IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) has commenced digital skills training for 4,335 citizens, in Basic ICT Skills and Entrepreneurship, as part of the Digital Transformation Centres Project (DTC).

The two-week training, which began on April 11, 2023, and will end on April 28, 2023, is being carried out in 155 GIFEC Community ICT Centres (CICs) across the country.

Currently, India has roughly 700 million internet users across the country. However, despite the huge number, digital adaptation by small businesses is very less. While the big businesses are entirely dependent upon accounting software, those in the MSME sector still do their accounting on paper.

Most MSMEs are still unstructured and hire accountants for their daily entries. To be more organized, small businesses need to adopt modern and faster techniques of accounting. To this end, many mobile apps have been designed to make it easier for MSMEs to go digital in their bookkeeping. Digital accounting methods have numerous benefits such as:

Low pay and a male-dominated sector must be tackled to help the NHS, police and councils bring in vital digital expertise

It has been almost a decade since the government pulled the plug on what would have been the world’s largest civilian computer system. The NHS IT system was meant to create electronic patient records for use across the health service in England, but ended up becoming known as the biggest IT failure ever seen. The project, finally abandoned in 2011, cost taxpayers at least £10bn.

European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel here on Friday said ensuring cyber security and developing IT skills are crucial for the digitalization of the European Union (EU).

"Security is a top priority for European citizens, but digitization adds one more dimension to it -- cyber security," Gabriel said while addressing a conference on e-government.

Europe has drawn up the Riga Declaration, which sets out 10 principles to unlock the potential of e-skills to boost growth and job creation across the continent.

Governments, industry and academia have joined forces with the European Commission to address the digital skills shortage and to build a single market for tech jobs in Europe.

Interestingly enough, there are wide differences among the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states in regard to their performance on the “Network Readiness Index”. To put it more simply, the extent of their technological readiness.

At least, this was the judgment in the “Global Information Technology Report 2014” issued by the World Economic Forum in partnership with INSEAD, the business school, and Cornell University.

Beyond in-person or virtual lectures, the Academy will provide instructor-led workshops, tech talks, exchanges with communities of practice, hackathons, and offers for on-the-job training.

The Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech Singapore) has introduced a new platform designed to raise the digital competencies of all public service leaders and officers, particularly those in ICT.

The Office of the Head of Government said, he, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, "recognizes the importance of Information Technology and Communication (ICT)" and for this reason, "has decided to make a tool of governance, in accordance with his policy statement through which he had to identify the priorities of his government."

The UK has traditionally viewed Silicon Valley as the trailblazer of technological advancement, but environments producing innovation and success in the IT industry extend well beyond the USA. To drive success, the UK needs to expand its horizons and look to emerging markets, such as India, which has seen its ICT sector grow from being a $5.7bn industry in 2000 to a staggeringly large $100bn industry just 12 years later.

ICT Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i said in Nairobi the shortage has forced some county governments to depend on private sector in order to deploy ICT systems.

“We are therefore fast tracking efforts to increase the number of highly skilled personnel in ICT sector,” Matiang’i said after signing a Memorandum of Understanding between Huawei Technologies and ICT Authority of Kenya.

Under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the National e-Governance Division (NeGD) plans to establish cyber labs for the ‘Online Capacity Building Programme on Cyber Law, Crime Investigation and Digital Forensics’. The government has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Law University (NLU) in Delhi and the National Law Institute University (NLIU) in Bhopal to set up these cyber labs.

The goal of this programme is to provide police officers, state cyber cells, law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and judicial officers with the skills to deal with cyber forensics cases efficiently and effectively as per the Indian Cyber Law. According to a press release, it aims to adopt the best global practices, standards, and guidelines. The NeGD, in collaboration with NLIU-Bhopal, is offering a nine-month online postgraduate (PG) diploma to 1,000 Officials through its learning management system (LMS). This programme enables users to learn on the go-anywhere and anytime. The first batch started last November with a total of 579 participants approved for the course.

Kenya's Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Authority and China's tech company Huawei have completed training public servants in order to enhance their technology knowledge, officials said on Thursday.

Fiona Pan, deputy CEO for Public Affairs of Huawei Kenya said that the online training for civil servants was designed to provide the personnel with the latest knowledge on (ICT) trends, e-government, smart city, Internet of Things and cyber security.

The Chief Officer in charge of Information Communications Technology and E-government at the Uasin Gishu County government Edwin Kemboi has said that the public sector is still facing a shortage of Information Communication Technology skilled experts.

According to Mr Kemboi, youth have failed in taking up the ICT and opportunities in the sector therefore creating a gap that requires ICT skills in a bid to streamline the public sector.

The initiative aims to enable civil servants to better generate content, summarise information, analyse data, and enhance meetings with AI-generated notes.

Malaysia’s Digital Ministry has organised a training programme for 200 civil servants, aiming to enhance their skills in using generative AI tools as part of the government’s push for digital transformation.

Business has been growing at the brothers’ Kobciye Internet Coffee, one of the several makeshift Internet cafés that have emerged in Mogadishu since the Islamic militant group Al-Shabaab fled the city. “I wanted a business,” Hassan says, “and this is something that I’m good at. I have skills in computers and IT.” The café costs around $600 a month to run, and the brothers manage to bring in around $1,000 from their 40 or so daily customers, mostly university students.

The parties on Friday launched a six-week training module covering technology, business, finance and logistics, as well as to develop critical soft business skills, at Multi Media University, in Ongata Rongai.

Dr Robert A. Baffour, Vice President of the Ghana Telecom University College (GTUC) disclosed this while speaking at the University of Ghana Business School where NIIT Ghana graduated diploma students recently.

He spoke on Ghana's internet infrastructure which he codenamed 'Project Ghana.'

As you may know, the president of the country, Robert Mugabe, and the ICT minster launched the first phase of the deployment of e-Learning facilities at Zimbabwe’s primary and secondary schools last week. “After Tsholotsho we will now be going into the various districts. We’re looking at at least a thousand schools before December [this year]” said Chamisa.

The Government of India aims to create a pool of 10 million skilled manpower for the IT world, said Kapil Sibal, minister of communications and information technology. The minister released the Draft National Policy on Information Technology, 2011 on Friday.

Speaking at the occasion, Sibal said, “Information Technology is a key driver of an increasingly knowledge-based global economy, and given its current global position in the IT and ITeS sector, India is well positioned to enhance and leverage its existing IT capabilities for a leadership role. The technology has transformational power, and it is a great leveler of opportunity within and across economies.” With the right policies and investment in infrastructure, he said, we have the opportunity to strengthen and enhance our position as a global IT powerhouse. On the domestic front, use of IT in all sectors can transform our economy, enhance equity and help the nation to rapidly improve its development indices.

The programme, called Qudrat eTraining, is a national project which aims to eliminate computer illiteracy by training 2,015 government employees and 13,000 Bahraini nationals, officials said in a statement.

Each trainee will attend a two-hour training session for 12 days.