The National Information Technology Authority Uganda (NITA-U) on Thursday handed over an e-Licensing System to the National Forestry Authority (NFA) to provide an efficient & automated platform for registration, licensing, transfers, harvesting and dissemination of information to tree farmers. In addition, the system enables online application for tree planting and allows farmers to access information about their application status, make online payments and access payment information among other features.
While address the press at NFA head offices in Bugolobi, NITA-U Executive Director Dr. Hatwib Mugasa said they are glad to hand over the system to NFA having been approached forestry body to provide technical support in digitizing the institution. He also added that the institution has been connected to the National Backbone Infrastructure(NBI), hosted their website on the Government Cloud.
In his concluding remarks, Mugasa, said; “I’d like to thank the Management and Staff of NFA for trusting us as your partners in this digitization effort. You have set an example that all Government entities must emulate. Let me take this opportunity to encourage all Government institutions that have not yet fully embraced digitization to join the digital revolution. As NITA-U, we are ready to journey with you.”
NFA Executive Director, Mr. Tom Okello Obong thanked NITA-U for providing the system to them and will ease their work henceforth. He said their goal was to facilitate tree farmers in accessing services from NFA online and provide real time information about farmers for better management.
“I’m glad to announce that as we speak, we are migrating existing farmers into the system and updating existing farmers. Farmers will now be able to apply from anywhere and at any time,” said Obong.
The e-Licensing system on top of facilitating online applications and access to information, will be able to manage back end approval processes, provide a dashboard for management and provide reports and enable payments.
The next phase of implementation will see the system extend licensing to other areas such as Research, Eco-tourism and Occupation, Telecommunication masts, Nursery Management and
Mining.
The system comes at time when the government through NITA-U has embarked on the process of integrating all government systems so that data can seamlessly be shared across government in a rational, secure, efficient and sustainable manner in order to improve service delivery to citizens through e-services.
The e-Licensing system becomes an addition to the over 160 applications developed by NITA-U from over 90 government entities that are currently hosted in the National Cloud Data centers.
