The need to build digital trust and implement international standards to support digitisation policies was the centre of discourse at a Digital Policy workshop, organised by the British Standards Institution (BSI), held in Abuja.
The Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, who opened the discourse disclosed the centrality of NITDA’s role as regards standard in digital transformation, noting that the event is quite timely as it would deepen the collaboration between the Agency, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and the British Government, invariably, helping in enhancing digital trust and adoption within Nigeria.
He further disclosed that the Agency is working assiduously to build digital trust across boards, in order to reawaken as well as repose confidence in the citizenry who are expected to make use of digital services safely and responsibly.
According to him, there is the need to have standard and a guideline for building our services and digital offering, as well as develop standard for the Nigerian Digital Public Infrastructure, we need international collaboration to get the job done.
“We also need to build a system that can scale beyond Nigeria where our solutions would be indigenous but have global market value”, Inuwa said.
He said that the challenges in Nigeria, especially when it relates to e-commerce and online transactions may have over the years negatively impacted on the dwindling trust but with the call for the adoption of international standards, there is hope that every transaction will be trusted in Nigeria.
“With digital trust in place, the plan is to have automated transactions and electronically generated invoice afterwards, this and more are possible but it is not something to be done at a local level, hence, partnering key players like the SON and international bodies like the BSI”.
The Team Lead, British Standards Institution (BSI), Dr Nigel Croft lauded the collaboration, noting that after the workshop, there will be training sessions for all critical stakeholders in the standards sector of Nigeria to explore the adoption of a standard that can be in line with global best practices.
