By Emmanuel Elebeke

NATIONAL Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA and Microsoft Nigeria are collaborating to strengthen ICT Innovation and adoption in the country. This followed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two organisations.

The partnership will see both NITDA and Microsoft collaborate in ICT development and innovation in Nigeria, particularly in the areas of cloud policies, data protection,  privacy laws and data classification frameworks.

Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami

Speaking on the collaboration, NITDA’s Director-General, Dr. Isa Ali Pantami said: “We are delighted to collaborate with Microsoft. As regulators, our mandate is to create the right policies that foster innovation and help build a robust digital economy. Nigeria is a forward-thinking economy which is ready to compete in the 4th industrial revolution by having policies which drive growth and encourage investments. This is a positive move towards digitalisation of government processes and provides a tremendous opportunity to scale up citizen’s access to services and concurrently improve the quality of services.”

On his part, the General Manager, Microsoft Nigeria, Akin Banuso said: “We are excited to collaborate with NITDA. Microsoft is committed to providing technology you can trust; we have been actively involved in discussions with governments around the world to digitally transform systems. We are also frequently asked by other governments to identify best practices for moving to cloud. We are honoured to be able to work with the Nigerian government on this framework.

“This collaboration aims to foster detailed discussions of recent regulatory and policy development, including global best practices, to create cloud regulatory frameworks appropriate for driving innovation and improving how the public sector operates and delivers citizen services,” he added.

With the signing of the MoU, NITDA and Microsoft will set up a joint working group for the collaboration. NITDA’s mandate is to create a framework for the planning, research, development, standardisation, application, coordination, monitoring, evaluation and regulation of information technology practices in Nigeria.