Mr. Polycarp Anyanwu:

When I came into the role, when I first joined the Arts Council, we had to work with the existing system. We upgraded the operating systems from 2003 to 2012, enhanced the processing capabilities of that system and right now we are taking it to the cloud. We have a more stable system operating. However, the issues that led to the request for the upgrade of the grant-management systems is still there. The operating systems are dated and the platform is dated. They were .NET 2.0. Now we have .NET 10 and all that is still there. There is a security risk in the systems. There are a lot of vulnerabilities. It is stable but it is still not the best that we deserve. If an artist makes an application, it takes five days to get an artist registration number to be able to submit an application. One has to use four different systems in the course of the application. It is not an ideal situation for artists. They suffer a lot to submit applications in the current system.