UBA boss roots for speedy technology development

From Andersen Consulting where he had a three-year stint as consultant after a First Class degree in Industrial Mathematics, from University of Benin, Benin, Wahab Aminu-Sarumi had taken up a self appointed mandate to change the face of Information Technology and Accounting practice in Nigeria.

By the time he set up Wadof Software Consulting in 1993 as the Chief Software Architect, he had become an Associate member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN). But his forte remains software practice and holds a very strong opinion of local content in software programming if only the banks and other government agencies and multinationals would patronise the locals. Besides University of Benin, he has had several trainings in Chicago, Bristol, Eindhoven, in Systems Design, Installation, Application Programming among others.

A stickler for perfection, his campaign has since caught on as many more people have joined in order to curtail capital flight by reducing patronage of foreign softwares and giving the locals a chance.

In this interview with The Guardians SONNY ARAGBA-AKPORE, he bares his mind on this and related issues. Excerpts:

HOW can technology be used to drive business whether in government or in other organisations?

It is important to stress here that leveraging on technology to drive business does not imply changing your core application. This explains why most airlines, for example, have moved ticketing and reservation to their web portals while still retaining their legacy Cobol (yes cobol with the green and black screen) for their core operations. The reason is very simple. The application is still adequate for their operations and technically speaking, a change should only be effected if the maintenance cost can no longer be justified. The airlines are not alone as other companies that have invested heavily in stable but old technologies continue to leverage on their investment while adopting new technology to complement their legacy systems. This will enable them time to think through their new solutions holistically as they recognise the huge cost that goes with implementation.

In addition, most banks adopt new technologies without a proper evaluation of the cost. For instance, I cannot see any viable reason why anyone will jump into deploying Vista when Microsoft is still battling with the DLL Hell occasioned with it. At the last count, Vista is known to have 31 categories of application compatibility issues that have discouraged many organisations from its adoption until their next PC refresh cycle in order to reduce costs and impact to business continuity. Time and time again, clients rush to adopt new versions of SQL Server even before the arrival of its Service Pack 4. This we know as the threshold before we can start entrusting our critical data to the product given Microsofts penchant for using the end-user as part of its test laboratory. If I may ask, what has the average user gained from migrating from Windows 95 through Vista? Not a great deal! Interestingly, some solutions passed as web-enabled are strictly speaking legacy applications delivered on other third partys presentation server or other enterprise virtualisation technology.

The best way to derive maximum returns from investment in technology is by ensuring that the IT strategy is aligned to the corporate strategy of the institution. For instance, ATM deployments should be a product of exhaustive business analysis and must be within the banks larger corporate strategy. I am sure if most Banks elect to do the cost accounting of their ATM deployments, a lot of them will pull out of the segment. In other climes, the IT sees users as its customers and therefore come up with innovative products as value-added services. This can then be marketed to the various units to see how they can impact their bottom line positively. We have instances where the downtime of some of these ATMs is atrocious. Each breakdown attracts prohibitive maintenance costs which should ordinary justify a replacement.

The above scenario will persist until we have very skilled people as project managers. The banks will need to invest in training core IT personnel, as a way of saving billions of Naira that could be lost to ignorance.

What is the state of automation in the public sector?

It depends on where you are coming from. If your definition of automation is having machines in a networked environment, then the public sector can be considered as automated. However, if you are assessing the situation from the point of view of effective automation, then my answer is that the public sector is yet to take-off. The majority of government institutions have only automated their payroll function. A few have equally automated their fixed assets management function. However, virtually all agencies are lagging in terms of core operations automation. For example, INEC should not be conducting voters registration for the purposes of every election if it has a good back office application.

The above indicates the state of automation in the public sector. In fact, automation in the public sector is synonymous with procurement of hardware without any investment in automating operations. The sad aspect is that the trend is not about to change. We have continued in our destructive development of exclusion where individuals saddled with national responsibilities deliberately sideline fellow Nigerians with the ability to make a difference. The current trend is a rash of invitation to Bid adverts in the newspapers where all that is being advertised is the procurement of hardware. The question is of what use is the hardware without the back office software? It is about time government put a stop to this waste in the name of automation. I have seen several bid documents for automation where only a page is devoted to software and over 100 pages for hardware.

To cap the madness, the main object of the bid is the software application for the agency. Most times, these adverts are placed to fulfil all righteousness as the contract has already been awarded. This again shows how callous we are as a people. Innocent individuals will be encouraged to spend their time and money chasing a nonexistent job. The trend lately is for government agencies to start selling their portals as a measure of the levels of their automation without a robust supportive back office system.

What is the role of automation in the banking industry?

Nigerian banks, like their counterparts in the advanced economies, need automation to improve their service delivery. In the 80s, the old generation banks were notorious for their tally numbers. In those days, it took over 24 hours to cash cheques as it became the norm to drop your cheque and come the following day instead of spending the whole day in the banking hall. The new generation banks made significant inroads right from inception due to their adoption of leading-edge technologies to deliver their services. Through automation, more customers are being served from smaller branches as the service rates in the banking halls now take less than five minutes. The direct savings derived from effective automation cannot be over-emphasised. Today, the Nigerian bank is evolving into a virtual bank as more customers are empowered to transact business away from the banking hall. Internet banking and the ATM have encouraged the saving culture as well as increased customer base. Automation has assisted our banks to cope with large customer base, which was a major challenge in the past.

