THE Lagos State government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with software giant, Microsoft International on e-Governance initiatives that will drive governance in the state.

According to the Ministry of Science and Technology, in a statement, the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, who led some members of his cabinet to the U.S. based company at the Redmond Washington, headquarters of Microsoft in the U.S.A, signed the agreement.

The statement quoted the governor, saying that the agreement would focus on e- governance strategies to better serve the people of Lagos.

Fashola said the initiative is centered on four cardinal programmes, which includes; implementation of a citizen relationship management platform leveraging on the existing call center infrastructure, provision of IT infrastructure to support Lagos State health insurance initiative, Information and Technology skill development and affordable mobile devices availability, being a premier partner under the Microsoft4 Africa initiatives, which is centered on entrepreneur support.

The governor added that as part of the agreement, the state has secured the commitment of Microsoft to help train 100 Microsoft certified applications support personnel who will not only assist Lagos State government but other states in Nigeria to implement Microsoft application and the private sector for both Nigeria and the rest of Africa.

According to the governor, the e-governance will focus on a platform of delivering services to the citizens of Lagos State using smart phones and mobile devices while enabling him to be able to monitor the performance of each Ministry, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in the discharge of services and to monitor all ongoing projects especially those around the medium term budgetary objectives of PATH (Power, Agriculture, Transportation and Housing).

“It will also be used to answer queries from citizens regarding the state services, initiate transactions and eventually to completely offer government services via on-line; constitutes another mode of communication without traveling to the Secretariat. The expected go live date of this initiative is April, 2014”, the governor stated.

Fashola said the health solutions will focus on delivering cloud based solutions that will assist pregnant mothers and patients at the 57 primary health care facilities, which are being upgraded under the health care initiative of the state.

“The Cloud Serve will also include a Private Cloud for Lagos State based on Microsoft Technology. This cloud technology will support Lagos State disaster recovery strategy, enhance the existing e-Health platform, integrate existing silos of databases that houses important information such as Health, Education and Budgetary data,” Fashola added.

Other members of the cabinet who went with the governor include, the Commissioner for Science and Technology, Mr. Biyi Mabadeje, the Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Nike Animashaun and the Director-General, Financial Management Bureau, Mr. Ahmed Mustapha. They expressed the readiness of the state to deliver on the commitments agreed to under the terms of the memorandum as the availability of IT solutions especially in service delivery further enhances the dividends of democracy to the citizens.

They reiterated that ICT is a platform that any serious government committed to service delivery has to embrace, adding that having a partnership with Microsoft will help the state to meet this challenges.

Meanwhile, the Microsoft GM worldwide Jeff Fraizer who signed on behalf of Microsoft International, expressed the readiness of the company to help finance the implementation of a health IT support infrastructure for the state existing community health insurance program which can then be leveraged to support the expected roll-out of the state social health insurance programme.