IT Projects Failure: Kashifu Tasks MDAs on Adoption of SLA Framework
TECHDIGEST – The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Kashifu Inuwa, has advised Procurement and Information Technology Officers in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to curb the incidence of IT projects failure in their various organizations.
Inuwa gave the advice while speaking at a Consumer Protection Forum with the theme ‘Inculcating the Culture of Service Level Agreement in Government Information Technology Contract’, organized by NITDA in Abuja.
The forum, geared to acquaint participants with the rudiments of IT Contracts award and execution in their respective organisations, highlighted the importance of efficient Service Level Agreement (SLA) towards creating an enabling environment for vendors and consumers, and ensure that extant rules and regulations were applied on all government IT contracts.
The DG, who was represented by the acting Director, Standards Guidelines and Frameworks of the agency, Mr. Oladejo, urged participants, drawn from various MDAs to make useful contributions towards developing digital technology in Nigeria in line with the Agency’s core values of professionalism, innovation and prioritizing the people’s interest.
Declaring the session open, the DG said that NITDA, in furtherance of one of its seven strategic pillars, which is developmental regulation, is always seeking for ways to ensure efficient and effective delivery of IT projects and services especially within the government establishments.
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Kashifu, who underscored the need for mutual understanding in the area of developing standards and building capacity of IT and procurement staff of each organization, added that IT sector has played a pivotal role in getting the country’s economy out of recession in recent times, which resulted in making the sector the highest GDP growth rate in Q1 of 2020.
He asserted that, with the growth rate in the IT sector, being the only double digit growth rate sector that exceeded the aggregate of all the seven fastest growing sectors which made it to lead in the year 2020 and in Q1 of 2021, hence the need to protect consumers’ interest.
Kashifu added that the Consumer Protection Forum is a platform through which NITDA seeks to bring vendors and consumers in the IT Industry together with a view to raising the awareness of consumer rights addressing areas of challenges in efficient and effective service delivery.
“Issues discussed in past Consumer Protection Forum and subsequent complaints received within the industry were collated, a result of which NITDA has developed a guideline for the introduction of Service Level Agreement to aid government IT contracts”.
The DG assured that NITDA will continue to protect the consumers and users of IT against substandard IT products and services in Nigeria.
Several experts in SLA made presentations in areas related to consumers’ right affirmed that the wide scale failure of IT projects executed within MDAs necessitated the development of the framework to guide the MDAs in defining the scope, liability, limitation and nature of IT projects for the government.
 Kashifu Inuwa, has advised Procurement){kind=link}