By Prince Osuagwu

THE Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC has shown strong online presence, as its website, recently clinched the coveted Phillip Consulting’s Web Content awards in the Parastatal Category.

The Commission also came second in the Best Overall award, Parastatal Category; and Third Place, Use of Social Media (Twitter ) Parastatal Category.

Umaru Garba Danbatta, New NCC boss

All these are for an online department put together in just about a year ago. NCC said that when the awards were announced last year, it wondered why an organisation regulating mainstream technology would not be the one leading the pack.

However, after several meetings by relevant departments, there was a general admission of failure and therefore an agreement that the commission’s various web platforms needed to be retooled to ensure the Commission doesn’t fall short in subsequent awards. For the Commission, that was what made this year’s awards very exciting considering that just a year ago, it wasn’t even in the radar.

Director Public Affairs of NCC, Mr Tony Ojobo, said the Commission does not only validate the Phillips Project but will strive to lead the pack going forward. “There are still some grounds to cover and the present management led by Prof Umar Garba Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) will not leave anything to chance by way of achieving its overall target of being a reference point among parastatals.

For the NCC, the preceding year wasn’t a bad one after all. Investment in the telecommunications sector has hit an all-time  high of about $68bn, contribution to GDP was  bullish in the first three quarters, telephone subscriber base is well over 153 million with over 93million connected to the Internet.

“ Whereas the country’s National Broadband target is 30 per cent by 2018, recent research by the the ITU UNESCO Broadband Commission For Sustainable Development says Nigeria already has 20.95 per cent Broadband penetration as at 2016, making it very likely that Nigeria can easily surpass that target.

With that encouraging information and based on the 8-Point Agenda of the current administration at the NCC , the sector has the capacity to do much more than what is stated in the Broadband plan”.

The Web-Jurist rating was conceived by e-business experts at Phillips Consulting. The ratings commenced in May 2001 with version 1.0. Its primary objective was to critically and objectively evaluate the effectiveness of websites in Nigeria, focusing initially on the financial services industry and taking into account what the customer wants. Phillips Consulting sought to establish a barometer for assessing e-business activities and for identifying best practices.

This exercise evaluated a total of 46 Banks’ websites at the time. The impact and effect of this initial evaluation exercise has been far reaching: Web Jurist 1.0 served as a wake up call for banks. For the first time, websites got executive attention which resulted in a deluge of internet activity by the banks. Several websites have been extensively revamped, some even abandoned their existing sites at the time and developed brand new websites, many websites are still in the process of evolving.

The Web-Jurist evaluation tool used for the ratings, according to Phillips Consulting, was developed using intelligent algorithms and the process entails a step-by-step web analysis using detailed criteria developed specifically to evaluate the effectiveness and performance of web sites.

These criteria are: Aesthetics

Examines adherence to key design principles such as legibility of text, functionality of graphics and appropriate use of colours.