President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to subject the Integrated Payroll Personnel Information System (IPPIS) and the two other proposed payment solutions proposed by University workers to fresh integrity test
This is in a bid to end the lingering strike action where Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is demanding among other things the replacement of IPPIS with UTAS.
NITDA earlier claimed that the University Transparency Accountability Solution failed three integrity tests.
But ASUU which has been on strike since February 14, claimed that UTAS was developed to address the peculiarities of the university system which the IPPIS failed to do.
ASUU expressed worry that despite subjecting UTAS to the integrity test twice, the Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency, which scored the software over 90 per cent, misled the public that UTAS failed the tests.
The body challenged NITDA to subject IPPIS to the same integrity test, warning that if the agency failed to heed their call, ASUU would be left with no option but to expose the politicians behind IPPIS, who are feeding on it.
Earlier, Kashifu Inuwa, director-general of NITDA, said the University Transparency Accountability Solution failed three integrity tests.
According to him, the tests were meant to qualify UTAS — which was brought forward by the Academic Staff Union of Universities — as an alternative payment platform to the IPPIS.
Inuwa said ASUU is currently reviewing the system.
“When we received the request to review UTAS, you know, building a complex system like UTAS that involves employees’ personal data, and also payment system, we have to subject it to best practice tests before approving,” he said.
“Normally, when we are reviewing that kind of system, we perform three tests. Firstly, because when you’re building system, it’s not just about the technology, you need to consider the people that will use this system and the process. You need to get the business requirement. What do you want to achieve? So, it’s not the technology that will come first; it is the business requirement. Then, you need to identify the capabilities you need to achieve that your business objective.
“Part of the capability is the technology you need to bring in and the people that will operate the technology, because technology is always a tool that will help you to achieve an objective or to do your work. If you bring the tool before knowing what to do with it, it will be useless.”
He said NITDA conducted a user acceptance test, a vulnerability test to check for possibility of hacking, and a stress test to prevent the system from crashing.
“We did all these three tests with them and the system couldn’t pass. We wrote the reports and submitted it back to the honourable minister, which he forwarded to all relevant institutions, including ASUU. As we speak now, ASUU is working, trying to fix all the issues we highlighted with the system and we will review it again. But that is just one half of the story,” he said.
“The second half of the story is that we need to find where to put that system like IPPIS. We have a data centre built for it. That means we need to have the data centre, and we need to check to make sure it meets minimum requirement, because if you put people’s information and the system crashes, how can you pay them salary?
“There are a lot of things to do. As we speak, they’re trying to fix all the issues we highlighted with the system.”