Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekufful addressing the press.Photo.Ebo Gorman
Government is embarking on the implementation of a number of electronic services (e-Services) as part of measures to improve efficiency in the delivery of services, the Minister of Communications, Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has announced.
According to her the interventions being implemented under the e-Transform Project funded by the World Bank apart from improving efficiency, would also ensure greater transparency, promote accountability and responsiveness among different governmental agencies in the country.
“To provide more efficient delivery of government services, reduce corruption and enhance transparency, a number of e-services are being implemented under the e-Transform project funded by the World Bank, to increase efficiency, accountability and responsiveness,” she emphasized.
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful who was taking her turn at the Meet the Press Series organised by the Ministry of Information in Accra yesterday said government would continue to deploy appropriate efficiency in all aspects of national development.
She said so far the ministry as part of the project had deployed the e-Immigration, e-Procurement, e-Parliament and e-Judiciary Services and plans were afoot to upscale it across all sectors of government.
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful explained that the e-Immigration system would be used by the Ghana Immigration Service and it would facilitate speedy processing of travellers entering and exiting the country in a more efficient manner as well as provide full immigration control system including-biometric identification of citizens and visitors.
In addition, she said the Ministry in collaboration with the Judicial Service has implemented the e-Justice integrated system under which the courts would rollout electronic Court Management and Administrative System at the 43 High Courts in Accra.
“The e-Justice system has brought efficiency in the justice delivery system and lawyers, judges and court officials’ access to case files and information is now faster than before to facilitate court process.
She noted that the new system would ensure that the days where dockets went missing from the court registries were over, stressing that “The era of missing dockets and court process is hopefully over and judges and parties would have easy access to information which would ensure fast delivery of judgement.”
Touching on the e-Procurement, the Minister said it would help standardise government procurement processes, bring visibility and transparency into government procurement transactions, centralise the monitoring of procurement activities, eliminate physical storage of procurement documents as information would be stored digitally and ensure compliance with procurements laws, among others when fully implemented.
She explained that the digitisation efforts and introduction of a number of e-Services had exposed the country and the people to possible cyber attacks and vulnerabilities.
To counter these potential threats, certain deliberate measures had been put in place by the ministry, stating that “the MoC has established the national cyber security activities both in government and the private sector. It is responsible for national cyber security awareness creation and cyber security incident coordination.”
BY CLIFF EKUFUL AND EVANGEL KELVIN AINOO.
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