MONDAYBUSINESS The high handling charges on TSA should be reduced - Galaxy Backbone MD
How does Galaxy Backbone Plc operate and what role has it played in ICT development in Nigeria?
Galaxy Backbone is a wholly government owned entity. It was established in 2006 as an outcome of the deliberations of certain committees that were seeking to reduce duplication of government spending on ICT and to harmonise the different ICT initiatives of government. The committees decided that the best practice is to have a central ICT service provider that will serve all the government Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and provide a common platform to be able to share information. In their wisdom also, they decided that this entity should be operated like a private company. It is created as a limited liability company so that it will not be slowed down by other bureaucratic requirements like other government entities. This is important, as you are fully aware ICT is a very dynamic area, it is not an area that you will subject to bureaucratic hurdles. If you are going to make it a typical government agency, for instance, if your router breaks down, you have to wait for budget circle to fix it, so in their wisdom they made it a limited liability company.
The major function of Galaxy Backbone is that we are to take over all existing government ICT infrastructure and consolidate them into one common platform, which we have successfully done. We called that the 1-gov.net. What this platform consists of is primarily data hosting facilities - what we call the government data centre as well as connectivity that links the MDAs together. It helps them to exchange data in a seamless manner while allowing each other to remain independent and maintain its privacy and the security of its operations. However, if there is need to exchange information, the platform assists them to do that. In a nutshell this is our modus operandi.
How does this 1-gov.net assist government in terms of savings and also the agencies in their operations?
The 1-gov.net is an opportunity for government to use its size to benefit from the economy of scale. What that means is if you are buying ICT services and products from vendors, especially the large ones, the more you buy the cheaper the services, but if you allow them to go to each individual MDA then they will be selling at retail price to them whereas government is a one whole entity. So just like the TSA by which government has an overview of all funds at its disposal, the 1-gov.net enables government to have an overview of the sort of license required, products and services it needs from a single point.
Secondly, it ensures efficiency because sometimes if you are buying on a silos basis take a bandwidth for example - it is not all the time that you need all the bandwidth. Like video conferencing, it is not possible to do that 24 hours a day and it is bandwidth intensive. But if you have a common platform, where you have a pool arrangement for the bandwidth needed for the video conferencing, say while MDA ‘Y’ is doing video conferencing so also MDA ‘X’ is doing video conferencing that is the sharing of infrastructure in an efficient manner. And thirdly, it ensures transparency, as you are aware, transparency is one of the key ways that you can enhance revenue generation. What I mean by transparency is the ability to see a transaction from end to end on a single platform, so that you will be able to block all loopholes and leakages in the system. What the 1-gov platform does, is it enables MDAs without any additional cost to benefit from this seamless transition that goes from one service provider to when payment is due in and across all boards. So it means, beyond the MDAs, it links various other systems.
For how long have you been implementing this 1-gov.net, how successful it is and how many MDAs have you captured on the platform?
The 1-gov. net came around 2009 that was when the first coupling of the MDAs started. By 2013 it had won a United Nations award for the way it was able to link over 400 MDAs at a go, on one platform. The whole concept around it was attractive that was how it got the UN award which is one of the most prestigious awards that you can get in line with this kind of ICT products. Over time we increased the number of MDAs in such a way and manner that I can comfortably say that 90 percent of all the MDAs within Abuja are linked with fiber backbone and across the country we have touched about 3,500 locations of different MDAs. It has been evolving and we keep expanding day by day, now beyond that we also host the websites and applications for many MDAs. We host websites for about 270 MDAs, so it is quite a large convergence of MDAs on the network as we speak.
One will be concerned about the security of this network, especially with the rate at which cyber-attacks are increasing worldwide, so pooling together all the MDAs in one platform means a single attack will run down the whole system. How secured is this network?
The important thing to know is that, among the key value propositions we most offer to exist as a company is security, just like you have mentioned. One of the key things is that there are two schools of approach to security, one is that you have back-up and preventive approach, and the best security situation is when you balance the two. Now what we have done primarily, is that beyond getting the best applications and hardware, we have also gone out of our way to ensure that we create the level of redundancy that is required. So typically, if we host your website within Galaxy, we have a backup. And we are also working to expand the number of data centres.
Hopefully, by the end of this year we are taking over the data centres of some of the MDAs that have existed before now, so we will have two additional data centres. What this means is that we will be able to have a situation where we have four data centres in different locations by the end of this year. Right now we have two, by the end of this month the third one will come live to ensure business continues to avert that risk you speak about. Beyond just doing that we have also consistently been able to have the world best practices. To be able to achieve that, we have an ISO certification which is purely targeted at information security management - the ISO 27001. We are probably one of the first public institutions to acquire it way back in 2011, we renewed it in 2013 and we are about to recertify it again this year. The fact that we are recertifying year on year, means we have opened our system for scrutiny to ensure we conform with best practices that we are known with.
Lastly, our main data centre here in Abuja, is the one that we are about to commission. It is tier three certified which is the highest certification you can obtain for data centre. When you are certified at that level, you have a level of redundancy and guarantee required to be able to give the sort of service level that is expected by the tier three data centre. Yes, we are still going to say that, that is still work in progress because the security threats are evolving by the day, so the best thing is to have systems that have resilience and to have a crop of people that are welltrained, that are able as possible to keep up with the speed of the threats, so we invest a lot in training our staff to ensure that we have been able to stay up to the speed of these threats.
How much did government save using this platform?
I can comfortably said, may be government has saved nothing less than 30 percent of what it could have expended on a unit per unit cost. I don’t have total figure in terms of cost.
