The need to grow Information Technology (IT) to a certain level that is good enough to benchmark its capabilities was the position of IT experts at the 61st edition of the Digital Jewels' Information Value Chain Forum held in Lagos recently.
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Digital Jewels Limited, Adedoyin Odunfa, who gave the assertion during her presentation on 'IT Maturity: Stimulants, Enablers and Inhibitors', said IT maturity assessments were in many shapes and sizes, including those in the of areas strategy, culture, governance, people, skills, transparency, risk management, security, processes, asset management, customer satisfaction and supplier management. She therefore said an IT maturity assessment was designed to benchmark current IT capabilities against a fixed scale.
"It will give you a baseline, a snapshot of where you are now, from which you can plan a roadmap for improvement," she added.
Odunfa also provided a cross-referencing of IT maturity models which included the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnaegie Melon University, Pittsburgh, United States. This applies to software or system engineering, systems, project management, risk management and information technology services. Others are COBIT Maturity Model, IT Maturity Model (Value-Based), Gartner IT Maturity Model, IT Management Maturity Model and Meta-Architecture Maturity Model.
According to Odunfa, "The IT maturity assessment tool can be a valuable tool by having a clear purpose because the value of an IT maturity assessment lies in the context of improvement." She advised companies to have their own IT Maturity Assessment and Improvement effort within the context of their organisational mission, vision, goals and objectives.
She also gave the benefits of an IT Maturity Assessment as a strategic approach to progress along the maturity ladder. These included providing an active monitoring and management of the maturation of the program and attracting senior management support.
The Information Value Chain (IVC) Forum is a quarterly gathering of ICT professionals. It provides a platform for knowledge sharing, information exchange and networking for executives as they climb the corporate ladder. The interactive forum helps executives to keep abreast of pertinent trends on increasingly important issues which can affect their individual and corporate competitiveness.
Network Middleware Applications Information Technology Manager of Chevron Nigeria Limited, Eloho Agbaje, who also presented a paper on "IT Maturity: Lessons from the Oil and Gas Sector", explained that strategies had been mapped out to help continually grow the oil sector towards profitability and competitiveness being a multi-disciplinary sector.
According to her, this would enable the oil industry "have a competitive advantage with respect to their peers," adding that "our key vision and strategy is to differentiate performance through technology."
Dwelling on the impact of IT on the oil and gas business, Agbaje stated a reliable telecommunication link between rigs and offices would lead to increased efficiency in drilling campaigns, better collaboration and communication, and reduced cost due to support for remote operations.
As an IT support function, Agbaje said the IT Maturity Model developed from a vision that would differentiate business performance with the strategic intents needed to deliver trusted information in a manner that would connect people, partners and business, accelerate business insights as well as automate, integrate and optimise business operations.
"The key enablers are an integrated IT operating model that builds functional excellence to deliver and steward reliable and efficient assets, easy to use solutions, an agile architecture and trusted information," she explained.
Agbaje shared some of the strategic objectives that Chevron Nigeria had used over the last five years to progress on IT maturity. They involved creating a business value by investing in the core business, capital stewardship and digitised platforms to make the work processes easier, fast and more efficient.
She then shared key steps in an IT maturity journey, which involved determining a goal, vision or future state, assessing the current state, identifying gaps, developing prioritised roadmap to close gaps and measuring and tracking progress by aligning with business goals.
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NCS to Discuss Cashless Economy, Broadband at Conference Emma Okonji The Nigeria Computer Society (NCS), the umbrella body for Information Technology (IT) professionals, has concluded plans to hold its 12th international conference in Akure, Ondo State, this month.
Giving details of the conference activities scheduled to hold between July 22 and July 24, during a press conference in Lagos, President of NCS, Prof. David Adewumi, who is also the Dean, College of Science and Information Technology, National Open University, Lagos, said the conference would focus on cashless economy and electronic payment system, which it championed through an advocacy campaign in 2012, as well as smart city initiative and broadband availability, accessibility and penetration. Other related key issues to be discussed, include critical information infrastructure protection, cloud computing, IT human capital development, e-health, e-government, e-education, e-agriculture, e-tourism, entrepreneurship development in the IT sector, software development and local content issues, among others.
Director, Corporate Affairs at NCS, Mr. Iyiola Ayoola, who gave clarification on the choice of venue for this year's international conference, said NCS had remained a national body with a national outlook, hence the culture of spreading out international conferences across the six geopolitical zones of the country. He added that past and current government of Ondo State, have used technology in transforming the state, just like other states where NCS has held its international conferences in the past.
Chairman, Conferences Committee of NCS, Mr. Moses Briamah, added that Ondo State was selected as venue for this year after careful deliberations among members of council.
According to Adewumi, the conference would comprise plenary, parallel and technical sessions, networking meetings, panel discussions and special focus forum, where it would provide opportunities for policy makers, public and private sector, IT practitioners and the academia, to keep up-to-date with technology trends and to discover opportunities for the private and public sectors in the process of inclusive development.