The banking software is responsible for the management of accounts and all transactions as well as loans and money market operations. The banking software is very expensive which explains why banks often indicate improvement of their technology infrastructure as a major reason for raising fresh capital during public offers. The cost of automation is so significant that some banks lately have started passing the cost over to their customers by introducing charges that are not known to the bankers tariff.

Why do banks encounter serious challenges when changing their existing applications?

Banks usually decide on deploying new technologies either due to perceived inadequacies of their existing platform or surprisingly as part of the need to join the fad. A few implementation scenarios will provide further insight into the above. More than one bank has procured solutions that were inferior to the old one triggering a user-resistance. In one instance, the CEO took a bold decision by stalling the implementation. This action saved the bank a lot of money and preserved the banks data integrity, as the devil you know is better than the angel you dont know. In another instance, the bank continued with the implementation for over 10 years at enormous cost to shareholders without any improvement in service delivery. We have also had instances where the basis for changing the solution cannot be justified by any stretch of imagination.

There was a case where an Access Database application was passed on as an SQL Server application. We have had instances where applications have been bought when in actual fact they are not needed. We have had situations where some banks have had more stress with the robust foreign solutions that they moved to than the local solution they started with. There are also instances where critical user requirements surfaced at the point of Going Live. Software solutions have been changed with billions of Naira when what was needed is less than one hundred million naira worth of enhancements to the existing solution. There have been situations when rather than embark on a solution turnover; the proper thing to do was to deploy a third party bypass to address the challenges being faced. It is interesting to note that some of these foreign applications that gulped billions of naira of shareholders funds cannot transfer reports to Microsoft excel, an activity that local solutions have supported for over ten years!!! In addition, some cannot provide running totals on their online statement.

Given the above examples and the fact that bankers are very smart, how do we explain these events? The answer lies in the quality of the implementation drivers. For instance, users will resist any application that is not better than what they are used to. This leads to the question of who and how was the decision to procure made? The answer to this lies in the dearth of project management and implementation skills in a lot of institutions in the country. It takes an experienced professional to pinpoint the adequacy or otherwise of a software solution in the course of a demo. In addition, to the extent that you cannot give what you do not have, if the project manager is not knowledgeable enough on the subject matter, he will not have a good basis to spot the dangers in the course of evaluation. What happens mostly is for everyone to concur with the presentation being made for fear of looking stupid in the eyes of their colleagues not minding the ramifications of their actions on their institutions. This explains why inferior solutions have been procured at enormous costs without any reward. There are occasions where a superior product may not be even recognized due to the subsisting knowledge gap.

The project manager may not understand the advanced concepts being espoused by the superior product and in fact in some cases see such features as defects in the application. The lack of knowledge is not only responsible for this colossal waste; it is equally the main reason why local solutions are sometimes not patronised. For instance, there are several foreign solutions that Nigerians can provide good alternatives to for less than a quarter of the price. However, the incompetent project manager will neither risk having to justify why a local Vendor must be paid that much nor give the local Vendor the opportunity to prove himself for a good fee as this could threaten his own survival. He will only engage the local Vendor at a fee that cannot guarantee a good job as a way of ensuring his failure and ultimately his own self-preservation. Such individuals present automation as rocket science to their superiors and as such it is beyond the comprehension of Nigerians. Most times you see individuals that cannot do five per cent of what the local Vendor can do disparaging them adopting all manners of impracticable jargons to bamboozle their audience.

What is the effective cost of a problematic implementation?

The first and the least expensive are the billions of Naira spent on procurement. Others include personnel cost of staff that is involved in the implementation in addition to the cost of numerous foreign trips. There will be customer dissatisfaction due to non-optimal performance of the software. Staff morale tends to be low during such exercises as most of them find it difficult to understand why they are going through the stress.

What is the effect of the current situation on indigenous software companies?

In other climes, government automation serves as a developmental platform for the emergence of new software powerhouses. The likes of IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc all benefited from the huge defence departments automation budgets in their formative years. The lack of understanding of the efforts required in custom solution deployment has robbed the country of enormous sums. A good example is the automation of the National Population Commission. That project presented the country with a massive opportunity to propel some local firms into the international arena. The country spent so much and got nothing in return when we have firms that could have delivered a better solution with a fraction of what was spent. This state of ignorance and our penchant for disliking our own out of pettiness and envy should stop if we intend to develop as a nation.

What do you think is responsible for our preference for foreign solution?

The reason in my opinion is colonisation. The Asians are developing into major economies because their colonisation was not total unlike we Africans. They were able to retain their culture and religion despite colonial rule. That assisted them in retaining their self-beliefs unlike us that endured total colonisation i.e. physically and culturally. To be colonised culturally implies that you must have been convinced or coerced into accepting that yours is inferior and the effect is still with us today.

