Dr Oyewole Oyedokun, president / chairman, Governing Council at Institute of Information Management – Africa, started hi professional career in the late 90s .
He is also the president, RIMA Foundation (Nigeria & South Africa) and WM and managing director/CEO, Wolexdok Micro-processor.
Oyedokun has received different international awards for his contribution towards the development of the Information Management industry in Nigeria and Africa.
He spoke to peter ugwu on matters of urgent importance in the cyber space, national database, among others, in Nigeria.
Relevance of Information Managers in Big Data Era
The advent of Big Data has buttress the need for proper records and information management. What is the essence of us having data or information that cannot be utilized for better decision-making? How do we make the retrieval easy?
These are some of the issues that Big Data has brought to the table. Every company that want to make adequate usage of Big Data must have Good Information Governance (GIG); that is, you know what you have, where they are located, the person that is in-charge, the retention period, the corporate format to keep the information, these must be in place for individuals or organizations to have control over information they have.
Government and Proper Information Management
First, I will commend the Federal Government and the lawmakers for passing the Freedom and Information (FOI) Bill into law.
I can say authoritatively that the process has changed the game. In the past, most Government Institutions do not see the need for records management due to lack of openness in governance. This led to secrecy with certain information management.
The passage has sent a positive signal to workers in the public service as the law requires them not to stop the public access to certain documents.
But, on the implementation government is not doing enough. Beyond just ordinary training, information management training is an essential ingredient to ensure the FOI regime becomes a reality.
Without GIG, retrieval becomes an issue while individuals require certain documents.
The government has the largest part of information generated in the country. So, training of workers ought to be a continuous process.
Synergy between Information Management and Information Security
Well, information management an umbrella also caters for information security. When we refer to cyber space, it is just a medium.
Physical environment is another medium. So, if you have GIG in place, then you can have principles guiding the cyber space and the information physical environment.
At this juncture, it is pertinent to note that for you to have control over the cyber space; you ought to have developed a functional physical space.
It is what you have physically that will be transformed into digital content. Today, quite a number of organizations in Nigeria do not event have information management policy; they do not understand the specifications, standards, procedures, manuals.
If you have employee handbook, then you should a kind of manual that guide information management, so that you can get it right from the time data is generated through disposal which is regarded as information life-cycle.
For instance, there are information that are permanent in nature; in as much as such organization exists it must be there.
Hence you do use them regularly, they should be archived in an off-sight location, which could be physical or in the cloud.
Information Management Policy Negligence
By not having the policy in place, you will be exposing the organization to risks. The risks include information theft, penalties by regulatory authorities, legal tussles, and efficiency becomes a nightmare.
Such organization will discover that the staff spend time and resources searching for information they may end up not able to lay hands on.
It could cost the company a whole lot of revenue. When I was still in the oil & gas sector, there was a particular document that the company needed; they ended up spending millions of dollars to get a copy from the original designer of a particular project. It was just an A4 document.
The issue of storage becomes problematic too, because at a point you wouldn’t know which document to keep or dispose.
This is prevalent in public sector where rooms are designate for stack of old documents and files. Those spaces would have been put to use for other arrangements. They are even stored that retrieval is difficult; hence there is no classification or proper arrangement.
Message of InfoSecurity Conference 2014 And Nigeria’s Cyber Security Bill
It was a wonderful experience. Part of the sessions I attended the minister of Internal Affairs (UK), said something that drew my attention.
According to him, 10% of UK’s gross domestic earnings come from the cyber space. This is something we should be looking at.
We want to build or develop our economy, then, of what benefit has the cyber space been to us? How well are we taking the advantage?
A country like UK achieving 10% of their GDP through the internet, it means we can do better. Here, we have a lot of resources: human, natural resources and even the finance, and commodities we can invest online. The government could generate revenue from that.
To me, some of the take-homes from the conference actually came from that message, because, we are taking things with levity.
For the fact we have oil, we seem to be blindfolded in exploiting other sectors for employment generation, investment opportunities and increase in GDP.
Aside that, there are technologies trending presently that organizations in Africa should be tapping into. For instance, data analytics, I was stunned by some of the solutions I saw there, because there are so many things you could do.
We are emphasizing on cyber security, there are technologies that help in shedding off hijackers along the line. Even if they succeed in hijacking it, the hackers wouldn’t have access to the content, because they are encrypted.
There are some that even if I mistakenly send you an email, and discover it, I could swiftly block it from my end. You will receive it but with no access to the content.
There are software that could aide to track if your email was delivered or opened by the other party. In fact, there are several technologies that cloud has provided us with today, reducing stress on organisations’ infrastructure and resources.
Benefit from Cyber-Entrepreneurship
Foremost, government has a lot of works to do. They need to encourage local software developers. Secondly, the entrepreneurs need an environment that protects their interest before they can excel.
We have a number of them that with little support from government they will build amazing software. I have seen locally developed applications that you would never believe are developed in Nigeria.
If we were able to do that, other countries will subscribe to them, are we not earning foreign exchange by then? It will help our economy to blossom.
To individuals, the cyber space has created a lot of opportunities. If you have products or services, you could launch them online. Without restrictions, clients could be coming from different part of the world. It has really bridged the digital divide.
This innovation has even heightened with the cashless policy introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). It is one of the major requirements for people to thrive in e-commerce.
Recently, Paypal came into Nigeria. To me, that was a major breakthrough for this economy. It has increased the confidence or trust level of outsiders with regards to Nigeria. Before now, transacting an online business has been a nightmare.
Then, you must visit the banks for transfers. Banks would also delay in approving certain conditions for the transactions to go through. But Paypal has come up with a very simple system where you just link your bank account even in local currency. It makes life easier and seamless.
Internet Availability and Affordability
To me, we still have a lot to do in that area. There is need for more companies’ participation in the sector.
To do this, the licencing fees should be slashed, because for any industry to thrive, we need competition.
By the time we have increased number of service providers, the cost will drop automatically. The monopoly few players are enjoying is responsible for the high subscription costs.
Should we have more investors, the country will be surprised with the kind of services they will roll out.
National Identity Management Project
It is a wonderful development, because we have been craving for this for a long time. And for the very first time, Nigeria will seem to be on track. But my major concern the partnership with the international organization.
Enactment on a policy for Information Protection & Privacy (IPP) is something that the government needs to take cognizance of.
As a country, we cannot entrust our data into the hands of corporate entity like the company they are partnering with. If they have to toe that part, it means our information are not protected. Before going into this, the government ought to have put a policy in place. Nigeria, as a country, do we have information privacy policy? It’s not in place. What do we think will govern our relationship with these international organizations?
What will govern the way and manner our government will entrust data in their hands? How well are we protected? Before they go into full implementation, I would want the Nigerian government to look into this privacy act. These are very key.