Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) have announced a new collaboration that will see them create a platform for the seamless exchange of data and the strengthening of Digital Public infrastructure across Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government.
The Director-General of NITDA, Mr. Kashifu Inuwa who revealed this during a courtesy visit to the Director General of NIMC, Mrs. Bisoye Coker-Odusote in Abuja Nigeria’s Capital, said the collaboration is significant in promoting digital economy initiatives that will lead to a more efficient and effective service delivery to Nigerians.
“Today, we have agreed to set up a technical working crew to look at how we can harmonise and implement national public key infrastructure, how we can work together to build the Nigerian DPI stack, how we can work together on data exchange platform and to strengthen our enterprise Architecture across MDAs to give a 360 view of all government investments in IT,” he said.
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Mr. Kashifu said, “The technical working group will start working immediately and We look forward to getting a final working recommendation from them by the end of May. At the end, we should agree on how the National public key infrastructure, (PKI) should look like, the regulatory frame work for it and how we can start using it to secure digital transactions in Nigeria.”
Commenting on the new collaboration, the Director-General of NIMC, Mrs. Bisoye Coker-Odusote said both organizations recognize the immense value in sharing data and the collaboration is a step towards achieving a more digitally enabled Nigeria.
“The key thing is to adopt the stack technology process in Nigeria through the digital public infrastructure. We want to work together with NITDA to produce the PKI and ensure that it is used locally across the public and private sectors,” she said.
“The collaboration is a welcome idea. It is a strategic move towards achieving a harmonized database in the country. The NIN which is a unique identifier is basically the foundational identity on which the digital public infrastructure sits on. It is important that we harmonise together to advance the course of technology in Nigeria. Working with NITDA in this partnership will chat a new course forward,” she further said.