It will also provide opportunities for stakeholders to identify avenues for public-private partnerships towards realising IT objectives within the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Part of this year's conference is the election into the national executive council of NCS, which means that the current NCS executives will stick to the policy of one term of two years in office and conduct election for another executives to pilot the affairs of NCS for the next two years.
"Expectedly, NCS will hold its Annual General Meeting (AGM) at the 2015 international conference, as well as holding elections into various positions of the national executive council of NCS. Registered members of NCS will vote for new executives, who are expected to make a difference in the affairs of NCS in the next two years," Adewumi said.
He called on all stakeholders to use the opportunity of this year's conference theme: 'Information Technology for Inclusive Development', to further advance the country in the area of technology development.
Adewumi said NCS would continue to drive development in the country, through its interest groups.
President of Information Technology Systems and Security (ITSSP), one of the vibrant interest groups of NCS, Mr. Rogba Adeoye, said ITSSP had been in the background, promoting critical information technology infrastructure such as critical data for Nigeria.
EBIZ ANALYSIS 1
CAPTION: President of the Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Mr. Lanre Ajayi Broadband Data Penetration Still Crawling
An assessment of Nigeria's technology development in the last six months shows that broadband data penetration is still very low relative to voice telephony. Emma Okonji reports
When Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) was introduced and launched in Nigeria in 2001, the focus then was on voice telephony. At that time, existing active telephone lines were 400,000, which was the cumulative figure since the inception of telecommunications in Nigeria in 1885.
Telecommunications was formally heralded into Nigeria following the establishment of the internal telecommunications arm of the British Post Office by the British colonial government in Nigeria, known as the Post and Telecommunication (P&T), which was used by the colonial masters for the purpose of effective administration and contact with the London office.
But in 1962, the first development plan to begin a purposeful telecommunications development in the country began, as captured in the book 'Path to Nigeria ICT Development', published this year, by Mr. Aaron Ukodie.
From 1885 to 2001, Nigeria recorded only 400,000 telephone lines, but with the advent of GSM in 2001, voice telephony penetrated deeper into the nooks and crannies of the country and in March 2014, recorded active telephone lines rose to 127 million. As at April this year, the figure had jumped to 143 million, a situation that has placed Nigeria as the fastest growing telecoms market in voice telephony in Africa and the world. But this cannot be said of broadband data penetration, which currently stands at 10 per cent, from the initial six per cent in 2013.
In 2013, there was conscious need for the telecoms regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), to grow data penetration from six per cent to 30 per cent in 2018, following the release of the country's National Broadband Plan (2013-2018).
THISDAY half year review shows that data penetration is still at its lowest ebb, despite several attempts by NCC and the federal government to deepen its penetration.
NCC's broadband campaign
Although the telecoms industry regulator, in collaboration with the Ministry of Communications Technology, has made concerted efforts to further grow data communications through its local and foreign campaign on broadband availability and penetration in the country, the efforts have not yielded much results as that of voice telephony.
From Dubai in the United Arab Emirate (UAE), to Bangkok in Thailand, to Doha in Qatar, where the International Telecoms Union (ITU) World Conferences have been hosted from 2012 to 2014, Nigeria took its broadband campaign to the international conferences, where it unveiled the country's plan for broadband penetration and used such occasions to woo foreign investors to come to Nigeria and invest in the country's broadband roadmap.
Back home, the NCC has held several fora with industry stakeholders on the need to further grow the country's broadband plan, a situation that led to the release of Nigeria's Broadband Plan in 2013. But THISDAY's review revealed that although much efforts have been put in place, such efforts have not yielded the expected results that will gladden the hearts of industry stakeholders. Some, who painstakingly reviewed the efforts of NCC, concluded that the structure with which the NCC is operating, is faulty.
According to them, the faulty structure is also affecting data penetration across the country.
The inhibiting factors
The Chief Executive Officer of Etisalat Nigeria, Mr. Matthew Willsher, who is of the view that the take-off of broadband in the country is rather too slow, blamed the situation on faulty industry structure, which he said, was responsible for the challenges faced in deepening broadband penetration in the country.
He said the faulty industry structure hampered investment within the sector, as well as access to sub 1GHz broadband spectrum that would have enabled extensive and affordable broadband deployment in the country.
"The most critical challenge is perhaps the gross inability of the majority of operators in the industry to achieve the scale necessary to support the level of broadband deployment that the Nigerian market requires. Broadband involves considerable amounts of fixed cost and sub-scale operators who, as a result of size, are unable to attract the volume of reasonably priced, long-term funding required to deploy and operate broadband infrastructure profitably," Willsher said.
He also faulted the issue of inadequate spectrum to support broadband deployment in the country.
"Mobile broadband is clearly Nigeria's best route towards achieving her broadband coverage objectives given that it is relatively cheaper to deploy when compared with fixed broadband. Unfortunately, the most valuable coverage spectrum is underutilised with the sub-optimal use of the 800MHz spectrum and the delays being experienced in freeing up of the 700MHz spectrum," Willsher added.
