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| Idlelo5: Nnenna Nwakanma, Mrs. Gordon, Mr. Ajisomo welcoming Mrs. Johnson |
The federal government through the Ministry
of Communications Technology is planning to grow Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) through facilitation.
Minister for Communications Technology, Mrs.
Omobola Johnson gave this insight at the opening session of Idlelo5 at the
Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja on Tuesday tagged ‘Open Source Solutions for
Achieving the Millennium Development Goals.’
“We hope to support and facilitate this
growth of this industry through the establishment of ICT incubation centres,”
she said.
Mrs. Johnson also said that these will
amongst other things provide market research, testing facilities, business
advisory support to translate ideas for software applications that support MDG
achievement and commercial activities into a reality.
To facilitate these and other IT incubation
centres, she said, there would be access to venture capital funding.
The framework, she said, is near completion
and will have establishing four pilot centres
by the fourth quarter of this year.
With the passing of the Freedom of
Information Act, the Ministry of Communication Technology, she said, could now
aggressively pursue the provision of government data sets to software
developers to work on their applications.
“I am particularly impressed with a recently
launched website mybudgit.com? that takes hundreds of pages of complex Federal
Government budget data and translates them into simple to understand graphics
available over the internet,” she said,
stressing that she learnt that the
underlying software used to develop this application is open source.
A focus on open source solutions to achieve
the MDGs, she said, would therefore not only create jobs in the ICT sector but
will create wealth especially for the young population.
Remmy Nweke
ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D
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