Twenty six out of Nigeria’s 36 states have not complied with the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA)’s standard guidelines for government websites, an analysis by FIJ has shown.
The NITDA act of 2007 mandates the agency to establish a standard for state-owned and private sector entities to follow when building and maintaining information technology systems and applications.
In line with this mandate, NITDA had created a 46-page Standard and Guidelines for websites of government institutions to operate by. This website rulebook focuses on five important areas: the availability of a website, the currency and relevance of the information on it, its security, its inclusivity for people with disabilities, and the ease of navigation.
Due to the relevance of websites to citizen participation, administrative effectiveness and transparency, FIJ assessed the operability of the websites of all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory based on NITDA’s criteria. The 36 states, their website compliance status and the guidelines they violate are tabulated here.
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SOME STATE WEBSITES ARE NOT AVAILABLE
At the very least, it is necessary that webpages of state governments are available, with or without an operational holy grail. Section 7.3.1 of the NITDA guidelines, for instance, mandates that all government websites are available on a 24-hour basis across all the days of the week.
The section then proceeded to highlight the steps — and technical hosting and domain requirements — that government IT professionals must follow to keep their websites operational all the time. But up until press time, Kaduna, Imo and Kano do not comply with this instructions to make their websites available and accessible.
Kaduna State Website Landing Page as of July 31
FIJ extended the benefit of the doubt to the states by visiting the websites between July 29 and July 31 but observed no changes whatsoever. The Kaduna State website for instance simply loads an error prompt, leaving a potential user unable to access anything including contact information and state specific services. Similarly, browsers return a 404 to any user attempting to access the Imo State website. The landing page appears with a prompr that says ‘the resource is not found’
Imo State Website Landing Page as of July 31
As for Kano State, the website is not developed. FIJ first observed that the URL loads through to an undeveloped WordPress template on May 8. The WordPress website is still undeveloped and bears no signs of affiliation with the Kano State government, as of press time. However, it now carries a header that reads ‘ministry of education’.
Unavilable Kano State Website as of July 31
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MOST WEBSITES DO NOT HAVE RECENT OR RELEVANT INFORMATION
NITDA is very specific about how recently information on a government website must be updated. According to the agency, government websites must be able to provide timely and accurate information for people looking for information within its purview.
Section 3.0 of the guideline mandates government Institutions to make sure that “information provided is current, and that it is updated at least weekly”. But as as of the time of this report, nine states have not updated the information section of their websites for more than two weeks. Four states including Yobe, Ebonyi, Kebbi, and Rivers State only have news information as recently as 2023.
Katsina, which is the most up to date among the remaining five, has news only as recently as June 21, 2024. The other states in this category include Oyo, Taraba, Bauchi and Plateau State.
Beyond the recency, a state government’s website is also mandated to have relevant information about the state and the people at the helm of its affairs. Section 3.3.1 of the NITDA guidline specifically mandates government websites to have a page dedicated to the names, information and images of its principal officers. This page, according to the guideline, must be linked to the home page.
Three, however, do not have information about their principal officers published on their website at all. The states — Katsina, Niger and Kaduna State — only have the profile of their governor plastered conspicuously on their home pages. Other relevant stakeholders in the executive council, legislature and judiciary are nowhere to be found.
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NIGER STATE WEBSITE EXPOSES USERS TO CYBERCRISK
NITDA website guideline places significant emphasis on website security for government websites. As an indicator, an entire subsection of the rule book contains recommendations and must-dos for government institutions to ensure that webpages do not put users at risk.
Section 7.1 of the guideline document specifically asks government institutions to “put measures and controls to protect their webresources to assure the Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of information. Government Institutions shall ensure that information contained on their websites are safe and securely stored, retrievable and removable.”
Unsafe Page linked to Niger State Website
In another subsection of the guideline, NITDA mandates all government institutions to ensure that “reasonable care is betaken to protect the personal information held by a GovernmentInstitution from misuse, loss, unauthorized access, modificationand disclosure’.
However, users may be exposed to considerable security risks when navigating the websites of Niger State and Taraba State. In the case of Niger State, a browser automatically flags the website as unsafe if a user tries to access information about the the Secretary to the State Government or the Head of Service
Another broken link on the Niger State Website
Meanwhile, FIJ tried to access this subsection of the webpage multiple times between May 3 and May 8 to see if it would be fixed but the situation remains the same.
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SOME STATE GOVERNMENT WEBSITES CONTRAVENE NAVIGATION GUIDELINES
Ease of navigation is one of the four key criteria to judge an effective government website, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). NITDA also recognises this and in tandem, set some rules to ensure easy navigation on websites belonging to government institutions.
Section 3.3.1 of the NITDA guideline mandates all state-owned webpages to have a search facility to enable users navigate the pages faster and in real time.
FIJ found 10 states — Cross River, Niger, Enugu, Gombe, Imo, Ogun, Ondo, Rivers, Yobe and Zamfara — in direct contravention of these guidelines. Users have to manually search for some information on the websites, instead of the automated crawl that a search feature provides.
The same section 3.3.1 also mandates state-owned websites to have a contact page that contains the physical address of the institution, a phone number, an email address and a contact/complaint form. This is different from the contact links or information provided at the header or footer subsection of the website.
However, eight states — Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Taraba, Zamfara, Cross River, Delta and Ebonyi — do not have a separate contact page or a complaint redress form linked to the home pages of their websites.
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SOME STATE WEBSITES ARE NOT INCLUSIVE TO PWDS
NITDA highlights a considerable number of guidelines for government websites to follow to make them inclusive of people with physical disabilities, especially if its visual or auditory.
According to section 1.4 of the guideline, government institutions are to be considerate of a spectrum of users, including, specialised audiences, people with disabilities and those with limited know-how.
Section 5.5.3 of the guideline already contains specific design instructions that is considerate of people with colour disabilities. In section 8, however, NITDA outsourced a bit by mandating government websites to adopt Content Accessibility Guideline developed (WCAG) by W3C.
FIJ found that the WCAG places significant emphasis on the provision of ‘text alternatives’ for non-text content of a webpage. These text alternatives makes access to these websites possible for users with visual impairments.
However, a significant 14 out of the 36 states have non-text content, especially images, without any text alternative. These states include Delta, Enugu, Gombe, Lagos, Nassarawa, Kwara, Ondo, Oyo, Osun, Plateau, Lagos, Yobe, Sokoto and Zamfara State.
The situation is slightly grimmer in the case of Yobe and Kwara State. Text alternatives on this website are unedited and sometimes include technical descriptions from the source of the image.
Yobe State Government uploaded images to its website with unedited alt text from the image source thereby making it difficult for PWDs
Yobe State Government uploaded images to its website with unedited alt text from the image source thereby making it difficult for PWDs
Kwara State Government uploaded images to its website with unedited alt text from the image source thereby making it difficult for PWDs
The website of the FCT is not excluded from these violations. As of the time of this report, the news subsection of the FCT website was last updated in September 2023. This directly contravenes the part of the NITDA guideline that mandates government institutions to update their websites at least weekly.
FCTA Website Violates NITDA Guideline. Last Updated in 2023The post ANALYSIS: 26 of 36 States — and FCT — Have Substandard Websites. 14 Are Unusable for PLWDs appeared first on Exposed.Quest The Quest for X !.