Minister of Communications and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful says the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) has since its inception had misplaced priorities but now steps are far advanced to refocus the agency on its rightful legal mandate as a tech industry regulator and not an operator.
The Minister made the remarks at the opening of a three-day stakeholder engagement on the draft Legislative Instrument for the NITA Act, Act 771 and the Electronic Transactions Act, Act 772 which will equip NITA to perform its proper role as the Regulator for all Information and Communication Technology (ICT) related matters and electronic transactions in Ghana.
Ursula Owusu Ekuful noted that per Act 771, NITA was established as an agency to regulate the provision of ICT, ensure the provision of quality ICT, promote standards of efficiency and ensure high quality of service.
“NITA was therefore expected to issue licenses to service providers and ensure fair competition among others, a roadmap which was set out as far back as 2008,” she said.
She however noted that “unfortunately, without properly understanding their mandate NITA never performed the role prescribed by its enabling Act fully but rather got engrossed in operations and became a service provider, competing in the same space as the entities it was mandated to regulate.”
As a result, the Communications Ministry, prior to Ursula Owusu-Ekuful coming into office, continued to dumped ICT projects it couldn’t operate on NITA and watched it flounder.
The Minister observed the due to the misplaced priority of NITA, the country embarked on digital initiatives with no direction and was held captive by service providers who did as they pleased with no regard for sustainability of initiatives, and interoperability of systems as ICT procurement for MDAs were done with no oversight and no set standards guiding it.
This chaotic situation, she said, led to wanton dissipation of public resources as it encouraged duplication, waste and procurement of sometimes near end of life systems which were unfit for purpose.
“When I assumed office in 2017, I directed the management of NITA to change course and assume its properly defined role as a regulator to sanitize the ICT landscape which had been orphaned with no proper regulatory regime guiding their operations and standards,” she said. “I seconded a seasoned regulatory practitioner from the NCA to support the NITA transition and guide the process.”
Ursula Owusu-Ekuful said she also noted that the NITA needed a root and branch overhaul in their functional philosophy and a re-orientation of the staff to inculcate the attitudinal change required for the shift in focus from operations to regulation, so, she sent selected NITA staff on a study tour of similar agencies in Rwanda and Nigeria to serve as benchmarks and use cases for the performance of their new role.
Cost cutting
Regarding the dividends of her initiative, she said just by insisting on proper oversight for public sector ICT procurement, NITA has helped ensure that two key ministries avoided procurement of the same systems under two different donor funded projects and saved the exchequer millions of dollars.
“Procuring national licences for universally used software has also helped save government millions of dollars and cut duplication and waste,” she said. “We have done so for Microsoft software and are working on a similar arrangement with Oracle.”
According to her, the stakeholder meeting is therefore to get industry and public input into the Legislative Instruments designed to operationalize Acts 771 and 772 and give meaning to NITA’s regulatory mandate.
“With the support of the World Bank e-Transform project, we procured the services of a consultant to facilitate the drafting of key Legislative Instruments to give effect to both Act 771 and Act 772, 15 years after those laws were passed, to facilitate the performance of NITA’s regulatory functions,” she said.
The Minister said she believes the two LI’s will empower NITA to perform the full functions envisaged by its enabling Acts.
Meanwhile, NITA’s operational activities have been outsourced to a private partner Smart Infraco Limited, which has already been introduced to you in an earlier forum.
Director-General of NITA, Richard Okyere-Fosu said it is imperative to note that enacting a Legislative Instrument for an Act is supposed to be carried out shortly after the Act is passed, but NITA’s situation was not the case and it has taken fifteen years to get to this point.
He therefore expressed his profound gratitude to the Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the World Bank and other stakeholders for making this a reality after 15 long years.
The NITA Boss used participants at the stakeholder engagement to attach a sense of seriousness to their contribution towards fine tuning the draft LI before Parliamentary approval. saiying “Please note [that] your inputs are important to us.”
He however noted that getting the LIs in force is just the beginning because the the success of the Act will largely depend on how all industry stakeholders are able to translate the provisions of the Act into tangible actions which will benefit the country.
The three-day stakeholder engagement is being attended by ICT industry players, policy makers, representatives of international organizations, members of the academia as well as some individual experts.
