Data, critical tool for digital economy – NITDA

The National Information Technology Development Agency, (NITDA) has said that data plays a critical role in the country’s agenda toward a digital economy.

Mr Kashifu Inuwa, the Director-General of Agency, said this on Thursday while participating in an online US-Nigeria Digital Trade standards workshop organised by the US-Trade and Development Agency (USTDA).

The event which had the theme as “Current state of Data Privacy and security in Nigeria” was part of the webinars to mark the Data Privacy Week which began on Monday, Jan. 25.

“Data plays a huge role in our everyday activities as enormous amount of data is generated, collected and stored by all equipment like our mobile phones,” he said.

He explained that data protection differed from other protections, adding that privacy was a broad concept referring to the condition which enabled basic foundation of human dignity while data protection was more specific.

Inuwa said that data protection was about how third party managed information they had about people, collection process, how it was shared, stored and utilised.

He recalled the establishment of the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) on Jan. 25, 2019 which was created to meet global standards on data protection and provide unique innovative implementation process.

Inuwa said that the implementation strategy and continuous awareness for the NDPR saw the establishment of Data Protection Compliance Organisations (DPCOs), Data Breach Investigation Team and Police Enforcement Teams among others.

“The NDPR implementation framework has also succeeded in ensuring that within a year of coming on stream, a total of 635 data audit reports were filed by various entities across 13 sectors of the Nigerian economy.

“We have 15 investigations on alleged data breaches and 2,686 jobs were created,” he said.