Are you facing challenges in terms of remittance for your services by MDAs?
In reality no, there are off course one or two isolated cases but the truth is that because of the way we are allowed to operate, to a large extend because of the way we depend 100 percent on the revenue we generate, and with that understanding by the entities we serve and most of the services we provide are services that are already they paid for, some of them are budgeted for, and then lastly, but very rare, we have the power to switch off MDAs if they do not pay us. That is if you ignore our warnings and I know how you feel if today I take away your phone from you. That is how MDAs who depend on ICT also feels. It’s so fundamental to their services not to toy with. As a last resort, we can approach the Ministry of Finance or government and complain about particular MDA and seek for reimbursement directly, if all ways failed, but it hasn’t got to that level yet. These are some of the safeguards that are there for us to be able to continue to remain in business.
Are you been harassed by the private operators for not allowing them to get some share of the market?
On the contrary, a lot of private operators, knowing the model of Galaxy BB view us more like an ICT department of government and if that is so, we will not be their competitors. They come to us to access or sell other services to government. What we are providing for government is just small amount of the lower part of the value chain. What we do is essentially host their data, which is important, because government data should not reside anywhere, you should know where it is; it has to be incountry through an organisation that is conscious of the rules and regulation of the land. Secondly, we provide connectivity. On this, we partner with other service providers, because the truth
is that nobody has a full coverage of this country. You have to share capacity with different operators. These two things I have mentioned are enablers for the higher level of ICT products and services that are there for other private operators.
Does your Act allow you to have clients from the private sector?
We are allowed to have clients from the private sector, but we have been opportunistic about it. Because what government said is that, the work in connecting MDAs is large on its own right that until we get to some comfortable level, we will not be distracted by other opportunities, because we will be measured on how well we are able to provide services to government in the first place, then subsequently can be engaged by private clients, but interestingly we have a lot of interest in terms of service providers partnering with us either to create redundancies in their data centres in Lagos or Abuja or where we have fiber capacity. At that level we are more than at a retail level.
Are you partnering with other agencies like NIGCOMSat in providing coverage?
One of the key things when I came on board with the support of the Ministry of Communications is looking inwards to see how we solve all our problems. So the level of collaboration between the companies and departments under the Ministry of Communications Technology has improved dramatically in the way and manner that our company and NIGCOMsat signed an MOU to consolidate some of the services we provide unto their platform. Previously, we have other services on other satellites but now most of them are going through NIGCOMsat for obvious reasons - it make sense because NIGCOMsat is owned by government, we are owned by government as well, so in the light of creating synergy around that.
So you don’t see yourselves as rivals?
Far from it, we have two distinct areas of operations. NIGCOMSAT does not own data centres, they don’t have fibers optic, and Galaxy doesn’t own satellites and I can’t reach far areas without a satellite service so that synergy is very important. The kind of services we are offering are different but complementary to each other.
You have seen the past where ICT was considered as taboo by the MDAs, can you share how Nigeria was able to go through these changes and how far we have gone in ICT transformation?
I was reading a report in one of my old documents recently that led to the formation of Galaxy, as at that time, the 70 MDAs were surveyed to find out how much bandwidth they were utilizing. The total amount of bandwidth then was less than 3mhz. And that was 13 years ago, so imagine 70 MDAs using 3mgz if you try to give one MDA 3mgz (laughs). So the evolution has been wonderful to witness. Recently, there have been a huge acceleration of demand for better quality service and quantity. For obvious reasons, the fact that government has made several policy statements that point to the fact that if you did not digitize you may become irrelevant even as an MDA because you cannot work, statement like cashless policy, TSA all point the way. And then there are certain MDAs that have been able to digitize their operations and therefore any other one that wants to work with them must also digitize.
Secondly, government invested quite early in terms of the level of training it gave to workers, and lastly Nigerians love technology so that is how we achieved a lot but we are not yet there, there is a lot of work to be done in other areas. What is slowing things down has a lot to do with existing policies on how we process government business and you know, if you want to use IT there are some levels of engineering that must take place the way you use your phone for SMS is not the same way when you write a letter. The same thing with government; certain processes must be evaluated and changed. Being able to change the process in government is the hardest thing, that is where it slows the ICT penetration but hopefully the Ministry of Communications is working on some ICT and e-govt related road maps that will change the process.
Government is complaining about high cost in handling the Treasury Single Account platform. If invited for instance, are you going to make any impact on TSA management?
Yes, we have the enabling platform that will do that but like I said, when you speak about issues around Remita and the development of other applications then the volume matters. I think what alarmed everybody initially was that Remita was handling smaller volumes of transactions but when the volumes grew exponentially overnight and you multiply that percent of the handling charges into high volume of transactions it will be high. What will happen, like I said, when I talked of the economy of scale, the percentage should also drop drastically in line with volume, so that is what really will now have to evolve…Beyond that, our own specially is in providing the enabling infrastructure if government requires to develop certain level of applications. We have the relationship in the industry, the in-house expertise to develop a lot of these apps. When you are developing app you will find a lot of young entrepreneurs that are giving some kind of support. So we are encouraging such entrepreneurs to come forward to develop applications for government. To support them we are providing a hub around Abuja for those young entrepreneurs that will be able to provide some level of hosting so that the cost of hosting and testing such applications will be taken away. That is one way of supporting the ecosystem and giving back to society.
What is the position of Nigeria in Africa in terms of networking of government services?
We are behind countries like South Africa, Egypt, and Morocco. When you talk of government connectivity and infrastructure we are within the top five.