Lagos to open portal for real-time project management report

The Lagos State government has set plans in motion to open a new portal for the purpose of project management report to improve accountability and transparency of projects and programmes.

The portal when fully built and ready to launch will enable seamless interaction among Ministries, Departments, Agencies as well as between government and the citizenry.

The electronic platform called ‘Lagos State Project Management Report Tracker’, which is still at a work-in-progress status was revealed during the opening of a two-day validation and presentation workshop for the 25 MDAs selected for the pilot phase for the platform, organised by the Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget through its Monitoring and Evaluation Department in collaboration with an I.T consultant, Mydes Lynk Partners at the Protea Hotel, Ikeja on Tuesday.

According to the Special Adviser to the Lagos State Governor on Economic Planning and Budget, Mr. Bayo Sodade who represented the Budget Commissioner, Mr. Sam Egube, said the opening of the portal was to digitise the pre-payment certification as well as to enable citizens accessibility to government projects and programmes in real-time.

The Special Adviser highlighted that Lagos State had been on the e-governance journey since 1999 when the Ministry of Science and Technology was created, noting that government activities had undergone innovative processes for efficient service delivery with the deployment of technology. He added that the state’s Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget has played part in contribution to the digital Ecosystem such as the EKO 360 – a smart data initiative to drive the Smart city project for a faster and safer access to information.

He said, “The world today is becoming increasingly smart and digitalized and these technologies are virtually becoming the bedrock of our everyday activities which cannot be ignored. Lagos State being the innovative State is always poised at all times to ensure that deployment of tools to enhance efficient service delivery and engagement with citizenry for ‘Greater Lagos’ is always at the front burner of its priority.

“The introduction of the world-renowned Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning software and database solution in 2000; Unified Metro Fibre project, Art of Technology; Lagos State Property Taxation Software Mobile App; LASSRA ID validation with seamless payment of bills; EKO 360, amongst other e-technology initiatives had made government activities progress innovatively.

“It is in this vein that the Project Management Report Tracker was developed to ease and fast track pre-payment certification through digitization and at the same time make the government accountable to the public through transparency of programmes and projects.”

Stating the objective and benefits of the portal, Mr. Tumi Adeyemi of Mydes Lynk Partners said, “The platform allows the citizens to have easy access to information on government projects and programmes and holding the government accountable.

“The portal will enable automation of data collection processes; real-time access to remote data on status of various projects being executed by the State for easy access and reference purposes by any of the relevant stakeholders.”

He added that the portal would “facilitate automation of report generation process to show data on project status based on MDAs as well as location of project and other determinants of project performance; automate expenditure caution of the quarterly budget performance review; and very importantly, will serve as a campaign tracker for citizens to compare campaign promises with project executed.”