Regional News of Friday, 23 March 2012

Source: GNA

NITA holds consultative meeting with IT managers

The National Information Technology Agency (NITA) on Friday organised a day’s consultative meeting for Information Technology (IT) managers of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), on new products and service at the agency in Accra.

NITA was established by an Act of Parliament to lead the transformation of Public Service information management and efficient delivery of services by government to citizens, provide the foundation and framework for utilising information and technology, and to transform the country into a value-based knowledge society.

Mr William Tevie, Director General of NITA, said the agency over the years had established an e-government network to enable MDAs to communicate efficiently and undertake government business effectively.

“Today, over 85 MDAs are currently connected to the network, while plans are far advanced to install fibre connectivity in the eastern corridor of Ghana,” he added.

He said the second phase of the e-government project would ensure that all the 170 districts and large towns had connectivity via fibre optics and WIMAX connectivity.

Mr Tevie said, NITA had rolled out a pilot data centre project where several applications were being conditioned.

“NITA is providing Anti-Virus, active directory, e-mails, storage and web hosting services from the data centre,” he noted.

He explained that with the availability of the data centre, losses through fire outbreaks would soon be a thing of the past.

Mr Tevie said an e-payment platform was recently launched to enable the citizenry to pay for their services online.

The IT managers were taken through topics like e-payment gateway, e-commerce, e-service portal, e-government infrastructure, Data Centre and Network operations Centres.**