E-governance programme begins

Accra, Sept. 26, GNA - Government has accessed a World Bank loan to enable it to implement the electronic governance (e-governance) programme aimed at bringing efficiency into all sectors and improving revenue collection for development.

Professor Mike Ocquaye, Minister of Communications, said in Accra on Tuesday that to access the World Bank loan, the Ministry had to hasten the e-governance process for parliament's consent and that a committee had been set up to fine-tune its implementation.

Under the e-governance programme, government would apply information technology to activities of all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as a means of bringing efficiency into the sectors and also to check loopholes that brought about collection of low revenue. Professor Ocquaye was speaking at a Communications Forum at which Alcatel, a telecommunications giant, introduced its structure and representative, Seatec Ghana, to the Ghanaian market. The company also took participants through trends in technology and highlighted the emergence, uses and benefits of the Voice-Over-Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Prof. Ocquaye said information technology and its related matters played a meaningful role in development and that it was imperative that the government took advantage of its benefits for widespread development.

"Ghana cannot afford to miss ICT revolution if it hopes to improve the quality of its citizens' lives and alleviate the widespread poverty that seriously undermines human development."

The Minister said it had taken a short time for technology to move from one stage to another, saying "a lot of things are moving fast, we also have to move faster or perish if we are left behind".

Prof. Ocquaye gave an example in which he said Former President John Kennedy of the United States did not even see a calculator yet technology had developed into various dimensions since then. A few years past, we could not take calculators to the examinations room, but now people are required to send calculators to the examinations room because the examinations are to be answered in applied forms using calculators, the Minister said, and added that this served as a challenge of the development that continued to take place around us.

"Every capital shared diminishes but knowledge shared, including IT, increases," Prof. Ocquaye said. He added that those involved in IT businesses held the key to the successes that the nation expected in that area.

He said Ghana allowed the industrialization era to pass by her, 'but knowledge revolution cannot pass by us in our quest to develop'.

"Today, it is used to seek accommodation, jobs and even life partners," the Minister said.

He said the United States had shown interest in backing Ghana's technology quest to create an incubator for computer parts. Prof. Ocquaye said this and other ventures such as the Ghana Telecom University College, the IT training centre at the former Ghana House in Accra, the Kofi Annan Centre for ICT, among others, could take advantage of technology.

Current mobile tele-density, penetration of mobile telephone, within the country has reached four million from 400,000 in 2001 and the Communications Minister said he believed government could do more than this compared to what India had achieved in a relative short time. Statistics indicate that India earned 10 times more from ICTs compared to Ghana's import earnings from most traditional exports. Mr Ravin Naidu, a Voice Sales Specialist for South and East Africa with Alcatel, said the use of VoIP was fast catching up and that benefits far outweighed other means and therefore asked Internet users to make the best of it.

VoIP refers to communications or transmission of information by the use of speech through the Internet and its rules. This technology can be applied using PC-to-PC or through telephony.

Expected benefits from the use of VoIP, according to Mr Naidu, include reduced costs, simplified migration of technologies, enhanced voice services and enhanced convergence of businesses.

Seatec Telecom Services, organizers of the forum displayed their new telephone products, which allow for monitoring of call accounts, to receive voice mails, receive personal assistance and also to receive calls from home or office within a radius of the point of installation. 26 Sept. 06