Government wants private sector to support digitisation agenda

The Ministry of Communication has urged the private sector to embark on digitisation within their organisations to support government’s agenda of formalising the economy through digitisation.

“Government is embarking on a digitisation agenda. We have seen the introduction of a paperless port system; E-justice, E-procurement, E-immigration system and the online registration of passports are all part of the government agenda.

“We expect that the private sector will do the same or even more than what government is doing to enable us achieve the overall objectives of the digitisation agenda,” the Deputy Minister of Communication, George Andah, said at the launch of the 2019 Huawei Ghana IP Gala in Accra.

He said government has already made some fundamental strides in using digital technology to build the country.

These, he said, include mobile money interoperability, the national address system and national identification card.

According to Mr. Andah, while digitisation of the economy is extremely welcome, it is not without it challenges: “As we scale-up our digitisation effort and increasingly embrace technology advancement, it will come with cyber security”.

He said government has taken notice of these challenges and taken steps to address them. One of the measures that government has taken, he said, is establishing the National Cyber Security Governance Framework.

ddressing participants at the 2019 Huawei IP Gala, who were mostly IT professionals, Mr. Andah said there is a need to protect personal data and the right to privacy.

“It’s vital that personal information of organisations, businesses and government agencies are accurate and up-to-date, and are use for the intended purpose for which they were collected.

“More importantly, proper data protection procedures have to be followed; and this is essential in helping prevent cyber crimes by ensuring details and personal data are protected from misuse by third-party fraud,” he added.

He reiterated government’s commitment to developing the ICT sector by way of introducing key policies.

2019 Huawei IP Gala

The Huawei IP Gala is a global initiative aiming to build an open, cooperative platform for sharing on latest network developments and trends, as well as exploring new opportunities.

Huawei has planned and executed more than 70 IP Gala events in nearly 30 countries and regions worldwide, attracting an audience of nearly 5,000 technical experts from all industries.

The IP Gala event for this year brought together industry expert from more than 200 ICT and leading mobile network operators, enterprises and top global experts from Huawei, to discuss and engage one another on local and global technology issues and trends.