The Ministry of ICT and National Guidance on Thursday launched a Digital Addressing System; ePosta, developed by CITZ Technologies in collaboration with Posta Uganda —they (Ministry) believe shall not only ease service delivery, but also spur business and e-Commerce for Ugandans.
Under Sections 115 and 116 of the Companies Act, it is a requirement for all companies to acquire and declare valid P.O. Box addresses prior to registration in Uganda. This has been difficult to enforce because the Posta Uganda had only about 80,000 physical addresses, which were fixed on walls. Now with digitization, Posta Uganda has capacity to offer limitless addresses, all because of the new system, ePosta. To-date they (Posta Uganda) have created 1,050 digital addresses and registration is continuing countrywide.
Posta Uganda is using the system and has connected 49 out of 108, of its offices countrywide —thereby enabling quick and reliable exchange of information.
The system has enabled on-line creation and management of Post Office Addresses, easing fulfilment of the national law on registration of companies and lately, filing annual returns. On the other hand, enabled on-line payment, renewal, and amendment of the owner’s particulars in case there is a change in the composition of Directors of a company.
Hon. Judith Nabakooba; the Minister for ICT and National Guidance while addressing journalists at the Ministry’s head offices in Kampala yesterday, said, “that the system has been fully tested and found to be secure.” Adding that the system allows end-to end encryption through finger-printing to prevent hackers and fraudsters from possible interference.
While concluding her remarks, Nabakooba invited public agencies to tap into this government infrastructure (ePosta) to improve on their service delivery. Among some of the government entities she mentioned that could use the digital addressing system to improve on their service delivery for Ugandans included; URSB, NIRA, Immigration, and Distributors of Drivers’ Licences.
There are on-going efforts to secure budgets to create Government Service Centres in Post Offices, where citizens shall obtain services conveniently, cheaply, and quickly. This is mainly because the government already has Post Office buildings across the entire country.
ePosta is one of the IT applications developed by young Ugandan innovators/entrepreneurs through the Innovation Fund for Young Entrepreneurs —that was was setup by the government to help give innovators/entrepreneurs financial assistance to develop practical IT solutions.
Nabakooba said, “The government setup an Innovation Fund for Young Entrepreneurs, and from this —is where we carried out a competitive process and identified credible young Ugandans who were given financial assistance to develop practical IT solutions. Among the applications that were selected and tested was ePosta.”
She concluded that ePosta is a significant milestone under the government’s goal of ease of doing business.
