The Federal Government may apply sanction to federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of government that continue to show weak zeal for the registration of dot ng domain name.
The move to apply sanctions is sequel to the attitude of staff of government parastatals in the registration of dot ng domain name, which has been described as weak among Nigerians.
In technical parlance, ‘dot ng’ domain name is Nigeria’s identity in the cyberspace. Every country has its code name with which they are identified when sending electronic mails through cyberspace, via the internet. The cyberspace address of individuals or organisations in Nigeria carries the suffix ‘dot ng’.
The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), which is the registry for dot ng domain name registration in the country, has lamented the low response of Nigerians and corporate organisations as well as MDAs in registering their domain names, despite intense awareness creation carried out by NiRA since 2008.
Chief Operating Officer of NiRA, Mr. Ope Odutan, who spoke with THISDAY, lamented the low level of registration of domain names in Nigeria, but was glad to that government may be soon apply sanctions, especially on MDAs and at the same time stop all government contractors from communicating with government electronically, if their email addresses end with yahoo.com, or .co.uk, or a with a gmail or hotmail, without carry the Nigerian domain name, the .ng.
According to him, the issue was raised at the last workshop on ‘Switch to .ng’ organised by NiRA in Abuja, where official of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), during his presentation,
referred to NITDA’s Act, which stipulates a fine of between N200,000 and N500,000 per breach for any corporate or MDA that refuse to switch to .ng.
“Again there is a directive from the Ministry of Communications Technology that all MDAs must switch to dot ng but the argument from stakeholders is that a directive is no law that will compel people into doing something. But the truth is that we do not need a law anymore. If the Minister gives a directive, it becomes an obligation that the Head of Service must implement in all Federal MDAs,” Odutan noted.
He added that the first thing was to create the email address for MDAs. He however said that the Ministry of Communications Technology had created over 40,000 dot ng email accounts for MDAs and that it was left for them to begin the implementation of the use of the email address developed from a domain name. The email address, he said, should be used for official communications and anything outside that should not be recognised by government.
“Government can say that part of the requirements for submitting proposals to government must be that the contractor has a dot ng domain name. No yahoo, no Gmail and no hotmail accounts. They must have dot ng domiciled domain name. These are guidelines that should be implemented,” Odutan said.
Source: thisdaylive.com