Tech expert develops civic solutions to enhance accountability in governance

Tech expert, Oluseye Onigbinde has developed six civic tech solutions to help enthrone accountability in governance, open up the budget and encourage citizens to hold political leaders accountable.

According to Onigbinde, the applications were developed for six of the 2022 Civic Hive Fellows with tech-enabled ideas that can solve social problems.

The six solutions included: Grassroot Advocacy Project (GRAP); YVoteNaija; Local Open Governance Initiative in Nigeria (LOGIN); Policy Shapers; Motivators Crib Africa and Linker.

Speaking in an interview with journalists after the launch of the six solutions, Onigbinde said he is a result-driven professional with a unique blend of expertise in AWS Solutions Architecture, Web Development, and Finance.

He said: “Working with the Civic Hive Foundation gave me the opportunity to develop these solutions for six of the 2022 Fellows. Civic Hive is a center set up to create an innovative virtual & physical space for partnerships and to raise civic tech leaders/solutions in Nigeria. Civic Hive Innovation Fellowship is a 20-week boot camp and implementation program designed for early-stage Civic innovators with tech-enabled ideas that can solve social problems.”

“I worked on these six (6) projects between April — September 2022 using the PERN tech stacks. The frontend was designed using React Framework, Material-UI, and Javascript while the backend was designed with Node.js, Express.js, and PostgreSQL.

“These solutions were designed to achieve a better Nigeria and I am happy to be part of the changemakers. I will continue to study for my AWS Solutions Architect exams while I still keep on developing web solutions that are adding value to the society.”

Speaking on the GRAP solution, the tech expert said: “GRAP is a civic-tech initiative for budget participation by PROMAD — using tech to document the NEEDS of Nigerian communities for adoption into the annual budget. The application is designed to fill the gap and to engage communities and citizens digitally and offline to conduct NEEDS assessment which would be adopted in the budget for the people and empower them on how to hold the government accountable.”

On the YVoteNaija solution, Onigbinde said: “YVoteNaija is an initiative of Brain Builders Youth development Initiative which aims at increasing voter education through data driven engagement, orientating young Nigerians on the importance of getting involved in the process especially at the grassroot level.”

On the LOGIN solution, he noted: “LOGIN is an emerging civic hub aimed at launching strategic cum calculated design-thinking civic action melded with tech premised on Open Governance System for tracking/monitoring projects, budgets, expenditures & financial flows including Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) monthly releases as well as elections; by citizens & stakeholders for the purpose of promoting good governance, accountability, and transparency at the third tier of government in Nigeria.”

He explained that Policy Shapers is a youth-led open source platform for policy ideas that address the world’s most pressing challenges.

“The platform features policy ideas worth implementing. Through Policy Shapers they hope to inspire the next generation of policymakers and provide them a platform to share their ideas and collaborate for change. The policy ideas shared on this platform are accessible publicly for anyone to learn from and this is in line with core open source principles of open exchange, collaborative participation, transparency, meritocracy, and community-oriented development,” he stated.

According to Onigbinde, the Motivator’s Crib Africa is interested in promoting good health and Mental well-being through drug abuse prevention and treatment.

“It intends to use technology and data to build an effective and sustainable framework for advocacy on drug abuse prevention and also create an intervention support system in response to stigma free, harm reduction, availability, accessibility and affordability of treatment and recovery services (continuum of care) for People Who Use Drugs (PWUDs), Women who use/inject drugs (WWU/IDs), high risk drug users and Most-at-risk and vulnerable Populations (MAR&VPs),” he said.

He also noted that the Linker is a civic-tech idea of Urban Alert, designed to build a society where all spheres of governance work for all citizens irrespective of their social status, literacy level, disability or geographical location.

Onigbinde added: “They do this by reawakening citizens to engage established ministries, departments and agencies of government on social problems they are facing.”

“Linker helps citizens to find the ministries, departments, and agencies of government established to solve their problems and track the response rate of these public offices for institutional accountability and policy reform.”