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• Misguided prescriptions in the bill 1 day ago

  Alain,
  
  The “misinformation” you accuse others of spreading is, in many respects, a consequence of how your outfit has handled the circulation and revision of the bill documentation itself.
  
  When stakeholders are unab ...
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  Alain,
  
  The “misinformation” you accuse others of spreading is, in many respects, a consequence of how your outfit has handled the circulation and revision of the bill documentation itself.
  
  When stakeholders are unable to access a clearly version-controlled and up-to-date draft, people inevitably respond to older provisions and earlier consultation documents. In the vacuum created by that lack of clarity, public commentary will naturally rely on the information available to them at the time.
  
  More fundamentally, the continued emphasis on a “licensing” regime suggests that the framers of the bill may not yet have fully thought through the actual causes of ICT project failure — particularly in Ghana.
  
  Licensing does not prevent poor implementations.
  
  Research across the ICT and project management sectors consistently shows that failed digital transformation projects are far more commonly linked to weak executive sponsorship, poor governance, lack of continuity, procurement failures, and the absence of meaningful benefits realisation management.
  
  In Ghana especially, one of the enduring problems is that major public-sector technology initiatives frequently lose strategic continuity whenever governments change. Projects are commissioned, rebranded, abandoned, or poorly integrated, with little institutional accountability for long-term value delivery.
  
  Yet rather than addressing those structural governance failures, the bill appears focused on imposing licensing obligations and fees on ICT practitioners and startups — many of whom could become tomorrow’s technology innovators and high-growth firms.
  
  That approach risks creating barriers to entry rather than strengthening the ecosystem.
  
  More importantly, licensing in itself does not guarantee competence or professionalism. A poor contractor can still obtain a licence. The ICT industry globally has traditionally addressed professional credibility through accreditation, certification, standards compliance, peer reputation, and demonstrable capability — not through criminalisation of practice.
  
  That is why the inclusion, in earlier consultation drafts, of sanctions such as fines and jail terms for practising ICT without a licence caused understandable alarm across sections of the industry.
  
  Those provisions gave the impression that control and restriction were being prioritised over innovation, growth, and ecosystem development.
  
  If the true objective is to improve standards within Ghana’s digital economy, then the focus should be on governance quality, procurement reform, executive accountability, delivery assurance, interoperability standards, and long-term institutional capability — not simply on creating another licensing bureaucracy.

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