State House searching for relevance, new life

                  

The Presidency may have quietly reactivated its moribund portal to serve the digital, convenient communication purpose for which it was opened.

But the revitalisation process appears slow, at least, for now. While it has started using it for press statements, its design, resolution and general features has continued to ignore key needs of the Internet consumers.

In terms of functionality, especially, the site is perhaps many steps behind even many of the not-too-exciting states-operated domains.

Designed in green and white, the digital space is not exactly what anybody could describe as an appealing portal.

Understandably, the developer may have be constrained by the country’s national colour –while and green. But many visitors would certainly have issues with are the resolution and, more importantly, the content.

A federal government’s portal should be able to hold the attention of a visitor for, at least, five minutes. But statehouse.gov.ng may not for want of attractive content.

The online documents are compressed into five folders – the administration, government, government in action, news, gallery and contact. As traditional as the classifications are, some are, still, lacking in content.

For instance, a folder labelled “government in action”, which, perhaps, should take visitors through on-going key programmes of the government, is not accessible.

When clicked on Friday, the server responded, “You may not be able to visit this page because of: an out-of-date bookmark/favourite, a search engine that has an out-of-date listing for this site, mistyped address, you have no access to this page or the requested resource was not found.”

Modern sites have taken media section to a whole new height, giving visitors an opportunity to explore live feeds, view streaming conversations coming from other visitors and get instant feedbacks, even if such are automated.

But the best the media section of the Aso Rock Villa’s portal gets is a contact email address and a fixed telephone line that was not active on Thursday.

But the good news is that official press releases originating from the Presidency are now promptly posted on the site unlike before when it was rarely updated.

On Tuesday, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, went to the site to inform the nation of President Muhammadu Buhari’s mission to New York, the United States – a journey that commenced on Thursday.

“President Buhari will leave Nigeria for New York on Thursday (yesterday) for a series of meetings and interactions with notable world leaders within and on the sidelines of the main events of the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

“President Buhari who will be accompanied by the governors of Sokoto, Kaduna and Niger states, the National Security Adviser and the permanent secretaries in the federal ministries of Foreign Affairs, Defence, Finance, Health, Industry, Trade and Investment. He will deliver Nigeria's statement on Monday,”