By Amaka Abayomi

The Head of Service of Cross River State, Mrs. Mary Olayi, has disclosed that the state is set to kick off its enrolment exercise for over 20,000 civil servants in the state through Smartgov.CRSG Ltd, which would cover over 74 ministries, agencies and departments (MDAs) in the state.

According to her, these MDAs include ministries of information, finance, health, justice, education, transport and internal revenue amongst others.

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

She said at the end of the enrolment exercise, civil servants would be issued biometric-based identity SmartCity cardwhich would contain cardholders’ information, and grant them access to healthcare, pension, transportation, educational bursaries, social amenities and benefits.

The SmartCity card will serve as civil servants identity card and can also be used across multiple payment channels such ATM, online and Pos.

The card would afford the 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.

The enrolment 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.

Governor Liyel Imoke and his cabinet would be the first to participate in the enrolment exercise, which would be supervised by the Mrs. Olayi.

Speaking further on the implementation, Mr. Odo Effiong, Special Adviser to Cross River State Government on Information Communication and Technology (ICT) said the enrolment 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.