icegov2012 proceedings

Technological Assessment of e-government Web
presence in Nigeria
Awoleye, O. Michael
National Centre for Technology
Management (NACETEM), An Agency
of the Federal Ministry of Science &
Technology, P.M.B. 012, Obafemi
Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 20005,
Nigeria
+234-(0)7069197823
awoleye@yahoo.co.uk
ABSTRACT
Government bringing innovation into its activities is a good
gesture but innovation that constitutes peril due to inadequate
technical capability necessitates re-assessment, hence this
investigation.This study investigated susceptibility of some
chosen government websites to infiltration due to flaws in the
design of their websites. Sixty four websites of some
organizations were randomly selected using an advanced feature
of google to sieve organization’s websites that have adopted the
use of country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) i.e. the
“.gov.ng”. The research was based on some major measuring
parameters which are: Cross Site Scripting (XSS), Structured
Query Language injection (SQLi), Cookie manipulation (CM),
unencrypted password (UP) and broken links (BL). The sixty four
(64) government websites chosen span 8 categories of sectors
with a view to evaluating their immunity against cyber attacks. It
was found that 27 (42.2%) of the websites are vulnerable to XSS,
while 20 (31.3%) to SQLi. Also, 24 websites which represents
37.5% of the websites examined are having the password inputted
by the user unencrypted while a high percentage (70.3) have
informational issues, like broken links which in itself may not
constitute high vulnerability but could create susceptible platform
which could permit infiltration. Thereafter, some appropriate
policy directions which provide technical advice as to protect
government resources available through the Internet were
advanced. This tends to also increase citizens’ confidence on the
adoption of the government web-presence initiative.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
K.4.6. [Security and Protection]
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00
Ojuloge, Blessing
National Centre for Technology
Management (NACETEM), An Agency
of the Federal Ministry of Science &
Technology, P.M.B. 012, Obafemi
Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 20005,
Nigeria
+234-(0)8035762207
blessingojuloge@yahoo.com
236
General Terms
Management, Security, Performance
Keywords
Siyanbola, Willie O.
National Centre for Technology
Management (NACETEM), An Agency
of the Federal Ministry of Science &
Technology, P.M.B. 012, Obafemi
Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 20005,
Nigeria
+234-(0)8033449687
williesiyanbola@yahoo.com
Web presence, e-government, management, vulnerability, policy,
cross site injection, SQL injection, security, performance, cyber
security
1. INTRODUCTION
Advancement in Internet and its services has culminated into
many applications and it provides information gathering platform
for citizens and opportunities for businesses to thrive [1].
Organizations and government bodies have leveraged severally on
these facilities provided by the web for improved efficiency in
service delivery, transparency, increased revenue, cost-saving and
global competitiveness. The art of online administration of
government activities is referred to as e-government [2]. By this,
the government can reach more citizens without boundary
irrespective of their locations at any point in time. And in turn, the
citizens can also reach the government without the bureaucracy
barrier [3].
The understanding of these facts most especially the benefits,
prompted the Nigerian Government to suggest to all its bodies at
all levels (federal, state and local) to make their presence known
on the Internet, by creating websites to deliver their services and
for effective information exchange. It also mandated them to use
the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), knowing the
benefits derivable from such as well as its security implications.
Using a ccTLD, the users are guaranteed genuineness of the
domain since the registration of such domain is supervised. It is
worth noting to state that Nigeria Internet Registration
Association- NIRA (a non-government organisation) is
responsible to managing the ccTLD for Nigeria, while National
Information Technology and Development Agency (NITDA) has
been saddled with the responsibility of managing the government
sub-domain (.gov.ng) as a part of the entire ccTLD. The
requirement for the registration processes of the domain is quite
stringent and hence the likelihood of domain hijack or
misrepresentation is remote. This is important because of the
services that some of these organisations provide online which