Government secures 10,000 Zoom application licenses for ‘critical’ public officers

Government has secured 10,000 Zoom video conferencing application licenses for the ‘critical staff’ that will need to work even during the lockdown.

This is according to a statement from the Permanent Secretary Vincent Waiswa Bagiire who issued guidelines that the selected public officers will have to follow while they continue to work away from their offices following President Museveni’s directive.

Bagiire noted that the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology and National Guidance, working with the National Information and Technology Authority (NITA) and the office of the Prime Minister with support from UNDP, had secured the licences.

According to Bagiire, all accounting officers in public institutions will have to identify the ‘critical staff’ that will need to be connected to Zoom for continuity of their work.

“All Accounting Officers should ensure that the identified officers have necessary equipment and connectivity to facilitate the Zoom application. The IT Officers in each MDA/LG are responsible for setting up/issuance of the licenses to the identified critical staff,” Bagiire said in a statement.

Bagiire tasked the public officers who will be working online to ensure confidentiality and data security when working from home as guided by the National Information Security Framework (NISF) and cyber security advisory from the National and Sectoral Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs).

“It is imperative that Public Officers working remotely desist from sharing official documents and/or communication to the general public by restricting communications on a need-to-know basis.”

“To ease the collaboration between government to government, the Ministry proposes that we minimize physical delivery of documents in favor of scanning and sending emails to relevant officers; something that MoFPED has done extremely well. Working from home is legally supported by the Electronic Transactions Act 2011 among others.”

According to Bagiire, all government websites and social media platforms are part of government’s communication assets and they will be used in the campaigns against COVID19.

Bagiire noted that a portal (Covid.gou.go.ug) has been developed in addition to the Ministry of Health channels to be a one stop platform that gives factual information on Uganda’s response to Covid19.