Minister calls for benchmarks for IT institutions

Accra, June 19, GNA - Professor Mike Ocquaye, Minister of Communications, on Tuesday called for benchmarks for all Information Telecommunication (IT) institutions to enable them to meet international requirements. He said such benchmarks would provide proper structured course outline for IT institutions to ensure harmonization in the sector.

Professor Ocquaye made the call at the Meet-the-Press series in Accra to provide an overview of some of the programmes, policies, achievements and challenges of his Ministry.

He said IT institutions did not have a well-structured course outline, which made it difficult to ascertain whether they were consistent with international benchmarks for Information Communication Technology (ICT) education. "The future is IT and IT is the future," he added.

Professor Ocquaye said his Ministry was in talks with stakeholders in the sector to help provide well-tailored course outlines for all IT institutions to help ensure discipline. He said the level of cyber crimes in the country was serious and that the Electronic Transaction Bill would soon be brought to Parliament to curb the spate of cyber crime.

He said such bill would take into account the relevant interlocking steps to ensure that the police was properly equipped to deal with it.

Prof. Ocquaye said the Government Assisted PC Programme (GAPP) Project launched in 2006 had provided 10,000 units of affordable computers to government employees, institutions and private individuals. He said there was the need to attract skilled ICT and Information Management (IM) into the civil and public services to help facilitate the implementation of the eGovernment project which sought to create institutional and regulatory environment to generate growth and employment by leveraging ICT and public-private partnerships. He said the Ministry had concluded arrangements with the United Nations Development Programme to support the development of a scheme of service to be completed by the end of the year to help define job content, career paths and appropriate remuneration packages for professional ICT/IM personnel.