On September 23, CID wrote to NITA-U Executive Director, Dr. Hatwib Mugasa, requesting copies of files related to project implementation, including work plans and budget for the last financial year 2023/2024, payment vouchers, procurement and accountability. documents and “any relevant information”.

“CID in collaboration with SHACU is conducting investigations into allegations of procurement irregularities by NITA-U,” the letter reads in part.

Investigate, monitored understands comes against the backdrop of recent revelations that senior NITA-U officials are involved in back-bending the Terms of Reference (ToR) to favor certain vendors bidding and bypassing the contract committee and evaluation committee for certain aspects of the project.

There is also a long list of complaints lodged with the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Act (PPDA) tribunal by suppliers challenging the awarded contracts.

In the same vein, sources close to the project told this newspaper that the growing discord within NITA, accentuated by the tug of war in the executive committee, with each of the senior officials pulling in different directions. There are also claims of officials pushing bidders for advance payments.

This messy state, sources added, has been flagged by the World Bank, which since 2023 has been complaining to the Finance and ICT Ministries about the slow absorption of 6% of the $200 million kitty. The project ends in two years.

The UDAP-GOVNET project was approved by the World Bank in June 2021, consisting of a grant of $60 million (Shs218b) and a loan of $140 million (about Shs510b).

The project aims to expand access to high-speed internet, improve the efficiency of digital government services and strengthen the digital inclusion of refugees and host communities in north-east and south-west Uganda.

As a result, sources indicated that several key government agencies including the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) and the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) have taken matters into their own hands by outsourcing private data/hosting to private providers. This is because NITA’s central data center at Statistics House on Colville Street in Kampala is always on and off.

Since its inception on 17 May 2023, the UDAP-GOVNET project has been plagued by numerous setbacks, which insiders attribute to “implementation incompetence”.

A September 2024 Ministry of Finance audit report on externally funded projects detailed the overall physical performance of the project as “weak and lagging” with “the obvious likelihood that several project outputs will not be achieved by the end of the project unless they are steps taken to speed up the processes.”

“NITA-U, the ministries of ICT and Finance should prioritize the counterpart funding of the project in the remaining period to achieve the planned value.

And the government should align the funding approval process with the lenders’ approval schedule to mitigate time overruns,” the audit recommended.

Huawei built the fiber optic system to link all government operations into a single network during the initial phases of the NBI/eGI project.

However, the government has turned to the Dell system and Juniper firewall, respectively, developed by US companies Dell Inc and Juniper Network, for network security.

Juniper also designed the first MAN Center housed at Statistics House on Colville Street in Kampala. The MAN Center connects IT systems in a wider metropolitan area.

As such, Huawei, which carries out the cabling and construction of the MAN under the UDAP-GOVNET project, has been flagged by some insiders as not understanding, considering that almost all information of ministries, departments and agencies flows through the portal. However, this led to the removal of several technical officers from the project, which stalled the procurement of several key components.

UDAP is an extension of the National Backbone Infrastructure and e-Government Infrastructure (NBI/EGI) funded by the Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM), the fiber optic cable connecting all government offices and the supply and installation of communication equipment for to allow transmission. of voice, data and conferencing services.

The first phase of the project was completed in June 2008 and involved the laying of fiber optic cable in Kampala and Entebbe to link 27 MDAs and the laying of 168 km of fiber linking Kampala to Mukono, Bombo and Jinja.

The second phase ran from 2009 to 2013, comprising the installation of 1,400 km of fiber and the construction of a data center at Statistics House in Kampala to manage all e-government services on NBI/eGI.

The third phase ran from 2016 to 2017, covering 756 km of high-speed fiber optic cable from Kampala to western Uganda and the borders with Tanzania and Rwanda, while the fourth phase was funded by the World Bank under the Program Regional Communications Infrastructure (RCIP) of US$75 million (Shs273b) between 2016 and 2022 to expand the ICT backbone in West Nile districts and border points with DR Congo and South Sudan.