Authority outlines plans to achieve e-govt

THE e-Government Authority (e-GA) says it’s committed to ensuring that President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s dream to have the system fully achieved, outlining five key plans to meet the President’s quest.

The plans were revealed on Thursday by e-GA Director General, Engineer Benedict Ndomba when outlining  achievements attained since Dr Samia took over the highest office of the land.

According to Eng Ndomba, his institution was planning to have a single place where all electronic government systems were available.

Also he said in the 10-year plan, e-GA plans to make sure that it tap all potentials of the new technologies that will come up in relation to artificial intelligence, digital currency and all financial technologies, in the quest to improving the quality of service provision to Tanzanians.

The other plans according to Eng Ndomba include engaging Tanzanian youth with the highest innovation qualities in the implementation of e-government, production of ICT hardware in the country as well as putting up e-Government efficient systems in the country.

“In ensuring that we meet the target in these plans, e-GA has put up six key priority areas including continuing to implement enforcement of the laws, regulations and guidelines of e-government to all public institutions, including frequent inspections in the strategic ICT systems which should operate as per the requirement of the law.

Others he said, reviewing the status of ICT security and infrastructure systems regarding the e-government system, continuing to formalise the Government Enterprise Service Bus (GovESB) as well as expanding the ICT’s Government System.

However, in various occasions the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) reports have been touting for reduction of different ICT systems in the Government, insisting that some of them were yet to be harmonised thus creating loopholes for the revenue loss.

But yesterday, the e-GA boss was quick to point out that the ongoing strategy was to make sure that they were reduced to have a few comprehensive systems that would be useful and efficient to all public entities.

To begin with, he said e-GA had introduced GovESB which had already connected over 50 public institutions, insisting that the system had proved positive as all institutions were now able to communicate online and that the previous anomalies had fully been eliminated.

The GovESB was purposely established with the aim of reducing anomalies that were spotted in the CAG report, he insisted.

One of the new systems that e-GA feel proud of according to  Eng Ndomba was the Government Electronic Gateway Payment (GePG) system which he said had so far helped to hike the government revenue as well as sealing loopholes for revenue loss.