Eze, DG of BPP Commends Galaxy

Galaxy Backbone, a wholly independent company with the primary mandate of setting up and operating a unified Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure platform has been commended for delivering government’s objectives in setting up the company and being resourceful in sustaining service provisioning to its customers’ with bandwidth inspite of the failure of Nigcomsat satellite station which was a major supplier of bandwidth to the company. 
Emeka Eze, director general of Bureau of Public Procurement said during a tour of Galaxy facilities made up of state of the art National Data Centre and Network Operating Centre from where the company is currently providing connectivity, co-location and other enhanced quality services to its customers in the public and private sectors including Government MDAs.
While receiving them, Mr. Gerald Ilukwe, managing director of Galaxy Backbone informed the Eze that the Federal Government had a clear and specific focus for setting up Galaxy Backbone as Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for the harmonization and integration of the deployment of ICT infrastructure and services to public institutions, underserved communities and other stakeholders based on economies of scale which will result in cost savings for all.
According to Ilukwe, this is line with a global trend that has witnessed Governments in India, South Africa, Malaysia, Egypt, Ireland, Israel, The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, to mention a few, demonstrate the ability to use technology – ICTs - to positively transform their economies through improved public sector delivery of services to citizens and businesses.
Ilukwe therefore condemned the practice by government organizations who are duplicating efforts and wasting national resources in the face of global economic crisis through the award of contracts for ICT infrastructure and services that Galaxy is already well resourced by the Federal Government to provision. He stated that such ‘siloed’ approach to the utilization of ICTs is counterproductive to national development as the issue of interoperability and security of national data are compromised.
During the tour, the director general and his team were conducted round the various top of the breed IT equipment installed at Galaxy’s Network Operating Centre as part of the NICEP network. The team inspected the company’s Interactive Distance Learning (IDL) project through which Galaxy enables the delivery of multiple, live synchronous e-learning lessons to an unlimited number of geographically dispersed students to either PC or TV-based classrooms using a friendly student/instructor interaction. The IDL project combines high quality bi-directional video, voice and educational tools like slide projection, whiteboard, chat and application projection. The BPP team also toured the state of art National Data Centre where mission critical systems and applications can be hosted securely. In addition, organizations can utilize the Data Center to take advantage of dedicated Galaxy-managed servers; they can also co-locate their own servers or opt for bundled offers that include broadband connections and a mixture of other services such as multi-layered network security, management and monitoring.
Commenting, the Head, Federal Public Sector, Galaxy Backbone, Mr. Frank Ugbodaga said “the facility tour affords us the opportunity to explore various ways that Galaxy can support the laudable work being undertaken by BPP and we also shared our roadmap for the development of ICT infrastructure and services in the federal public sector”.