Ghana’s ICT sector regulator, National Information Technology Agency (NITA) has received proposals from vendors seeking for a contract to build and deploy a National Data Exchange to facilitate safe, seamless and affordable data sharing between state and private institutions across the country.
Director of Technical Services at NITA, Solomon Richardson tells Techfocus24 that the proposals are currently being evaluated, but latest by October ending this year a contract will be award for the project to start.
He said the exchange will connect all state and private institutions for seamless information sharing, adding that the exchange will not necessarily host data belonging to individual institutions, but rather be the channel via which all institutions can make requests for data from each other and receive feedback in real-time at a very affordable rate.
Cross-border Goal
According to him, beyond what NITA is doing locally, it is also working with Smart Africa Alliance to operationalize the SATA (Smart Africa Trust Alliance), which is a continental interoperable data exchange, designed to facilitate cross-border use of digital identities and data to stimulate trade and services across Africa.
“Ghana, Benin and Rwanda will be piloting the SATA from September to establish proof of concept before scaling to the rest of the continent,” he said. “What will then happen is that we will connect our National Data Exchange via a national gateway to the SATA to facilitate data sharing across the continent.”
He explained that, for instance, if a request comes from Rwanda seeking to verify the identity for a Ghanaian doing business in Rwanda, the request will go to SATA, then come through Ghana’s international gateway to the National Identification Authority (NIA), and they will respond with the information requested through the same channel.
“Similarly, if a company in South Africa wants to make payment to a merchant in Ghana, the transaction will go to SATA, come through Ghana’s international gateway and be directed to the respective financial institution for termination.
“This whole process will be in real-time, which is as instant as mobile money transfers happens,” he said.
Regulatory Interoperability
But currently, there is a caveat. Lack of legal/regulatory interoperability is a major hurdle.
Solomon Richardson said every request would have to meet the data protection and cybersecurity laws of the country from which the data is being requested, or else the request will not be granted. And the laws in each country are different.
To cure the regulatory disparities and ensure regulatory interoperability, he said “the legal brains from the three piloting countries have just finished a meeting with Smart Africa in Rwanda, where they discussed ways to effectively harmonize the various data protection and cybersecurity laws and regulations and make them interoperable, to support seamless data sharing between the countries.
National PKI to deepen security
Solomon Richardson said Ghana has also deployed a national PKI (public key infrastructure) backbone and latest by September, NITA will issue a request for proposal from interested vendors for licenses to provide a suit of trust services such as digital seals, digital certificates and digital signatures to institutions and individuals as an additional level of security within the data sharing space.
This, he said, is to ensure that the verifiable credentials of persons and institutions on the platform are easily accessible. This will go a long way to prevent fraud in that ecosystem.
“The PKI infrastructure is backed by a law, which states the specific architecture in terms of how the infrastructure should look like. So NITA has deployed the core architecture that will enable the private sector to now connect and provide the necessary intended services,” he explained.
According to him, currently, components of the national PKI is already in use, saying that the Ghana Card uses a certificate from the national PKI; Ghana Immigration Services also uses a certificate from the PKI on visas and also in the new set of passports being issued recently.
Affordability
Solomon Richardson said the deployment of the National Data Exchange is expected to bring efficiency into the data sharing ecosystem and that will drive down cost considerably for users.
He explained that instead of an institution or a person having to deal with various institutions separately, which often consumer more time and comes at a high cost, including sometimes travel cost, the use of the exchange means at a click of one button, a person or institution can have access to several institutions at a fraction of the cost they would have otherwise incurred.
“So not only would the data exchange save you money but also save you time and provide you with the convenience of having access to various institutions via the internet in the comfort of your home even after regular working hours,” he said.
On the international level, the common exchange means that institutions would need to invest in just one API to connect to the exchange and by that they have access to both local and foreign institutions for data sharing, instead of having to get separate APIs for each institution.
Timelines
In terms of the timelines for operationalization, Solomon Richardson said there will be a six month deadline for every contractor to rollout the infrastructure once they are awarded a contract, adding that “by June 2027 we expect both the National Data Centre and the National PKI to be fully up and running.”
He said the onboarding of institutions will however take a bit of time, so at the moment they are phasing the onboarding to ensure that by the time the infrastructure is fully operational, majority of institutions will be on it.
With regards to the cross-border exchange (SATA), he said the pilot is expected to run for four to five months, within which period all the necessary tweaks and adjustment will done to establish the proof of concept before scaling across the continent. But the onboarding will depend on the readiness of the individual countries.
