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Public institutions that fail to comply with the federal government guideline on IT clearance risk serious sanction including criminal prosecution, the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami NITDA has warned.
Pantami while speaking at the “March 2019 Lunch Time Reform’’ seminar by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms in Abuja, said the government of President Muhammadu Buhari has demonstrated that it is more determined than ever to ensure transparency and accountability in public sector IT procurement; and resultantly, over N24.7 billion is saved monthly through deployment of IT and strict adherence to IT guidelines.
The head of Nigeria’s government IT clearinghouse said the extant laws under which the NITDA operates and directives from the Presidency including executive orders mandate NITDA to ensure compliance by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of government to IT clearance guidelines. Defaulters risk heavy punishment including criminal prosecution of the offending government officials by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Government remains committed to enforcing the laws on IT compliance and NITDA will not relax its efforts to achieve this, said Pantami at the seminar. His words: “Under E-Governance today, so many leakages in government institutions have been blocked by IT (Information Technology) and that has integrated even the revenue of our country
“With the implementation of Treasury Single Account (TSA) and Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) and BVN, the Federal Government of Nigeria has been saving a minimum of N24.7billion monthly, just because of the implementation of this IT software.”
According to Pantami, while significant automation has been achieved in some agencies such as the Corporate Affairs Commission and the Immigration Service, a lot of processes still require fuller integration of IT in the public sector particularly in some MDAs where automation could help to deliver services to the public at more transparent and faster levels.
He assured that NITDA was helping affected agencies to rapidly integrate IT into their operations because such institutions with digital skills among staff, and IT penetration in their processes risk becoming extinct by 2020 within government’s scheme of things. Besides, the non-digitalisation of such MDAs accounts for huge loss of revenue to the government.
He said NITDA runs a number of eGovernment initiative to help build capacity and synergy among MDAs.
