MDAs will be hooked onto electronic payment platforms - Veep

Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia on Wednesday announced that all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) would be hooked onto digital payment platforms by August 1, this year, to enhance revenue mobilisation and ensure quality public service delivery.

He said the recent piloting of the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture's electronic revenue collection mechanism had increased its revenue mobilisation by four folds.

He, thus, reiterated government's resolve to ensure all government services are paid electronically by June next year.

Vice President Bawumia said this when he delivered a keynote address at the opening of a two-day Ghana Digital Roadmap Conference organised by the Vice President’s Secretariat and Ministry of Communications in Accra

The two-day conference is being held on the theme:"Moving Ghana Beyond Aid: Expanding the Local Digital Economy".

The event is aimed at reviewing the country's ICT for Accelerated Development Policy, and to identify the gaps and provide the right framework to harness the benefit of the digital economy.

It attracted stakeholders in the ICT industry, development partners, captains of industry, the Diplomatic Community and Ministers of State.

The Vice President said adopting technology and improving human capital had driven the economic growth of most advanced countries.

He said digitisation made a big difference in modernising most economies; therefore Ghana could not afford to be left behind in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

In that vein, the Nana Akufo-Addo-led government upon assumption office initiated digital transformational programmes to build a new Ghana to aid the "Ghana Beyond Aid" agenda.

Some of those initiatives included; the instant issuance of the Ghana cards, e-business registration, e-justice system, digital property addressing system, mobile money interoperability system, paperless ports system,e-smart driver's licence, electronic renewal of the national health insurance scheme and online ticketing of the State Transport.

Dr Bawumia was of the conviction that adopting digitalisation would help the nation to overcome geographic barriers and inspire entrepreneurship and become the ICT leader in Sub-Sahara Africa.

The Vice President, therefore, urged the participants to ensure a comprehensive review of the ICT policy and provide a roadmap for blueprint of the country's digitisation agenda.

Mr George Andah, a Deputy Minister of Communications, in his welcome address, noted that digital application was dynamic and underlined the need for the nation to improve its digital strategy towards becoming the ICT leader in the Sub-Sahara Africa by 2023.

He outlined various programmes implemented by successive governments to transform Ghana into a digital economy.

Those initiatives, he said, enabled Ghanaians to access quality services and improved revenue mobilisation, stressing that there was the need to take a deeper reflection on the gains made so far on digitisation and bridge the gap for accelerated development.

The participants would review the ICT for Accelerated Development Policy in line with digital opportunities and generate ideas to develop a digital strategy and an implementation plan to establish Ghana as the leader in ICT innovation in Sub-Sahara Africa by 2023.

They are also supposed to come out with ideas to bridge the rural-urban ICT divide by expanding digital services to rural and underserved communities and improve efficiency in public service delivery.