Recently, a friend needed to renew his Nigerian passport.
Among the supporting documents requested was proof of his state of origin. Like many Nigerians, he expected the process to involve travelling home, visiting government offices, filling out paper forms and waiting days, perhaps weeks, for the document to be issued.
Instead, he discovered something unexpected. His state government had digitised the process.
He completed the application online, submitted the required information, made payment electronically and later received a verification call from government officials. Within a few hours, the certificate was ready to download.
The experience was not remarkable because it involved technology, as government websites and online portals are becoming increasingly common.
It was remarkable because the technology solved a real problem.
The citizens saved time, the government collected revenue through a transparent digital process, official records became easier to verify and a service that once depended on physical presence and paperwork had become accessible from anywhere.
This experience also raised a bigger question.
If one part of the government can deliver services this efficiently, why do citizens so often encounter completely different experiences elsewhere? Why does one agency feel modern and connected, while another still requires information that the government may already possess?
The answer, I believe, is that Nigeria’s biggest digital challenge is no longer digitisation but digital coordination.
For much of the last decade, Nigeria has pursued an ambitious programme of government digitisation. Citizens can now register businesses online, renew driver’s licences, apply for passports, pay taxes electronically, verify identities and increasingly access government services through digital platforms.
On paper, this represents significant progress. Yet the everyday experience of many Nigerians tells a different story.
A citizen may have to update the same personal information across multiple government portals, while an agency may request documents already held by another agency. Similar digital systems are procured independently across ministries, departments and agencies, each with its own login credentials, verification process and technical architecture. So rather than experiencing one digital government, citizens interact with dozens of disconnected digital islands.
Digitisation is about moving services online while digital transformation is about ensuring those services work together. In simple terms, one is about creating websites and applications, while the other is about building institutions capable of sustaining, improving and connecting them all.
The distinction may seem subtle, but it has profound implications for public service delivery. A ministry can digitise a paper form by making it available online. It can even build a mobile application for citizens to access that service. Yet if the application cannot securely exchange information with other government systems or requires citizens to repeatedly submit information that the government already holds, then the underlying experience remains the same.
Digital transformation is therefore less about technology itself and more about coordination. It requires common standards, shared infrastructure, interoperable systems and institutions that encourage collaboration rather than duplication. Without these foundations, governments risk creating a collection of modern-looking digital services that function as isolated islands instead of an integrated public service.
The state of origin application demonstrated what digital transformation looks like when it is done well. The challenge is ensuring that such successes become the norm rather than the exception.
But it also exposed a broader question: why are these successes still isolated?
Nigeria is beginning to recognise this institutional problem. The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has recently introduced stronger requirements for the planning, development, testing and quality assurance of government IT projects. The new framework places greater emphasis on standards, cybersecurity, data compliance, interoperability and independent quality assurance, while NITDA has also highlighted the need to reduce duplication and encourage shared digital services across government.
These measures are important. A government that wants reliable digital infrastructure needs to know that the systems it commissions are secure, interoperable and fit for purpose.
But there is another question that quality assurance alone cannot answer: what happens to the knowledge and software after a project is completed?
A system can be secure, well-tested and compliant and still become another isolated government platform. The agency that commissioned it may retain the code, documentation and expertise, while another institution elsewhere in government commissions a similar solution from scratch.
This is where the conversation needs to move beyond software quality towards software stewardship.
If Nigeria wants to build a digital government that improves over time, it needs institutions that do not only ask whether a system works but also whether what has been built can be reused, improved and shared across government where appropriate.
That is precisely the gap an Open Source Programme Office can help address.
For years, digital transformation in Nigeria has largely been approached as a procurement exercise. When an institution identifies a need, it commissions a new system. Another agency facing a similar challenge often starts from scratch, engaging a different vendor and adopting different standards.
This challenge is not unique to Nigeria. Governments around the world have discovered that the greatest obstacle to digital transformation is rarely the ability to build software but the inability to build upon what already exists. That is why a growing number of governments and organisations are embracing Open Source Programme Offices (OSPOs).
Earlier this year, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) argued that governments should think beyond open-source software as merely a way to reduce licensing costs. For governments, its greater value lies in the collaboration, transparency and reuse of knowledge that open source can enable.
Turning that idea into everyday practice is the role of an Open Source Programme Office (OSPO).
An OSPO is a small team within an organisation that helps different teams work better together. It exists to develop the policies, standards and practices that encourage teams to reuse existing solutions, document what they build, share code where appropriate and collaborate instead of working in isolation.
In government, this means ministries and agencies are less likely to commission similar systems independently. They can build on existing work, adopt common technical standards and treat software developed with public funds as a shared national asset rather than a collection of isolated projects.
GitHub’s 2023 Octoverse report highlighted the growing institutionalisation of open source, noting that 30% of Fortune 100 companies had established OSPOs, while many others were planning similar initiatives. The shift reflects a broader recognition that software governance is a strategic capability, not simply an engineering concern.
Companies, such as Microsoft, Google, Meta, Comcast, JPMorgan Chase, and Mercedes Benz, for example, have OSPOs.
Governments are reaching the same conclusion. France has adopted a national strategy to strengthen the use of open source across the public sector, recognising its role in improving digital sovereignty and reducing long-term dependence on proprietary technologies.
The model is also gaining traction in developing economies. In 2025, Trinidad and Tobago partnered with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to establish a government OSPO as part of its national digital transformation agenda. The message is that regardless of a country’s size or level of economic development, sustainable digital transformation depends not only on building software but also on building the institutions that govern it.
These countries are not embracing open source simply because software licences can be expensive.
They are embracing it because institutional knowledge is priceless.
Software can always be rewritten. What is far harder to replace is the knowledge accumulated while building and maintaining it, especially why certain decisions were made, how systems interact, what standards were adopted, and what lessons were learned along the way. When that knowledge resides only with a vendor or a handful of contractors, the government remains dependent on them long after the original project has been delivered.
An OSPO helps change this. By encouraging documentation, shared engineering practices, reusable code and collaboration across institutions, it ensures that knowledge becomes a public asset rather than a private one. Every digital project leaves behind not just an application but also the expertise, standards and lessons that future projects can build upon.
For Nigeria, the logical starting point is not 50 different OSPOs across the government but one.
An OSPO would not replace existing ministries or technology agencies. Nor would it eliminate the need for commercial vendors. Instead, it would provide the governance framework that encourages ministries to reuse existing solutions before commissioning new ones, publish appropriate software developed with public funds, adopt common interoperability standards and cultivate communities of public sector engineers who learn from one another instead of working in isolation.
A Federal Government Open Source Programme Office could develop national guidance, maintain reusable software assets, establish API standards, provide legal and licensing expertise, support ministries adopting open-source technologies and create a shared developer portal where government institutions exchange code, documentation and best practices.
Such an office would represent a shift in philosophy.
From procurement to capability.
From isolated projects to shared platforms.
From vendor dependence to institutional ownership.
Nigeria’s digital future will not ultimately be determined by how many new government applications are launched over the next decade. It will depend on whether the government learns to treat software developed with public funds as a strategic national asset, institutional knowledge as public capital and digital collaboration as a core function of the modern state.
Before commissioning another platform, the government should first ask a simpler question: What have we already built that others can build upon?
Answering that question may do more to accelerate Nigeria’s digital transformation than any single new application ever could.