Introduction

Ghana has been a pioneer in African telecommunications sector, leading the region in market liberalization deregulation, and serving as a hub for submarine cables linking the southern and northern Africa to Europe with impressive internet bandwidth and improved communications infrastructure. However, Ghanaians have not yet fully adopted ICT in their daily lives or in business operations. While mobile phone penetration is over 100 percent, the phones are used primarily for voice communications. In spite of the recent significant increase of Internet bandwidth and huge price falling of devices as well as usage charges, Internet users in Ghana are still less than 10 percent of the total population, and mobile broadband usage is extremely low (1.7 percent in 2011).

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The development objective of the e -Transform Ghana Project is expected to be achieved through interventions which collectively are expected to: improve targeting of government resources, leading to more efficient use of public funds; improve efficiency and coverage of priority government services, particularly in rural and underserved areas; and nurture entrepreneurship and increase jobs through ICT-enabled entrepreneurship. The interventions include unique electronic identification systems, that validate citizens and confirms rights to public services while promoting better access to online transactions, financial and other services; and innovative applications to improve service delivery in the priority areas of health, education, judicial, and parliamentary services.

The e-Transform Ghana project will harness information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks (WAN), the Internet, and mobile computing) to transform service operations. The project is a joint collaboration between the Government of Ghana (GOG) under the auspices of the Ministry of Communications (MOC) and the World Bank (WB)

The electronic transformation intervention is aimed at changing the way government functionaries provide services.

It will harness information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks (WAN), the Internet, and mobile computing) to transform service operations for a number of government agencies including the health, educational, judiciary, sectors etc. Its major components include-

• Component 1: Enabling Environment for Electronic Government;
• Component 2: Common Services and Infrastructure for Electronic Government;
• Component 3: Scale up of e-Services and Applications;
• Component 4: Project Management Support.

The project will involve the development of internet and computer networks and its expansion.

It will be implemented nationwide across the three geophysical zones of Ghana namely the Coastal, Middle and Northern belts.

Some potential positive project impacts include; (i) the improvement of intra-organizational and inter-organisational management due to the introduction of electronic network technologies and standards; (ii) introduction of environmentally friendly methods of operation.