EU supports ARAP institutions to improve work

The European Union has donated digital tools worth 38.364 Euros to support the Accountability, Rule of Law and Anti-corruption Programme (ARAP) national stakeholder institutions to improve the digital environment of work in the ongoing fight against COVID-19.

The institutions are the National Commission for Civic Education, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice and the Ghana Police Service.

The rest are the Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice, the Judiciary and Judicial Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, Legal Aid Commission and the Economic and Organised Crime Organisation.

A statement issued in Accra on Saturday said the deployment of digital tools within the Public Sector had been a core mandate of the ARAP programme since its inception.

"In this regard the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been a key area of work across all stakeholders, strengthening internal capacities and establishing online platforms such as the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan (NACAP) Online Reporting Dashboard or the Public Relations and Complaints Unit web application," it said.

This is very much in line with the Government's strategic outlook on digitisation to boost connectivity of the programme’s stakeholders, the statement said.

"Supporting the digitisation entails boosting data connectivity of all ARAP stakeholders through the provision of Wi-Fi routers and data."

The ARAP was, therefore, providing its stakeholders with a range of modems and routers, coupled with data subscriptions until the end of the year.

In addition to this, licenses to online conference tools such as Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams had been procured for all stakeholders in accordance with their specific needs and requirements.

The statement said the intervention responded to a critical situation heightened by the global pandemic, while enabling the programme to conduct all its final activities such as trainings, workshops and validations through online meetings before it ends in January, 2021.

The intervention also enhanced the effectiveness and efficiency of stakeholders to ensure that both central and regional offices were fully connected and could continue providing essential services to citizens, it said.