The federal government has unveiled plans to fast track implementation of enterprise architecture with a view to setting a clear direction of digital transformation in the country.
Its agency-the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) said there was the need to put some mechanism in place for proper implementation of the Nigeria Government Enterprise Architecture (NGEA) to give clear directions for digital transformation.
This was disclosed by NITDA’s Director-General, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi at the 12th ISACA Annual Conference where he delivered a keynote address themed “Accelerating Digital Transformation: The Nigerian Trends.
Abdullahi said NITDA had implemented NGEA’s framework to drive short, medium and long term digital transformational impact, saying that the framework would provide direction enabling other government parastatals to easily, quickly, and conveniently execute digital initiatives.
Besides, he said it would reduce complexity associated with digital transformation by accelerating its adoption across the board.
He said: “The framework we designed at NITDA is in line with the digital transformation foundation laid by President Muhammadu Buhari.
“In October 2019, the president renamed and expanded the mandate of our Ministry to cover Digital Economy
“In November the same year, 2019, the president unveiled National Digital Economy Policy for Digital Nigeria, and he directed my Minister Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, to implement the policy.
“On the same day, the president also directed all Federal Public Institutions to set up a Digital Transformation Technical Working Group and on 27th August this year, the Honourable Minister of communications and digital economy inaugurated the first set of 100 Federal Public Institutions’ digital transformation working group.
“The idea behind setting the technical working group is to consolidate on the achievements recorded under some of our initiatives such as the Nigeria e-Government Master Plan (NeGMP), Nigeria e-Government Interoperability Framework (Ne-GIF) and Nigeria Government Enterprise Architecture (NGEA).”
Specifically, Abdullahi said the framework had two value propositions which would promote government’s digital service and guarantee autonomy of each Federal Public Institutions (FPIs) so as to make individual decisions around business processes, digital services and applications.
The framework, which he said had seven layers—-Business, Service, Data, Application, IT Infrastructure, Security, and Performance, would revolve around people and processes.
Each layer, Abdullahi said had high-level expectations for FPIs had best practices, standards, tools, reference models and recommendations that would help FPIs achieve their value propositions and meet citizens’ expectations for government’s digital services.
Abdullahi went on: “Having understood how important digital capabilities are in driving digital transformation, we have embarked on up-skilling and reskilling Nigerians with appropriate knowledge and skills that the necessary building blocks for digital transformation.
“We have trained over 26,000 Nigerians this year alone on different digital skills to help them understand and embrace digital transformation.
“In addition to the capacity building, we have provided thousands of digital tools to Nigerians raging from artisan toolbox set, smart mobile devices, laptops to building Community training centers, IT hubs, Innovation, and incubation hubs and center of excellence for emerging technologies.”
