As the Federal Executive Council approved the National Policy on the Nigerian Government Second-Level Domains during its meeting on Wednesday, the government has ordered enforcement of the Government Second-level Domains on across board.
The approval followed the presentation of a memo by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Professor Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami at the FEC meeting.
The Policy was developed to strengthen public confidence in the use of digital technologies and participation in the digital economy and its enforcement is in the custody of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
The minister explained in his presentation that the Policy is in line with the implementation of the Nigerian e-Government Master Plan, approved by the Federal Executive Council in August 2018.
According to him, the Master Plan has a vision to create a world-class open and digitalized government that connects with people to drive efficiency in public administration, the responsiveness of civil services and, transparency in governance leading to improvement of the quality of life of Nigerians.
The Policy will be implemented by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy.
According to Pantami, the policy seeks to promote transparency in governance; protect Nigerian cyberspace; and promotion of the Digital Nigeria agenda.
“It also seeks to accelerate the adoption of the second-level domain (.gov.ng, .edu.ng, .mil.ng) under the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD.ng) with the main objective to eliminate the use of top-level domains for Government business and the use of private emails for official correspondences by the end of the year 2022,” says Pantami in a press statement signed by Femi Adetuyi, the Technical Assistant (Research & Development) to the Minister.
He stressed that the Policy gives direction for the enforcement of the mandatory use of the Nigerian Government second-level domains by all Federal Public Institutions and recommends its adoption by States and Local Governments.
“The scope covers the Nigerian Government second-level domain and email services on .gov.ng, .mil.ng, .edu.ng, .sch.ng, and any other Nigerian Government-owned second-level domains that could be approved in the future.
As part of the implementation of this Policy, Federal Public Institutions are to obtain a Nigerian Government Second-level Domain from NITDA and migrate to that platform with immediate effect.
“As part of the implementation of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS), the Ministry will continue to position Nigeria to leverage technology to transform Nigeria into a sustainable and secure digital economy,” the minister restated.
He noted that the increasing rate of cyber-related incidences has inspired countries to develop Policy instruments to effectively regulate and manage their use of Information and Communication Technologies in Government Institutions, specifically electronic correspondences within the government.
“The use of generic domains and private emails for Government businesses and correspondences impedes the identity, security, and global recognition of the Nigerian Government on the Internet.
“Furthermore, the use of private emails for government business is a major limitation to the capabilities to archive and back-up sensitive Government data thereby making it difficult to preserve historical correspondences and documents hosted on non-Government servers. Similarly, Government documents that should be deleted or destroyed after a period of retention are permanently hosted on unsecure servers,” he said.
