By Silvia Nyambura
Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) using old computer software will soon be required to upgrade their systems. This follows the signing of an agreement between the National Information Technology Uganda (NITA-U) and Microsoft for harmonization of IT initiatives. This move will enable government benefit from discounts and economies of scale as well as reduce the risk of cyber attacks.
According to NITA-U Executive Director James Saaka, Cabinet in financial year 2012/2013 called for harmonization and rationalization of IT systems. One of the strategies under this was the ‘consolidation and bulk licensing of applications and software licenses’.
“To this end NITA-U signed an enterprise agreement for the acquisition of Microsoft Software Licenses through the Microsoft Business Service Agreement (MBSA).This was meant to among other things; curb the vice of pirating software and applications, realize cost savings to government in form of volume discounts (which was estimated at 30%) and free training offers (vouchers) saving about 20% of the retail purchase and build capacity of Ugandans in different areas of software management and licensing,
