National Pension Commission (PenCom)has commenced the process of acquiring and installing various applications, which include both core and business support applications that shall be robust and reliable enough to ensure uninterrupted availability of information to all its stakeholders so as to assist it to deliver its mandate.

The commission has, therefore, invited reputable software companies with international experience to bid for the enhancement of the business support application called Oracle e-Business Suite.

PenCom's Director General, Muhammad Ahmad, notes that, "The applications, when developed, would strengthen the commission's supervisory and regulatory responsibilities over pension institutions. It would also facilitate the monitoring of the operations and performance of licensed operators."

PenCom was established by the Pension Reform Act 2004 to administer, supervise and regulate all pension matters in Nigeria. The commission says it is desirous of installing hardware systems to run its chosen suit of software applications.

The core applications are largely the Surveillance and Regulation and National Data Bank; the National Data Bank would provide the commission's employees and all stakeholders with on-line access to relevant transaction processing facilities and information. Business support applications would support the commission's human resource and accounting systems as well workflow management.

A groupware solution is also to be deployed to support messaging, collaboration and knowledge sharing that would enable the commission address key business imperatives. A document management application would be acquired to carter to the commission's anticipated large volume of returns and correspondence between it and its stakeholders. The bids will be opened in the presence of bidders' representatives who choose to attend on August 16 at the office of PenCom.

PenCom occupies a strategic position in the economic and social development of the country. The organisation is charged with the responsibility of supervising, regulating and promoting sound pension system, which is conducive to the balanced growth of the economy of Nigeria.

To fulfil these major purposes, PenCom has been entrusted with specific powers and duties as stipulated in the Pension Act.

In the light of the rapidly changing economic and political environment in Nigeria and globally at present, PenCom expects serious challenges ahead. In order to overcome the challenges and reposition PenCom and Nigeria, PenCom has embarked on the setting up a healthy environment for the pension industry, monitoring the operations and performance of the operators in the pension industry (PFAs, PFCs and CPFAs)in the country and generally improving the entire sector of the economy. PenCom wishes to use information technology as a critical enabler to achieve its restructuring objectives.

Although PenCom currently operates from one office - its head office in Abuja, the proposed applications takes into consideration the commission's plan to have branches and zonal offices at various locations in the country.

The computerisation project is part of the restructuring of the pension industry in the country. The project has come up as part of the strategic information system (IS)plan covering all aspects of PenCom's operations. This plan, which is being finalised, established the application systems portfolio, and the IS technology (hardware and software)environment necessary to support it.

As part of the plan to allow customers (ministries, parastatals, agencies, institutions, oil companies, operators in the industry, etc.)to link up with PenCom infrastructure; the office has in place the following networking infrastructure: fibre-optic link and dedicated bandwidth provided by Accredited Service Provider.