IT officers urged to desist from criminal activities

Engineer Dr Nana Ato Arthur, Head of Local Government Service, has raised concerns about some Information Technology (IT) officers of the assemblies, who use their knowledge to engage in criminally-minded activities.

He said “It is on record some IT officers connive with human resource managers to perpetuate recruitment fraud against the state.

He, therefore, warned them to desist from such practices as those found culpable would be severely sanctioned.

Dr Nana Arthur was speaking at the opening of a two-day training workshop in Tamale on Monday for 64 IT officers from the Regional Coordinating Councils and Assemblies in the Northern, North East, Savannah, Upper East and Upper West Regions.

The training, organised by the Office of the Head of Local Government Service (OHLGS) with support from the Inter-Ministerial Coordinating Committee on Decentralisation, was to keep participants abreast of any new development in the sector to enable them to give off their best.

The IT/Management Information System (MIS) officers in the RCCs and the Assemblies are responsible for local area networking, the functionality of computing system, setting up and deployment of applications in respect of GIFMIS, HRMIS, IT documentation, troubleshooting of computer systems amongst others.

Dr Nana Arthur told the IT/MIS officers that “Your schedule may entail you to be privy to confidential information about officers and even security situation of the MMDA or RCC.

“I will expect you to uphold professionalism in that regard, so that information will not be divulged to anyone, who may distort it for any parochial interest”.

He clarified that “Every institution has its own information dissemination policy. If you are not the official spokesperson, you are not authorized to release information to any third party”.

He urged IT/MIS officers to make themselves relevant to their respective RCCs or MMDAs as well as partner information officers to ensure the online presence of their assemblies to project them to attract the right investment to propel them to greater heights.

He spoke about the working conditions of staff saying, “We at the OHLGS really acknowledge the difficult environment in which some of you work. It is our hope to ensure that the needed logistics are provided for you to work smoothly. However, the inadequacy or lack of logistics should not be an excuse to underperform”.

Dr Nana Arthur was hopeful that participants would be committed to the training to improve on their knowledge to support their respective assemblies in terms of improved internally-generated revenue and accurate data for planning and budgeting purposes.