The Federal Executive Council has approved the upgrade of digital technology to all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government in line with present-day realities, created by the emergence of COVID-19.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami disclosed this to State House Correspondents at the end of this week’s virtual cabinet meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said the digital equipment would be installed and managed by the country’s network provider, Galaxy Backbone.
“What the memo speaks about is the need to upgrade and be more alive to digital transformation in our activities, we have seen how Covid -19 pandemic brought about the need to be conducting activities virtually and today we have attended the 14 virtual executive council meeting and this is unprecedented.
“We have been pushed by necessities to virtual activities. It is because of these that Galaxy backbone limited has deployed ICT infrastructure in federal public institutions like State House here where we have 1500 LAN points; that is local area network points , federal secretariat phase one 2750 land points, federal secretariat phase 2 , 4896 and SGF’s office 1176 local areas and network and Mabushi where Minister of Works and Housing resides, they have about 800 local area network points,” he said.
The Minister informed Journalists that the new deployment is also meant to phase out obsolete facilities currently being used by government agencies.
“Most of the facilities currently being used were deployed 10, 11 and 12 years ago. The most recent facilities in most of the places are the ones deployed eight years ago and the validity of these facilities is usually five years maximum.
“Now we have some that are up to 11 ,12 years. There is a need for these facilities to be upgraded why because we are going virtual almost every day and only Almighty God knows when this Covid -19 pandemic will leave us, however we are optimistic and prayerful as well,” he stated.
He announced that President Buhari has directed that all MDAs use Galaxy Backbone to install and maintain all IT facilities they may need.
“The President has directed that we should conduct an audit assessment of all the federal public institutions and the need to upgrade their facilities, we have done that and the report has been presented before the council being chaired by our boss Mr President and secondly after that Galaxy backbone has been established to be providing digital services to all public institutions and with the presentation and prayer contained in the memo, federal government has redirected that all federal public institutions should always contact galaxy as their first point of call whenever they have any IT project to be executed there, so most importantly our presentation here is about upgrading our ICT infrastructure and secondly directing institutions to patronize Galaxy and thirdly to show to us the commitment of the federal government towards promotion of our government digital services and this is in summary of what the memo is all about,” he added.
Source: VON
