The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the National Policy on the Government, Second Level Domain, which aims to protect official communications using government top-level domains, according to the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami.
This was when he spoke to State House media on the outcome of the Council meeting on Wednesday in Abuja, which was presided over by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo.
He claimed that government personnel must now shift from generic domains to the “second level under the government top-level domain” in their websites and emails.
According to him, government officials will no longer be allowed to use private email accounts such as yahoo.com, hotmail.com, or gmail.com for official interactions.
“The paper I provided is our national policy, which the Federal Executive Council has endorsed.” National Policy on the Government, Second Level Domain is the name of the policy.
“This policy has been approved, and it focuses on requiring federal public institutions, ministries, departments, agencies, and all other institutions that are part of the government to migrate from using generic domains in their websites and emails to using our second level domain under the government top-level domain.”
“For example, certain government entities will engage in official communications utilizing private email: yahoo.com; hotmail.com, gmail.com, and it is an official communication,” says the author.
“And someone may retire, or his or her tenure may be completed, or the tenure may be terminated, and he or she will leave with the same email.” And there are a lot of official documents in that email.
“As a result, the government will no longer accept this.” Any official correspondence must be sent via official email. And it should not be a generic email. It’s got to be dot gov dot ng.
“What matters most, dot.ng, is that our national identity be preserved.” There are many different types of second-level domains, some of them are for military purposes, such as mil.ng (military is a short version of military). Nigeria is represented by the dot ng.
“It’s possible to see.gov. gov stands for government, and ng stands for Nigeria. So there are second-level domain categories, as well as our country’s top-level domain. ng must appear in our webpages so that anyone who visits them will recognize that they are from Nigeria. In the case of email, the official name must be reflected.”
The benefits of the new policy, he claimed, would include the protection of the country’s internet as well as national identity protection.
To encourage openness and good governance, he announced that all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) must adopt the new national policy.
Pantami stated that an official circular would be released soon, outlining the best method to begin implementing the policy right away.
He noted that the National Information Technology Development Agency, which is in charge of the government domain and the second-level domain, would be happy to help MDAs implement the new policy.
“Each government employee is also expected to have an official email address via which he can communicate.”
“As a result, the Federal Government of Nigeria has approved this policy.” And part of the policy said that the government would not tolerate noncompliance,” he added.
