STRUCTURE
The Core Units / Departments of NITA
The Acts reveals the core Units of the Agency as; Compliance, Standards, Monitoring and Certification. These Units’ activities will further the achievement of the Agency’s mandate if emphasis is placed on capacity development since ICT regulation has never been part of its operation since establishment.
Standards
The unit is responsible for ensuring that ICT deployment, usage, configuration, implementation etc are standardized in government. The role therefore is to develop, regulate standards for the public sector players.
Unit Activities
- Adopt standards, establish regulations and guidelines for the governance of the ICT sector in order to facilitate the licensing, accreditation, and registration of IT Service
- Providers, IT Products (type approvals), IT Training Institutions and IT Professionals.
- Establish guidelines for the acquisition and use of IT hardware and software across government.
- Standards and compliance in data management (data center management, security) establishing standards, regulations, guidelines and ensuring compliance in web development.
Scope For Standards
- Government Enterprise Architecture
- Cloud Computing Standard
- Data Centre Standard
- Electronic Records & Data Mgt Std
- End-User Equipment Standard
- ICT Human Capital & Workforce Development Standard
- Information Security Standard
- IT Governance Standard
- ICT Network Standard
- Systems & Applications Standard
- Messaging & Collaboration
- Systems Standards and Procedures
- Website Standards. etc
CERTIFICATION & LICENSING
This Unit manages the certification and licensing obligation of the Agency to fulfill the provisions of Acts 771 and 772 of 2008.
Unit Activities
- Issue licences under this Act and ensure fair competition among licence holders
- Registrations, and licensing in e-Commerce/ePayment sector (QoS & Consumer Protection in ETA)
- Maintain registers of licences and applications for licences
- Maintain registers for approvals given for equipment under the Electronic Transactions Act, 2008 (Act 772)
- Provide access to registers for licences, applications for licences and approvals for equipment except where commercial confidentiality does not allow for access
- establish quality of service indicators and reporting requirements that apply to licence holders under the Electronic Transactions Act
Scope for Certification and Licensing
- Computers and peripheral equipment
- Communication equipment
- Consumer electronic equipment
- Miscellaneous ICT components and goods
- Manufacturing services for ICT equipment
- Business and productivity software and licensing services
- Information technology consultancy and services
- Leasing or rental services for ICT equipment
- Other ICT services
Computers and peripheral equipment
- Point-of-sale terminals, ATMs and similar machines
- Portable automatic data processing machines weighing not more than 10 kg, such as laptop and notebook computers
- Personal digital assistants and similar computers
- Automatic data processing machines, comprising in the same housing at least a central processing unit and an input and output unit, whether or not combined
- Automatic data processing machines presented in the form of systems
- Other automatic data processing machines whether or not containing in the same housing one or two of the following types of units: storage units, input units, output units
- Input peripherals (keyboard, joystick, mouse, etc.)
- Scanners (except combination of printer, scanner, copier and/or fax) Inkjet printers used with data processing machines
- Laser printers used with data processing machines
- Other printers used with data processing machines
- Units performing two or more of the following functions: printing, scanning, copying, faxing Other input or output peripheral devices
- Fixed media storage units
- Removable media storage units
- Other units of automatic data processing machines
- Parts and accessories of computing machines
- Monitors and projectors, principally used in an automatic data processing system Solid-state non-volatile storage device
Communication equipment
- Burglar or fire alarms and similar apparatus
- Transmission apparatus incorporating reception apparatus
- Transmission apparatus not incorporating reception apparatus
- Television cameras
- Line telephone sets with cordless handsets
- Telephones for cellular networks or for other wireless networks
- Other telephone sets and apparatus for transmission or reception of voice, images or other data, including apparatus for communication in a wired or wireless network (such as a local or wide area network)
Consumer Electronic equipment
- Video game consoles
- Video camera recorders
- Digital cameras
- Radio broadcast receivers (except of a kind used in motor vehicles), whether or not combined with sound recording or reproducing apparatus or a clock
- Radio broadcast receivers not capable of operating without an external source of power, of a kind used in motor vehicles
- Television receivers, whether or not combined with radio-broadcast receivers or sound or video recording or reproducing apparatus
- Monitors and projectors, not incorporating television reception apparatus and not principally used in an automatic data processing system
- Sound recording or reproducing apparatus
- Video recording or reproducing apparatus
- Microphones and stands therefore; loudspeakers; headphones, earphones and combined micro- phone/speaker sets; audio-frequency electric amplifiers; electric sound amplifier sets
Miscellaneous ICT components and goods
- Sound, video, network and similar cards for automatic data processing machines
- Computers
- Telecommunications Equipment
- Monitors
- Keyboards
- Printers
- Servers
- Drives
- Network HUBs
- Printed circuits
- Thermionic, cold cathode or photo-cathode valves and tubes (including cathode ray tubes)
- Diodes, transistors and similar semi-conductor devices; photosensitive semi-conductor devices; light emitting diodes; mounted piezo-electric crystals
- Electronic integrated circuits
- Magnetic media, not recorded, except cards with a magnetic stripe
- Optical media, not recorded
- Other recording media, including matrices and masters for the production of disks
- Cards with a magnetic stripe
- “Smart cards”
- Liquid crystal devices n.e.c.; lasers, except laser diodes; other optical appliances and instruments n.e.c.
