IFC's $340‚000 support for IT projects

KATHMANDU:

Government has received support to set up ‘government cloud’ and implement long planned digital signature to make online transactions safe and reliable. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has agreed to provide technical support to the government for these two projects.

As per the agreement signed on Friday, the Department of Information Technology (DoIT) under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (MoSTE) will receive technical support worth $210,000 to establish and operate the government cloud. Under this support, IFC will help the government in technology development and capacity building. Government cloud, as per the budget announcement for the current fiscal year, is targeted to maintain government information based on cloud technology and maintain effective archive.

Similarly, for digital signature implementation, IFC has offered support (capacity development and consultancy) equivalent to $130,000. The fund will be used for operation of public key infrastructure (PKI) to make electronic transactions safe and give it legal recognition.

Valentino S Bagatsing, country representative of IFC for Nepal, and Birendra Kumar Mishra, director general of DoIT, signed the two advisory agreements for the technical support on Friday.

“The partnership of IFC will help Nepal to implement digital signature to make available e-services,” said Krishna Chandra Poudel, secretary at MoSTE, during the agreement signing programme. He said once the system is established, it will facilitate in improving governance.

Even as the government launched digital signature three years ago, it is yet to come into practice for secure electronic transactions. A digital signature is a special identification code certified by the government and it is used to authenticate digital information such as documents, e-mail messages by the sender or the signatory to a document and ensures that the document is genuine.

Both PKI and private key are equally important to implement the digital signature. Private key is provided to users, while PKI is known to the other party or the receiver to validate information sent by private key holders. Office of Controller of Certification (OCC) under MoSTE is the main responsible government body to implement digital signatures.

Mishra, who is also controller of OCC, said they have already appointed Radiant Info Tech Nepal as the certifying agency (CA) to issue private keys to users and the IFC support will help prepare the PKI for implementation of digital signature in the country. “We have asked the CA to make their infrastructure ready by mid-April this year and the government’s system will also be ready by then for digital signature.”

Source: THT