The National Information Technology Agency (NITA) has advised heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to seek their services before engaging information technology firms to manage their data.

Mr Richard Okyere-Fosu, the Acting Director General of NITA, who gave the advice, said it is important to was to scrutinize such firms so as to ensure that the “right services” were engaged to promote effective data management.

He was speaking at a NITA Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Conference for stakeholders held via webinar in Accra.

Mr Okyere-Fosu said more often than not, heads of MDAs and MMDAs do not consult with NITA, a body tasked to regulate ICT in the country, when engaging the services of IT firms, a situation that had led to some security breaches.

Some of which includes; the locking up of a revenue mobilisation database of a metropolitan assembly by a private IT firm, the 2017/2018 glitch of the Ghana Education Service’s Senior High School Placement System, and defacement and hacking of websites of MDAs in the past.

“We are here to work with the MDAs and MMDAs and not against them, so they need to engage us more when seeking for services of IT firms to manage their websites and data,” Mr Okyere-Fosu said.