What is your view of governments involvement of Nigerians in the Diaspora in its automation efforts?

It is a good idea as all hands must be on deck if we are interested in developing the country. However, the calibre of the individuals involved leaves much to be desired. I dont have a problem if you are engaging a qualified Nigerian from outside to handle a project. But, in a situation where hustlers who ran away from the country in the late 80s return with their MCSE, MCSD and other online certification exams as automation experts after been unable to tie down a good job will not get this country anywhere. We have a lot of competent people within. Let us in the name of God cut out this our inferiority complex and start engaging those with the right credentials to move the country forward. Two years ago, I had a call from someone who I last met in England over ten years ago. He wanted to know whether he could use one of our projectors for a presentation in Abuja. I was curious to know what the transaction was all about since this guy was a certified cab driver while I was in the UK. To my consternation, he told me he was in Abuja to bid for a software job with a government agency. Lately, I have been seeing a lot of them around looking for automation jobs. The advice I have for the authorities is to engage those that have built their reputation here rather than stake our collective interest in the hands of hustlers.

Why have we not succeeded in our major automation efforts?

INEC has no credible database, which explains why we need the very wasteful, and expensive voters registration exercise on the eve of every elections. The case of the NPC is a different kettle of fish. The last census will go down as the most wasteful automation exercise in any part of the world. It is so bad that after three years, I cannot visit the NPC portal to confirm the population of my ward for market research purposes. I will try and confirm whether NPC has a functional portal. I hope the eGovt promoters are listening. It is extremely painful to note that Nigeria with our abundant talent cannot gather and organize basic information about ourselves after spending billions of Naira that could be deployed to better the lots of our teeming poor. I knew the exercise was one big disaster waiting to happen the moment I saw the data capture forms. It failed the basic principle of form capture design, which says that your design should be kept simple if you are dealing with an unsophisticated target. This the NPC project managers did not do. I must recognize the simplicity of the alternative forms provided by the Lagos State Government. Politics or no politics, I am of the view that the figures supplied by Lagos State are more credible than that of NPC. We will continue to fail in our major automation efforts until we recognize the talents within us to champion such projects. We must rise above our primordial sentiments in the interest of the country and engage the best people. It is very sad to know that in the eight years of the last administration, the best talents were rarely engaged. We have almost created a society programmed for talents to fail. Are you still surprised that the ID card project was bungled?

What is your view about eGovt?

I am always confused when people bandy e-Government all over the place. There can never be an effective portal without a functional back office system. For instance, I am not sure NYSC can avail me of the list of corpers that served in Lagos Island local Government in 1987 detailing the place of primary assignment. To that extent, this scratch card business is really an affront on the intellect of Nigerians as what is being queried is not different from an excel worksheet. The immigration service equally lacks an effective back office system.

Otherwise there will be no need for that annoying ritual at our international airports - scanning of your passport each time you are leaving the country. It is therefore imperative that those championing eGovt go back to the basics. The business of the respective agencies must be automated before we start e-ing. Anything other than this will amount to putting the Cart before the horse.

What is your advice to government?

The above instances are manifestations of our lack of depth and organisation in our important endeavours. We must begin to engage the talents that God has blessed us with. We dont have to like them, we must seek them wherever they may be and engage them meaningfully in order to move our nation forward. The government must put a stop to the current rash of automation going on all over the place. The way forward is for the government to constitute an information planning committee to identify its information needs and come up with a detailed information plan, which will be the basis of the automation projects of all government institutions. The deliverable of the information plan is a blue print defining all the applications needed with the relevant implementation standards as well as the necessary gateways for effective interfaces among the various agencies as well as other non- Governmental institutions.

I am glad that with a thoughtful person like the current President, we can begin to reprogram our society to reward hard work and diligence while punishing mediocrity and criminality.

Lastly, I understand that your academic record in the university remains unsurpassed after over two decades, how did you do it?

Let us leave that one. I am not alone. This country is blessed with too many talented people. We simply need to move away from empowering hustlers with strategic business of nationhood. The major problem in Nigeria is that we have too many vultures around us who are not very deep yet very loud and end up confusing those in authority. These characters get away with murder because we are very pedestrian in our attitude to nation building. The challenge for government is to devise ways of separating the wheat from the chaff when looking for the right people.

• Today, the Nigerian bank is evolving into a virtual bank as more customers are empowered to transact business away from the banking hall. Internet banking and the ATM have encouraged the saving culture as well as increased customer base. Automation has assisted our banks to cope with large customer base, which was a major challenge in the past.

   

• The major problem in Nigeria is that we have too many vultures around us who are not very deep yet very loud and end up confusing those in authority. These characters get away with murder because we are very pedestrian in our attitude to nation building. The challenge for government is to devise ways of separating the wheat from the chaff when looking for the right people

   

• We must begin to engage the talents that God has blessed us with. We dont have to like them, we must seek them wherever they may be and engage them meaningfully in order to move our nation forward. The government must put a stop to the current rash of automation going on all over the place. The way forward is for the government to constitute an information planning committee to identify its information needs and come up with a detailed information plan, which will be the basis of the automation projects of all government institutions.