The National Information Technology Development Agency NITDA has developed Service Level Agreement (SLA), to save the Federal Government and its institutions the huge amount of money it spends on IT projects maintenance.
The SLA contract will also cover services after sale.
The Director General NITDA, Mr. Kashifu Inuwa stated this in Abuja at a one-day consumer protection forum organised by the Agency to address areas of challenges in service delivery in the IT industry.
The one-day Consumer Protection Forum has the theme: “Inculcating the culture of Service Level Agreement in Government Information Technology Contracts”
Inuwa who was represented by the Acting Director Standard Guide Lines and Framework, NITDA, Mr. Oladejo Olawumi said “we are addressing a critical issue which emanated from our past consumer protection forum and subsequent complaints within the industry as a result of which NITDA has developed a Guideline for the Introduction of SLA into Government Information Technology Contracts”.
He explained that “we are here to see why the lack of warranty and after sales service agreements on our IT products and service purchases have cost us so much, and also to see why a good contract should have an SLA to make provisions for downtime, warranty and after sales support.”
According to him, the guidelines are developed to protect the IT industry which is the only sector that is growing at double digits rate in the economy.
“The IT sector has the only double-digit growth rate and exceeds the aggregate growth rates of all the 2nd to the 7th fastest growing sectors. It also has the highest growth rate in the year 2020 and the 1st Quarter of 2021.
“There is therefore the need to protect consumers in the sector.”
Inuwa also used the opportunity to remind MDAs to always make use of the NITDA’s IT clearance to save cost
“We also encourage MDAs to continue to embrace the NITDA IT Clearance as a way of cutting cost of IT contracts,” he added.
A legal practitioner with expertise in data protection services, Mr. Babatunde Bamigboye, while speaking to the press after his presentation on the SLA stated that “our target is sustainability and for you to have sustainability, there must be certain principles of operation that guides the operators, vendors, the regulators, the customers and all users of the products; that is why we are having a review of the framework.
“For instance, if we are to maintain a data centre and people are connected to the data centre, how long, what is the response time, what is expected of you in time when there is downtime and what are the measurements?”
He maintained that the industry is dynamic therefore, the need for dynamic guidelines.
“The industry is very dynamic, so new things are incorporated and SLA are new things that are incorporated into operations that we want all the parties to be aware of. For instance, you could be buying a product without knowing the manufacturers.”
A representative of Fortech Investment Ltd, Glory Kete said that with the new guidelines it won’t be business as usual in the IT industry when it comes to products and services.
“There’s always something you have to look out for in a tender; what are the criteria so that you know the things they want you to actually give them. But through these new guidelines that they just gave us, I think it’s not going to be business as usual,” she assured
The Consumer Protection Forum is a platform through which NITDA seeks to bring the consumers and vendors of IT products and services together in order to address areas of challenges in service delivery. It is also an avenue to create awareness of Consumer rights on IT products and services to ensure efficient and effective service
Nneka Ukachukwu
