Minister Tasks Committee On National ICT Policy

The Minister of Communication Technology, (CT) Mrs Omobola Johnson, has charged the committee saddled to harmonise ICT polices, to come out with a national ICT policy that will quicken its records in the market structure.

Mrs Johnson, said this in Abuja during the week as part of activities marking President Jonathan’s 100 days in office celebration.

She said that one of the reasons for the committee was to harmonise the various policies that rule Information Communication and Technology (ICT) so as to bring orderliness in the sector.

The minister noted that since the creation of the communication technology, it has given a new market structure for ICT industry that showed a better balance between information technology and communication technologies and also recognised the convergences of these technologies.

She hinted that within the short period of establishment, the ministry had commenced the process of realigning roles and responsibilities of the implementing agencies, showing the ongoing and future projects and initiative to eliminate duplication and overlap.

“It was also streamlining their activities to ensure that they focused on their core mandates of policy development, access and infrastructure provision, industry regulation or support”, she said.

She hinted that the ministry is internally harvesting all ongoing and proposed projects of other ministries in order to ensure that the federal government is for the first time receiving value for ICT projects.

According to her, it is an open agreement between these projects and the transformation agenda objects.

“The ministry and the implementing agencies of the ministry will work in close collaboration with the ICT industry to improve penetration, grow value added service like ICT training and education, digital content creation, call centre operation, domestic business process outsourcing, software development and maintenance and repairs”, she said.