Speaking at an E-Governance Conference in Accra last Tuesday on the theme "Utilising ICT for more efficient, effective and inclusive governance," Dr. Spio-Garbrah said "If governments' reports regularly on the state of projects and other expenditures on their websites, citizens will be able to know and monitor what is going on.
He said in Malaysia, the government promoted the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) by making it mandatory for all government correspondence to be done electronically. "These included cabinet memoranda and all letters to government," he said.
Again he said in India e-signatures were developed, while in Korea all 54 transactions that breed corruption were put online. E-governance he also said can be used to monitor the judicial systems, especially prisoners on remand and what has happened to their cases.
A record of all these people and the state of their cases will weed out the situation where people are incarcerated for years without their cases being heard in the courts.
He also said consumer protection issues can be more effective and monitored and discussed online if citizens are given the chance to fight for their consumer rights electronically.
According to him, ICT developments have been slow in Africa due to problems such as power cuts, illiteracy, and inadequate access to satellite, fibre optic and wireless networks.
He said while a lot of progress has been made over the past few years, ignorance of the people both in government and the private sector continues to slow down Africa's ICT development.
Dr. Spio-Garbrah urged African governments to invest, alongside private entities, in the creation of suitable content that will facilitate Africa's development, rather than rely on foreign entities to develop most of the content currently consumed in Africa through various ICTs.
The CTO CEO had raised similar concerns earlier in the month while contributing to a panel discussion on the liberalization and regulation of African telecoms at a conference in Johannesburg on Satellite Communications (SATCOM 2007) in Johannesburg early March, the CEO recommended the early establishment of an African regulatory body, to help reduce the costs of telecommunications in Africa.
According to Dr. Spio-Garbrah, although considerable liberalization has taken place in Africa's ICT policies and regulatory practices over the last ten years, Africa was still far from bridging the "digital divide" because most of the ICT content being consumed in the region is foreign.
He noted, for example, that whereas the explosion in mobile communications has speeded up the promotion of audiovisual content transmitted on 3 gigahertz frequency, much of the content of 3G transmission could be characterized as involving "Girls, Games and Gambling," - pornography, sports and entertainment; ignoring Africa's the most pressing needs, that is Education, Employment and Empowerment commonly called the three Es.
"In order to bridge this widening content divide we need serious partnership between the government, entrepreneurs, and consumers -a Public-Private-People's Partnership-aimed at creating suitable content that meets the developmental aspirations of African people", said Dr. Spio-Garbrah.
The Ghanaian Deputy Minister for Communications Dr. Benjamin Aggrey said Ghana has experienced amazing growth and expansion in the ICT industry in all the ten regions of the country. According to him, there are about 5.4 million subscribers of both mobile and fixed telephone lines constituting about 25 percent of teledensity in the country. "A lot more is to be done to move the figure up to the 40s and 50s," he said.
The Minister also called on the private sector to acquire part of Ghana Telecom since it will be privatized soon.
The Deputy Minister said the Ministry is sponsoring a fiber-optic network to among others push the rural telephony aspects of government ICT projects and has therefore set up a fund called Ghana Investment Fund for Telecommunications to address the high cost bandwidth.
The Chair of Ghana's ICT Policy and Plan Development Committee, Prof. Clement Dzidonu said there is the need to re-engineer the Ghanaian society to make it responsive to e-governance. "We have to re-engineer organizational culture and attitude to work," he said.
According to the World Bank, E-governance is about changing how government works to benefit society, ensure accountability and transparency and reduce corruption. Prof. Dzidonu said unfortunately in Ghana the Public sector reform is more about downsizing and not re-engineering.
The Director- General of the Ghana Information Communication Directorate Dr. Sam Somuah said two Bills on ICT are being sent to Parliament for passage after which there will laws backing the prosecution of Internet fraud and other ICT crimes.
According to Dr. Somuah his Unit is trying to link up all Ministries, Departments and Agencies. The unit also wants the MDAs to focus on their core functions and not worry about other issues that impact on their work.
"We want to ensure that, if you are the Accountant-General and your duty is to pay salaries, you don't need to worry about your broken down server, etc." Dr. Somuah explained adding, the challenge is to come out with a system which will serve society better and bring order into the system."
Autor(en)/Author(s): Isabella Gyau Orhin
Quelle/Source: AllAfrica, 09.04.2007