Manufacturing services for ICT equipment
- Electronic component and board manufacturing services
- Computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing services
- Communication equipment manufacturing services
- Consumer electronics manufacturing services
- Magnetic and optical media manufacturing services
Business and productivity software and licensing services
- Operating systems, packaged
- Network software, packaged
- Database management software, packaged
- Development tools and programming languages software, packaged
- General business productivity and home use applications, packaged
- Other application software, packaged
- Licensing services for the right to use computer software
- Software originals
- System software downloads
- Application software downloads
- On-line software
Information technology consultancy and services
- Business process management services
- IT consulting services
- IT support services
- IT design and development services for applications
- IT design and development services for networks and systems
- Website hosting services
- Application service provisioning
- Other hosting and IT infrastructure provisioning services
- Network management services
- Computer systems management services
MONITORING
This Unit undertakes monitoring and surveillance of ICT policies, investments, implementation, deployment, adaption, and usage etc by government and provide information to enhance the sector’s activities
Unit Activities
- Implement and monitor the national information communications technology policy;
- Monitor and supervise the Agency’s projects for proper implementation
- Monitor, enforce and ensure effective compliance with conditions contained in licences and tariffs;
- Lead in government ICT change management and knowledge management initiatives
- Establishing a database of national ICT assets and related resources (software and hardware)
Scope for Monitoring
- ICT investments by government
- ICT projects implementation and deployment
COMPLIANCE
This Unit is to forestall development of disparate IT Systems and Solutions without referring to NITA for compliance to standards and guidelines by Public Institutions.
Government identified the need to streamline ICT Adoption, deployment, development and to have a coherent government-wide ICT implementation, hence the establishment of the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) by Act 771 and 772 to regulate information communications technology and to provide for related purposes.
NITA has been mandated among others (section 3 (1) to; (b) implement and monitor the national information communications technology policy; (o) ensure the systematic implementation of national information communications technology policy; (t) ensure that the policy directions given by the Minister are implemented;
Scope for Compliance
- Implement and enforce the provisions of this Act, the Electronic Transactions Act, 2008 (Act 772) and regulations made under the Act;
- Ensuring compliance to interoperability framework (vetting ICT projects across government)
- Develop a clearing house for all ICT projects and initiatives.
- Investigate and resolve disputes between licence holders under the Electronic Transactions Act referred to the Agency by licence holders;
- Investigate complaints by users who fail to obtain redress from a licence holder;
- Carry out investigations on the conduct of persons at the Agency’s own initiative or at the request of another person to determine whether any person is engaging in acts contrary to the provisions of this Act;
- Carry out investigations and determine complaints that involve anti-competitive, price-fixing and unfair trade practices by persons under the Electronic Transactions Act;
Scope for Compliance
- IS Auditing of MDAs including systems
- ITE Type Approval and equipment compliance
- IT Interoperability & Enterprise Architecture Compliance