The
Federal Government has invested the sum of N2 billion on Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure, through the Galaxy Backbone
Limited, reports DigitalSENSE
Business News.
Disclosing
this was the Honourable Minister for Communication Technology, Dr. Mrs. Omobola
Johnson, at the formal launching of the unified email platform for the Federal
Civil Service in Abuja.
She
told DigitalSENSE
Business News that the investment specifically focused on improving data
centre environment, data computing and data storage resources.
According
to her, the huge investment has resulted in the Galaxy network maintaining an
uptime of over 96 per cent over the last 9 months and the Federal Government
ICT company is driving to increase service reliability and availability of the
platform to 99.999 per cent - known in the industry as “the Five Nines” where
downtime is no more than 5.39 minutes in a year.
She
also commended the collaboration existing between Ministry of Communication
Technology, Office of the Head of Service of the Federation and Galaxy Backbone
Ltd on the “switch to .gov.ng” initiative, the Minister stated that the
initiative was designed by her Ministry for adoption and penetration of the
unified email platform for federal civil servants on grade levels 10 to 17 in
the first instance, while workers on grade levels 9 and below will be scaled
onto the platform in a gradual and phased manner.
Mrs
Johnson further commended the immediate past and present Head of the Civil
Service of the Federation, Alhaji Bukar and Danladi Kifasi respectively, as
well as the immediate past and present CEOs of Galaxy Backbone, Messrs Gerald
Ilukwe and Yusuf Kazaure for the leadership and commitment demonstrated towards
the successful implementation of the initiative.
She
therefore, urged federal civil servants to embrace the unified email platform by
keying into its objectives in order to improve internal productivity and
quality service delivery to Nigerian citizens and foreigners.
“Collectively
adopting this messaging and collaboration platform is an important pillar of
our e-government strategy. The platform will improve the speed and efficiency
of official communications and provide the means to share, store and gain
access to official documents anytime, anywhere and on any computer or mobile
device. Other features of the platform include the ability to send confidential
(encrypted) email, schedule meetings on line, assign and track staff and
colleagues on official tasks and assignments, send circulars service-wide at
the touch of a button amongst others” she said.
The
Minster further said that prior to this, the Ministry of Communication
Technology with the strong support of the Council of ICT heads embarked on a
similar initiative to not only standardize the look and feel of federal
government websites but also to migrate all Ministry websites to the .gov.ng
domain name. The migration of websites to the .gov.ng platform and this unfied
email platform not only enables the delivery of government business over a more
secure and robust technology platform, it also enhances our national cyber
identity on the internet and improves confidence in citizens, businesses and
foreigners as they seek Government information and services online.
The Minister concluded by saying that Galaxy Backbone has also been recertified for the ISO 27001:2013 Information Security Management System (ISMS) standards, which is the foremost global information security standard. In this regard, Galaxy is launching a Government website certification program that will ensure that all sites hosted on the Galaxy platform are kept secure and safe from hackers and malicious software.
+Remmy Nweke
ITREALMS ... delivering news for ICT4D
Pix: Kazaure, MD Galaxy BB
No comments:
Post a Comment