Audit Service inaugurates website, ICT Centre

Accra, April 1, GNA - The Ghana Audit Service (GAS) on Thursday inaugurated a website and an Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) -based resource centre that would make the Auditor-General's report and other relevant information of public interest easily accessible to the public.

Under a World Bank grant of 244,000 dollars, the facilities fall within a broader project of the banks objective of strengthening the capacity of GAS to carry out specialised audits in areas of public procurement, special funds and forensic auditing.

Mr Richard Quartey, Acting Auditor-General, said funding for the project, expected to close by August 2010, was received from the bank in May 2007, to enable the service enhance the ICT capacities of staff in order to achieve its mission and contribute towards Ghana's democratic dispensation through good governance and accountability practices. He said under the service's registered domain name of www.ghaudit.org, copies of the Auditor-General's reports and other relevant information would be posted for the use of Parliament and the general public thereby, making information from the Service easily accessible through the internet. The ICT centre would also enable GAS staff to access the website of other Supreme Audit Institutions across the world, to keep abreast of modern auditing techniques in public sector auditing and international auditing standards.

Mr Quartey said to ensure sustainability of the project, eight core staff have been trained to manage the centre as well as the content of the website.

Also, a website content management committee has been set up to receive and vet documents and reports that should go to the website. He said the project however needed to be fully completed by hooking regional and district offices of the service to the server in Accra and called for additional support from development partners to fund the extension to make the project fully functional. Mr Robert De-Graft Hansen, World Bank Representative, said, the financial entity decided to support the project because of the crucial role the service played in ensuring good governance, transparency and accountability.

Mr James Agyemin-Boateng, a Deputy Minister of Information, advised the service to ensure that it update the website on regular basis, ensure the timeliness of the information it poses to the public to help sustain the relevance and credibility of the project.