70% of government websites hosted abroad – NiRA

About 70 per cent of government websites designated as either gov.ng or mil.ng are hosted in other countries, according to data from the Nigeria Internet Registration Association.

The data showed that majority of the sites were hosted in the United States, about 59 per cent; 3.4 per cent in Great Britain; 3.3 per cent in the Netherlands; and 1.3 per cent in other countries.

The remaining 30 per cent of the sites are hosted within the country.

According to industry operators, the hosting of content outside the shores of the country is a huge loss in revenue to Nigeria and it discourages economic growth.

The Chief Executive Officer, Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria, Mohammed Rudman, stated that local hosting of content was cheaper and would attract foreign investments into the country.

Another advantage of hosting locally, according to him, is the speed of the connectivity, which favours video streaming.

While speaking at a forum recently, Rudman said, “It saves money because when traffic remains local, it reduces capital flight and money stays in the local economy, which is used to provide better local infrastructure and services for customers.

“Customers tend to pay less for Internet access and therefore more customers sign up, because cost is cheaper. Internet Service Providers have more business and more opportunities.”

Findings by our correspondent showed that as of November last year, over 30 government agencies and parastatals had yet to migrate from their international and local domain names designated as gov.ng domain.

Checks by our correspondent on the web portal of the regulatory bodies and government establishments showed that many still had either the .ng, .org or .com domain names, while a few had complied.

The drive for government agencies and parastatals to adopt the gov.ng domain name is in line with the move to use Information and Communications Technology for efficient service delivery and improve the ease of doing business in the country.

The Director-General/Chief Executive Officer, National Information Technology Development Agency, Dr. Isa Pantami, had directed all Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the government to ensure that all official business transactions were strictly carried out on the country code Top Level Domain of the Nigerian government (ccTLD.ng).

He said measures had been put in place to ensure that all government MDAs operated within the .gov.ng.