State institution must manage ccTLD – Akumiah

Mr Eric Akumiah, General Manager of Africa Top-Level Domains (AfTLD), an ICT organization, has underscored the need for Ghana to vest the management of her Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) in an independent state institution.

He said the current situation where the ccTLD was being managed by a private company was not good enough to ensure efficiency in domain name registration in the country.

Mr Akumiah told the Ghana News Agency in an interview after presenting a paper at a forum organised by the Ghana chapter of Internet Society (ISOC) in Accra that ccTLD was very sensitive and represented a national resource, which must be protected.

His topic was: “The Role of ccTLD in a country”.

The forum, attended by ICT experts in the country, was to share knowledge on how best to deal with the challenges confronting the sector in the country.

ccTLD is the internet identity code for a country and its manager accredits or assigns distinct domain names to organizations and individuals to use to transact business.

Mr Akumiah said ccTLD was a complex area, the reason it must be entrusted to a state organization to ensure efficiency in registration of members.

He said this would also help the state to easily track organizations and/or individuals who would use the service to engage in negative activities.

He therefore, called for the management of Ghana’s ccTLD to be vested in the National Information Technology Agency (NITA), which is a credible state institution to bring efficiency to the system.

Nii Quaynor, Board Chairman of NITA, who chaired the forum, called on ISOC to be proactive in its dealings to avoid a situation whereby outsiders would be dictating to it as to what to do.

He called on ISOC to work to ensure that more people used the internet service.

Mr William Tevie, Director General of NITA, said government was working to build data centres as part of its e-governance project, which would help improve internet exchange in the country.

Mr Akumiah, on behalf of ISOC, presented a plaque to Mr Tevie and congratulated him on his appointment as the Director General of NITA.

Source: GNA