The Minister of ICT and Guidance, Judith Nabakooba recently announced the launch of online postal services in Uganda through the unveiling of an Addressing System that is intended to ease service delivery by creating convenience.
The Addressing system that was launched yesterday on 25th February 2021 has various capabilities because it gives real-time connectivity. Posta Uganda has used the system to connect 49 out of 108 offices country-wide, thereby enabling the quick and reliable exchange of information.
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The Addressing system was developed by a group of young innovators who competed in a program organized by the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance. This program brought a number of youthful Ugandan innovators together who shared and came up with digital solutions to some of the ongoing issues today.
One of the digital solutions that stood out was this innovation which included introducing online postal services in Uganda at Posta Uganda. Through financial support provided by the Government, this application has been developed widely and will now be applied at Posta Uganda and its offices countrywide to improve operations.
Online postal services in Uganda guaranteed as safe and secure
One of the applications of this innovation is enabling online creation and management of Post Office Addresses (previously called P.O Box Numbers) which were previously handed out through a manual process. However, the process was inefficient and passed on its difficulties to other systems like fulfillment of the national law on registration of companies.
Part of the requirements for registration of a company in Uganda is acquiring and declaring a valid P.O Box address. The filing of annual returns at URSB also requires the declaration of a valid P.O Box address. Posta Uganda can now offer limitless digital addresses as compared to the previous method where it could only give out physical addresses and had a limited number of 80,000.
The Minister of ICT and National Guidance, Judith Nabakooba explained that the new online postal services in Uganda introduces a system which is secure since it has been tested out. It allows for end-to-end encryption through the use of biometric features like finger print scans that will prevent cases of hacking and fraud.
She also urged for the creation of Government Service Centers in Post Offices where Ugandans will easily access services provided by Government entities easily and faster other than queuing at the main office in Kampala.
Some of the Government entities that were listed as those that could benefit from the online postal services in Uganda and further improve their internal processes were NIRA, URSB, and Immigration.
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