Moves to Advance ICT

Commercial Banks in the country have been asked to develop an integrated credit and debit cards in order to enhance transactions among customers in the country.

This call was made by the representative of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Mr. E. Zaato, at an "Information Communication and Technology (ICT) for Governance 2003" conference held last week in Accra.

He explained that, it would be more economical and non-time consuming for banks to join together to design and produce a common credit and debit card than to do them individually.

He pointed out that the cost per bank for the production of the products would reduce, as there would be no duplication of paraphernalia. He suggested, "instead of the numerous banks developing different cards, they could have one card to be used by all banks in the country". He noted that banks could benefit a lot for coming together because terminals would be used at higher levels.

Mr. Zaato revealed that it is the policy of BoG to make the country a cashless society but this is being hampered by certain factors. Poor telecommunication system and unsatisfactory legal framework are some of the problems affecting the smooth development of that vision.

In order to solve these problems, Mr. Zaato disclosed that BoG had drafted two bills to Parliament to address these issues.

He also said that automated clearing houses with electronic payment modes would be established to transfer messages between banks and this would be for both bulk and small values.

He further stated that BoG would also develop a "central high value payment system" for banks with high value payment.

The Minister of Communication and Technology, Hon. Felix Owusu Agyapong, said at the opening ceremony of the conference that the government is vigorously making efforts to develop the vital infrastructure that would support national deployment of ICT at a competitive cost within the shortest possible time so as to place this country ahead of the other countries in the sub-region.

He explained that the government is going to great lengths to ensure the development in the country, advanced technologies that would permit the wider application of technology to development areas like education, health, agriculture and rural development, governance, culture, scientific research as well as environmental and emergency managements.

The minister mentioned that all ICT projects within the public sector are still on course and they are expected to receive further boost next month in terms of finances.

One of the projects is the PUFMARP that seeks to develop an integrated public financial management system, Ghana Dot Project to link all ministries, departments and agencies and the National Identification Project.

Other projects are the local area networks and websites for the ministries and African Development Fund Institutional Support for Capacity Building. The minister noted that these projects are currently operating on independent basis but would soon be harmonized to prevent duplication and to economize on infrastructure.

On Electronic Governance (e-governance), he said the government would focus on access to government information, access to government services and enhanced participation of the people.

According to him, all ministries have the basic ICT hardware to initiate an application of ICT and that this would be complemented with the requisite capacity development to be undertaken by the Kofi Annan ICT Centre of Excellence, which would commence training next year.

"Government is now seeking to make the civil service efficient with the application of new technologies," he added.

The head of the Civil Service, Mr. Alex Quartey, stated that just creating sufficient technical system would not be enough in itself in the promotion of ICT.

But the government should try as much as possible to train workers, at least, in the basic level of computer literacy.

The ICT for the government was a two day conference that brought together local, regional and central government as well as some government agencies, institutions and corporations with the private sector to deliberate on how the IT Policy and IT in general to accelerate the growth of the country.

The conference was aimed at accelerating the growth of ICT and to enhance the digitization initiative being undertaken by the government.

It was also devoted to the discussion and advancement of the management of information as well as the appropriate application of innovative technologies culminating in the improvement of government operations and service delivery.