General News of Wednesday, 30 November 2016

Source: myradio360.com

Political Science student develops app for NSS

Executive Director of NSS, Dr. Kpessa White Executive Director of NSS, Dr. Kpessa White

The National Service Scheme (NSS) has launched a mobile application to foster dissemination of information to the public and service personnel alike in an efficient manner.

The move is also to respond to issues in a timely and effective manner for the development of the scheme.

The app was developed by Issah Abdullai Gombila, a Political Science student who is serving a 6 months extension of his national service at the Head office of NSS.

Executive Director of NSS, Dr. Kpessah White, after commending the efforts of the young enterprising man, hinted that the launch of the app is part of reforms being implemented by the scheme in the last two years to address the needs of Ghanaians in a friendly manner.

He pointed out that before the app, NSS had set up a call centre to resolve issues of service personnel, designed a new website with loads of information on NSS and desisting from the manual cheque payment to ezwich system.

The Executive Director said the launch of the app takes away the burden of having to worry about how information will reach service personnel in the hinterlands who have no access to the internet.

He said their worry also bordered about how to make sure that young people in the universities get information even before they are enrolled on the scheme after school.

“It is in this light that we came up with the idea of developing a mobile app that everybody can download free of charge from the play store on andriod mobile phones”, Dr. White disclosed.  

On the app, he indicated that one can obtain information about enrollment, various models, statistics of deployment, pictures of various activities of the scheme across the country and many other vital information.

He was full of praise for the young developer and directed his fellow service personnel to follow his footsteps and leave a mark wherever they serve.

“This move by Gombilla should serve as a source of encouragement for fellow service personnel and make yourself relevant wherever you are today”, Dr. White counseled.

Issah Abdullai Gombilla, the developer demonstrating the app to journalists and service personnel said the app is accessible on all android and IOS devices and has 25 menu functionalities.

Some of the information on the app, he said was job alerts, career advises, information about NSS, enrollment, postings check, NSS newsfeed and many other functionalities.

For those experiencing erratic internet service, he assured them that about 90 percent of the information on the app is offline, hence it will be appropriate for their use.