J48716 Willend EIA ResearchReport V4 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 10
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2.2 | FMEnv’s Current progress in relation to
Digital EIA
Environmental Assessment Department within the
FMEnv has sought to improve the effectiveness of
Nigeria’s EIA system, including the development
of many guides and the implementation of the
nation’s register of EIA experts. It is therefore
unsurprising that FMEnv has also sought to
explore the potential of digital systems to further
enhance the application of EIA across Nigeria.
Initial activities, some years ago now, included
recognising the need to upgrade the technology
and equipment available to the Department
and its officers to manage the EIA process and
related documents. The submission of over 5000
EIA Reports to FMEnv, since 2007, with multiple
hard copies required at both Draft and Approval
EIA Report and the need to retain copies for
the Department’s records meant that the large
volumes of paper work had piled up. FMEnv
recognised the need for better organisation of its
existing record and improved ways to store its EIA
archive in the future.
FMEnv secured financial support from The World
Bank – via funded initiatives within Nigeria that
included ambitions to improve environmental
protection. Through these funds the Department
was able to:
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- Create storage facilities to better organise its
archive of hard-copy EIA Reports
- Invest in ICT equipment & technology –
computers, scanners, internet connectivity,
and hard drives - to enable the archive to be
scanned future and better use computers in the
day to day work of the staff.
- Digitise a large volume of its hard-copy EIA
- via supporting the staff resources and time
required to manually scan EIA documents and
store these on hard-drives.
This investment and upgrade has certainly made
a difference, but as with any investment in IT
facilities have a limited lifespan as equipment both
breaks and becomes outdated over time. While
the need to secure sufficient funding to enable
on-going upgrades and investment in ICT
technology is a challenge, a more significant
barrier to FMEnv progress in digital EIA is a lack
of investment in ICT capacity within the staff
available to the Department – see Section 3.2.
More recently the Department has used central
Government funds via the FMEnv to help develop
its digital EIA ambitions; however, these funds
inevitably compete with the need for operational
delivery and tend to be of a smaller scale than
Willend Associates and FothergillTC Ltd – Digitization in and around Nigerian EIA
