Directorate of Information & Communications Technology

Meet the Office of the Director of Information and Communications Technology (ICT). This office was established in January, 2008 with the goal to pilot the development, evolution and realization of ICT Strategic plan for the University. Staff of the Directorate participate in and represent the University, as apposite, on all vital ICT initiatives embarked on by the University. The office supervises Academic Information and Communication Technologies (AICT), and Administrative Information Systems (AIS), which are the major support units in MOUAU.

 

Background

The creation of the Directorate was informed by the desire not to repeat the syndrome of abandoning projects after the providers had recouped the cost and benefits of establishing them in many developing countries. The later had in most cases been attributable to inadequate arrangements to takeover the project at the expiration of the contract by the partners. This has in most cases been because of failure to ensure the engagement of personnel to understudy the contractor partners during the execution of the project.

Head: 
unamma.ray

Vision

The Directorate has the vision to maintain a centre of excellence to bolster a sustainable ICT-enabled environment at the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike Campus and within its mandate Zone and beyond.

Mission

The mission of the Directorate is to ensure availability of high and sustainable ICT resources through quality management, control and maintenance of end user-oriented processes.

Objectives

The Objectives of the Directorate of ICT are to;

  1. Provide support and advocacy to the Nigerian National policy on ICT.

  2. Implement MOUAU ICT Master Plan.

  3. Supervise MOUAU ICT development project contracts to outside agencies.

  4. Initiate, attract, develop and maintain Exchange and External Relations with potential partners—local and international.

  5. Manage, control and maintain ICT wherewithal in MOUAU.

  6. Provide backup services to the University’s ICT Users.

  7. Serve as Knowledge Centre for MOUAU Agro-ecological mandate zone.

Scope

Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike recognizes Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services and schemes as critical and has given top priority to facilitators in achieving its Vision and Mission. The University is convinced also that ICT is presently one of the most critical tools in higher education. This is because ICT permeates every aspect of any distinguished university of this century from the first contact a student has with the website of such university through the myriad systems that manage and provide access to information of that institution. Keeping this in mind, the MOUAU authorities saw the need for hiring professionals in ICT to strategically plan and implement this University’s work in alignment with the University's Strategic Initiatives.

In March 2007, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ikenna Onyido FAS announced the reorganization of the campus information and Communication Technology units into a single ICT Directorate under the direction of a Director. By May 2007, the unit began the migration into a new organisational structure (Figures 1 and 2). In developing the organizational plan, the institution focused on the Malcolm Baldrige principles for excellence in education to implement an integrated organization that strives to provide continuous improvement in service-value for the MOUAU community, improved education quality, and enhanced organizational effectiveness remain the ultimate goal of these steps.

Accordingly, the University embarked on the implementation of ICT services and schemes with the support of the Federal Government of Nigerian, the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the mother Ministry of Education in partnership with some development partners—Zinox Technologies Ltd., AfriHUB of USA and others. However, appreciating the global scarcity of ICT expertise, and in order to rationalise and minimise the copious escalating costs consequent upon multiple hiring of such expertise, the Management of MOUAU set up the Directorate for ICT (DICT), as a central service unit to provide proficient services and guidance to all academic and administrative (non-academic) units of the University as well as to the entire University community.

The Institution got the Directorate to develop Service Level Agreement to assist the Directorate and other MOUAU Units, Programmes, Colleges and School centres and Directorates with guidelines for setting expectations, in regards to offering ICT backstops.

Director of ICT

unamma.ray's picture
Dr Raymond Paul Agwunobi Unamma, B.Sc. (Hon), M.Sc., Ph.D.

My first exposure to the use of the Computer was during a two months (June – July 1991) Computer Literacy Course at the World Bank Resident Mission, Lagos. The course...

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