Ghana has decided to strengthen the security service in the country. Recently, Ghana’s government has issued an ultimatum to state agencies and employees to stop using private email domains for official communication to avoid security risks.
In confirmation, Minister of Communication Ursula Owusu-Ekuful said that by the end of the year, all government agencies should fully migrate onto the government domains, local media report. This is a way to secure all important documents that can jeopardise the success and development of the country:
“By the end of this year, we don’t want to receive any official communication from any ministry, department or agency on any email platform either than .gov.gh.”
The minister further added that it is the government platform and should be respected as government officials are expected to create all official mails under the new government emails:
“That information is not your personal information, it is official communication, and it is governments work so that must be on the government platform.”
In addition, the minister warned all government department to respond urgently to the email creation stating that any communication without the new government email will not be attended to.
Also, she was speaking to information technology professionals in the capital Accra, calling on them to help in achieving the smart country dream while being security conscious. She said that it is a stepping stone to a safety governance.
Africans are really building security consciousness as last month, the Tanzanian government also issued an ultimatum to state institutions to immediately change their website domain names from .com to .tz to promote the country’s identity. Deputy Communication Minister Edwin Ngonyani instructed the country’s communication regulatory body to implement the order and take action against those who fail to make the switch.
However, .gh (Ghana) and .tz (Tanzania) are Top Level Country Domains (TLD) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) that oversees its approval process. As of February 2017, there were 1528 top-level domains registered. The common domain names used are .com, .org, .net which are open for any person or entity to register. However, the country, government, education and institutional domains are restricted to the institutions and purposes they were intended for. A better way to further strengthen security.
Ghanaian government is in a big deal to secure the country and at the same time, increase the country’s level of identity and popularity in the world. However, Ghanaian government further urged all governmental bodies to create the official emails to boost the level of security in the country.
