc. but in reality, these projects might not be in existence or they are not completed and they will put them there. If the citizens can engage with these government interactively, it will do a lot to
make them accountable.

Interactivity does not exist in a vacuum. It must take a place and must involve two or more parties for it to be established.
Let it be a wakeup call both on the side of the citizens and the government that we ought to interact to ensure good governance through e-Governance.