According to him, the fact that African countries like South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and Ghana, have achieved over 30 per cent broadband penetration, which Nigeria has not been able to achieve, clearly shows that there is still a lot of work to be done in Nigeria in the area of broadband penetration.
Given the exponential growth that has been experienced in voice telephony since the inception of GSM in Nigeria in 2001, Nigeria's broadband statistics should have been much better. It is a fact that with over 140 million lines, the Nigerian market is the largest mobile market in Africa and one of the fastest growing in the world, but this cannot be said of broadband penetration that is within the same sector as voice telephony, Willsher said.
President of the Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Mr. Lanre Ajayi, blamed the situation on what he described as 'slow implementation of the country's broadband plan'.
According to him, the slow implementation rate of the National Broadband Plan by the federal government will hinder the country from achieving the planned 30 per cent broadband penetration by 2018, a percentage level that most African countries have since attained and surpassed.
As a possible solution to broadband growth, Ajayi called on the federal government to ensure speedy implementation of the broadband plan, to enable Nigeria catch up with its broadband target.
Ajayi, who also blamed the low broadband penetration in the country on weak demand for broadband services in the country, advised government to urgently consider putting all its activities online, so that Nigerians who want to interface with government for any reason, will have no choice than to get broadband bundle data, in order to have access to the internet, that will enable them interface with the government.
Chief Executive Officer of MainOne, a broadband solution company, Ms. Funke Opeke, is of the view that the broadband penetrating in the country is extremely slow.
According to Opeke, who blamed the situation on structural issue, called for shared infrastructure services among operators, which she said, was necessary to drive broadband penetration in the county. She said the initiative would bring about cost-effective way of doing business in the country.
She said the NCC and the federal government must make broadband spectrum available to operators and must make good efforts to address the issue of a national backbone infrastructure for the country that will help transmit broadband capacities from the shores of the country to the hinterlands, where the services of broadband are needed in high demand.
Internet penetration
According to data gathered by eMarketer, the world recorded 2.8 billion internet users by the end of 2014 and it will experience more growth over the next five years. The growth is projected to reach 3.62 billion internet users by the end of 2018.
China has the highest internet penetration with over 643.6 million users, followed by United States and India with 252.9 million and 215.6 million internet users respectively. Meanwhile, the eMarketer data showed that Nigeria is the highest ranked African country, but 10th on the global list, with 57.7 million internet users. Surprisingly, Nigeria has more internet users than advanced countries like UK And France, which ranked 11th and 12th positions respectively on the global list. Nigeria is also the highest country with internet penetration in Africa.
Nigeria's internet growth is expected to reach 84.3million users by the end of 2018.
But data from other credible sources, rated Nigeria to have currently attained 78 million mobile internet users.
The high penetration of mobile internet is hinged on the over 143 million active telecoms subscribers in the country, most of whom have smartphones with which they access the internet.
Between broadband and internet
In the telecommunications parlance, broadband means a wide bandwidth data transmission with an ability to simultaneously transport multiple signals and traffic types. Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times.
Its origin is in physics, acoustics, and radio systems engineering, where it had been used with a meaning similar to "wideband". Later, with the advent of digital telecommunications, the term was mainly used for transmission over multiple channels.
In telecommunications, a broadband signaling method is one that handles a wide band of frequencies.
"Broadband" is a relative term, understood according to its context. The wider (or broader) the bandwidth of a channel, the greater the information-carrying capacity; given the same channel quality.
But the term Internet, refers to a global communication network that allows almost all computers worldwide to connect and exchange information.
The Internet, sometimes called simply "the Net," is a worldwide system of computer networks - a network of networks in which users at any one computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other computer.
It therefore means that internet connectivity largely depends on the availability of bandwidth from the broadband that is carrying the data capacity.
Nigerians are therefore saying that there is inadequate broadband penetration in the country that is expected to carry sufficient bandwidth capacity that will give easy access to internet connectivity and further drive interest access in Nigeria.
Service quality
In the area of service quality offering, THISDAY check reveals there has been improvement in the quality of service in the telecoms sector in the last six months, which is the reason why the NCC appears relaxed about sanctioning operators over poor service quality. Subscriber complaints have equally reduced, an indication that operators are waking up to the realities of their core business of providing quality service. Although the service delivery is not 100 per cent perfect, but there is a considerable improvement.
Telecoms operators, who attributed the improvement to the continuous investments in the expansion of their networks, said they expect stable network in the months ahead.
The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Nigeria, Mr. Mike Ikpoki, told THISDAY that MTN on its part would continue to invest in network expansion projects and ensure that its over 61 million subscribers get satisfactory services that will make them remain on the MTN network.
The Chief Executive Officer of Etisalat Nigeria, Willsher, told THISDAY that continuous investments in telecoms business remained a key factor for the improved service quality in the last six months. He however called on government to encourage the deployment of telecommunication infrastructure to support broadband services. He called for full implementation of the recently passed Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) Bill, in order to protect telecommunications equipment and to reduce incidents of illegal shutdown and disruption of services.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Emma Okonji
Quelle/Source: AllAfrica, 16.07.2015
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