Cybercrimes awareness, cyber laws and its practice in public sector tanzania

Abstract

The objectives of this paper was to determine the awareness of cybercrimes and cyber laws in the public sector. Since the services offered by the public sector to the citizens are the implementation of government wishes/goals. And anything that has to be completed in order to improve our country and to provide services to the people, is determined by the work of public servants. Public servants have a massive task and perform a significant role to make service provision work for the people. Nowadays, most of the public servants perform various works using the internet, but despite the fact that the internet has become a powerful platform in accomplishing our day to day activities in Tanzania, there has been a challenge public servant do not understand, that internet is not “high seas”. Most public servants know very little about cybercrimes, cyber laws and their impacts causing lack of confidentiality and integrity in Information Systems, publication of false news, theft of intellectual property and government data. The study was qualitative method whereby literature reviews, questionnaire and interviews were used to collect information. The research findings show that public servants who access internet are many compared to those who do not use because it offers tremendous benefits and it is one of the fastest developing areas of technical infrastructure development. Also, there is an increased rate of activities done using computer systems and smart phones since internet services cost is often lower compared to services outside the network. Furthermore, results show that most of the public servants are not aware of cybercrimes so they cannot take any precaution as well as they cannot protect the country and themselves from the substantial danger caused by cybercrimes. Results revealed that public servants know very little about the laws and others do not know even its existence. The government together with Higher education institutions need to provide awareness training, workshops and certification to public servants to ensure that they are aware of cybercrimes and cyber laws so that they can avoid committing cybercrimes as well as preventing their organization and the society in general against Cybercrimes.