Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has revealed the government’s plan to launch a transformational, one-stop online portal for all government transactions this year.
Addressing Boards and CEOs of state enterprises on Wednesday in Accra at the signing of a performance contract with them, the Vice President said the introduction of the one-stop portal, called Ghana.Gov is in line with government's digitization and economic transformation agenda and will make business transactions with government easier.
He explained that the Ghana.Gov online portal will synchronize all government agencies and enterprises, and members of the public will be able to transact business with any government agency through the Ghana.Gov platform.
“This quarter, the Ministry of Finance will be launching a portal called Ghana.Gov. It is a one-stop portal where we want to onboard all government institutions and state enterprises so that the public can go there - online and be able to fill forms for licenses and so on, pay and get their services without any hassle. This will be called the Ghana.Gov platform.”
Dr. Bawumia charged the Board and CEOs of state enterprises and other government agencies to brace themselves up for the upcoming transformation because their cooperation will be required to make it successful.
“I am urging all of you to be ready because you are going to be contacted. It is going to be operational this year and we will need your cooperation; Chairmen and CEOs of state enterprises so that we can onboard everybody.”
The Vice President said it is important for the government to onboard all government agencies and state enterprises on the platform to make government services and transactions easily accessible to the people.
“We have to onboard everybody (government agencies and state enterprises) in this digitization agenda so that there is a one-stop-shop that anybody who is going to deal with government, will go to Ghana.Gov; whether it is an application for electricity to their houses or whatever, they can go in there, go to the ECG portal and make their application online.”
Government’s digitization initiative has so far been remarkably successful. The digitization process for acquiring passports and driver’s license, as well as the automation service at the ports, have eliminated the cumbersome, and sometimes fraudulent processes people had to go through in the past to access passport, driver's licenses and other government services.
A successful implementation of the Ghana.Gov platform will be a further in the cap of government, as a one-stop-shop for all government transactions on a single platform online will truly be a great technological initiative by the government.