The Federal Government, on Wednesday, threw the ball to the court of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) saying that it still waiting for the lecturers to upgrade and return to it the Universities Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS).
The software, which ASUU is touting to replace the Integrated Personnel and Payment Information System (IPPIS) as an alternative platform for the payment of the salaries of its members has failed previous integrity tests.
ASUU has since gone on another strike action blaming the Federal Government for failing to meet its demands.
Speaking at post-Federal Executive Council (FEC) briefing at the presidential villa, Abuja, the Director-General (DG) of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, insisted that UTAS has failed the necessary tests that should qualify it to be used as a payment platform.
His explanation followed questions thrown at the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami on the progress of the UTAS platform.
The Minister had said that when he received a letter from the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, requesting a review of the submission and the technical ability of the software of the system, he forwarded the request to the NITDA.
While noting that he provided the agency’s findings to the relevant bodies, he said: “They (NITDA) conducted their own analysis, their own testing and sent same back to me, and I drafted a cover letter I forwarded to the Minister of Labour and Employment and I copied the two Ministers of Education, Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, and also the office of the Accountant General of the Federation and even NUC (National University Commission).
Pantami, however, directed the NITDA DG to provide explanation as the agency directly involved following which Inuwa disclosed that they were still waiting for ASUU.
The NITDA DG reiterated that UTAS failed user acceptance, security vulnerability and stress tests.
He explained: “When we received the request to review, UTAS, you know, building complex system like UTAS that involves employees’ personal data, and also payment system, we have to subject it to do best practice tests before approving. Normally, when we are reviewing that kind of system, we perform three tests.
“Firstly, because when you’re building system, it’s not just about the technology, you need to consider the people that will use this system and the process. If you don’t align people, process and technology, you will never get results. No matter how good the technology is, if people don’t understand how to use it, they won’t use it. And if the process is different from the way the people work, also, they won’t use it. So that is a process of building technology.
“Firstly, you need to get the business requirement. What do you want to achieve? So it’s not the technology that will come first, it is the business requirement, what do you want to achieve, then you need to identify the capabilities you need to achieve that is your business objective.
“Part of the capability is the technology you need to bring in and the people that will operate the technology before you start thinking of the technology because technology is always a tool that will help you to achieve an objective or to do your work. If you bring the tool before knowing what to do with it, it will be useless.
“So when they came, we said okay, fine, we will do user acceptance test, ASUU you’ve built this system, but you are not the one that will use the system. There are people in Bursary and all the finance that will use this system. So we need to do user acceptance test with them, let them come show them the system, let them see if it can help them to do the work there.
“Secondly, we said we’ll do vulnerability test to test the security integrity of the system. Because if there is vulnerability, people can hack it, can change and it involves financial transactions. Adding zero means a lot. So we say we need to do that.
“And also we need to do stress test. You can build a system on your laptop or on a small computer, use it but when you put so many data it will crash, we need to do the stress test to make sure that the system can do. This is on the system.”
He hinted that even after passing the relevant tests, the platform to host the UTAS may still be an obstacle, adding however that ASUU is working on it.
The NITDA DG further explained: “Then also you need to have a data centre where you need to put that system because just having a system without the data centre it will not operate also.
“So we did all these three tests with them. And the system couldn’t pass. We wrote the reports and submitted it back to the Honorable Minister, which he forwarded to all relevant institutions, including ASUU.
“As we speak now, ASUU is working, trying to fix all the issues we highlighted with the system and we will review it again, but that is just one half of the story.
“The second half of the story also, we need to find where to put that system like IPPIS, we have a data centre built for it. ASUU where are we going to put it? That means we need to have the data centre and also that data centre, we need to check to make sure it meets the minimum requirement. Because if you put people’s information and the system crashes, how can you pay them salary?
“You need to build redundancy. There are a lot of things to do. So but as we speak, they’re trying to fix all the issues we highlighted with the system. Then when we finish that, we need to look at the second half of the story, getting where to install it.”
Pantami had earlier said FEC approved the introduction of another layer of quality assurance certificate in government digital services.
According to him, before now, all federal public institutions had been mandated by law and also by government policies, that before they embark on any information technology project, they must obtain IT Project Clearance to embark on it.
He said: “There are so many benefits of that, this is provided for in NITDA Act 2007, Section 6, under Article A and the Federal Government has re-emphasised that through a circular on 31st August 2018. So many federal public institutions have been complying with this and the report is very commendable. We presented the report before the Federal Executive Council today. The report covers the 1st of January, 2021 to 31st December,2021. This is a copy of the report; IT Project Clearance Performance Report for Government Digital Services 2021.
“This report captures all the IT projects in the country, particularly towards our government digital services for the whole year. In that report, it is clearly mentioned that 282 major projects were submitted for clearance, out of this number 258 were cleared and 24 were rejected and the total amount submitted seeking permission to implement the project was over N213 billion by many federal public institutions.
“Out of this, NITDA cleared around N154 billion and if you compute the amount submitted and the amount approved, you will discover that we are able to save more than N24 billion for the federal government of Nigeria. More than N24 billion, comparing the proposed amount and the approved amount for the implementation.”
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has moved to put an end to the rip-off of Nigerian farmers by foreigners who purchase agricultural produce directly from them.
Such foreigners are now to go through licensed local buying agents to do business with the farmers.
Wednesday’s FEC presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo approved the establishment of an appropriate mechanism that will not only enable local farmers to get the right prices for their goods and commodities but also ensure that they have the appropriate incentives and the needed encouragement to guarantee their continued participation in the farming business.
Minister of Trade and Investment, Otunba Niyi Adebayo, who spoke on this during the briefing, said he presented two memos on behalf of his ministry before the council one of which was the promotion of agribusiness in Nigeria through right farm gate pricing and ban on foreigners and their representatives from purchasing agricultural commodities at the farm gates.
He explained: “We finally got approval from FEC today for only licensed local buying agents who must be registered by the relevant national commodity associations, they are the ones who now will be able to buy goods directly from the farmers and sell to the foreigners.
“This way, the farmers will no longer be cheated by these foreigners who just throw money at them and are able to buy their goods”.
Adebayo added the second memo was for the approval of the Trade Policy Action Plan with the theme “Unleasing Nigeria’s Development Potentials through Trade and Investment”.
He said the Action Plan was formulated with a view to utilising trade as another means of generating revenue outside oil whose revenue is on the downward trend.
The Minister stated: “The whole idea is that because we’re not making as much money as we used to from the sale of oil, and because of reduction in the money that comes from that aspect of Nigeria’s revenue generation, we want to utilize trade as a means of generating revenue for the country. So, the action plan aims to utilise the existing national trade policy to facilitate the effective use of international trade and investment as tools for economic growth and poverty reduction in the country.
“So, we’ve got approval from Council today to engage with all the ministries, departments and agencies involved in trade and revenue generation, and also the organised private sector and civil society organisations to ensure a successful implementation of the trade policy action plan.
“One of the next steps that we will be taking now that we have this approval, is to inaugurate a committee which will look into the update of the existing trade policy, which was last updated in 2002. And also, we’ll be looking into coming up with an investment policy. And these two policies we believe should be ready before the end of this year.”
