FG Bans Use of Yahoomail, hotmail for Official Business

After what appears a long wavering, the federal government has dusted its project to migrate all its ministries, departments and agencies as well as civil servants to the .ng domain based websites and emails addresses, in a bid to protect state mechanism from deliberate and unintended abuse, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can now report.
The aim is to set up and operate a unified ICT infrastructure platform that permeates through all tiers of government and its agencies.
It would be recalled that since 2009, the federal government through Galaxy Backbone Plc, a public enterprise of the government had begun moves to replace so-called free email accounts like Yahoomail, hotmail used by government officials for communication with accounts ending in .ng.
.ng is Nigeria’s Code Top Level domain name, an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for Nigeria only.
Galaxy Backbone had in 2009 told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek that it was creating over 10,000 new .ng domain based email accounts for the public service organizations in place of the free email accounts.
Investigations however revealed that government’s bureaucracy coupled by the sore-footed and refractory approach of civil servants have combined to hobble the implementation of the idea touted as an elixir to the flagrant abuse and leakage of important government information through free email accounts.
In apparent bid to instill new security ethos and give credibility to official communications, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, minister of Communications Technology said recently that her ministry is re-jigging the project to create a single platform on .ng to help share facilities and information.
The creation of the .ng domain based websites and email addresses followed discovery that some civil servants have inadvertently transmitted sensitive government data and information through their own free email addresses which pose national security challenges.
It is also a measure to tackle the menace of cyber criminals who set up fraudulent websites and have reduced Nigeria’s image among the comity of Nations.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations however revealed that more than 15 months later, government officials including ministers, permanent secretaries, university lecturers and even ICT directors of government agencies still use free email accounts.
But Mrs. Johnson said her ministry will stem the tide adding that “we are putting in place a message and collaborative system to facilitate a connected government. All MDAs will be on .gov.ng. From next year when you get an email from a government official, it will be a .com.ng address. I have already started using mine.”
 This follows the realization that email correspondence is becoming pervasive these days with the penetration of the internet and the ease email communication offers to users.
By implication when the ministry of Communications Technology is able to achieve complete migration of all government ministries, departments and agencies as well as civil servants to .ng domain based websites and emails, emails sent or received on free email account, no matter their content, are not public records because they are not owned or used by a government agency.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that under the project, electronic communications will be owned, used, or retained by government only if they reside on a government server set up by Galaxy Backbone.
Under the programme, each ministry will now have customized email accounts that allow its civil servants to use the ministry’s name as their e-mail domain and in turn allow people to immediately recognize incoming e-mail messages´ origin. For example: wazobia@mod.gov.ng.
The key feature of the Galaxy Backbone email service is the fact that it can be accessed from anywhere in the world and on mobile devices.
Though Hotmail, Rediff, Sify, Gmail, Yahoomail and similar types of widely-used email accounts are popular and easy to set up, they do not confer identity on user.
And despite their popularity, such e-mail accounts present their users with a number of inconveniences; inconveniences that can be avoided with ng. domain touted to posses robust, versatile and richly featured personalized details.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that beyond creating identities for the various ministries, government wants to avoid the dangers of using free email accounts.
For instance, because users of hotmail and yahoomail accounts share their Internet domains with millions of other users across the Web, they run the risk of having people eavesdropping on them.
A permanent secretary for instance sending sensitive documents like military proposals and vouchers through free email accounts runs the risk of exposing intra and inter-ministerial transactions, which may be a clear breach of national security.   
Critics of the project are quick to dismiss the latest initiative and said it is a device by the government to avoid openness in the running of the state affairs.