66th Annual New Year School launched
The 66th Annual New Year School scheduled to be held from January 4-9, 2015 has been launched in Accra.
Advertisement
Next year’s event is on the theme, “Improving the performance of the Local Government System in the era of e-Governance” and Dr Esther Ofei-Aboagye, Director of the Institute of Local Government Studies, is to deliver the keynote address.
The New Year School will look into how to provide electronic databases to ease access to e-documentation and information flow to improve management and quality online services for public satisfaction.
E-Governance
The Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Julius Debrah, who launched the event, said e-governance had been technically defined as the application of information and communication technology (ICT) for delivery of government services, exchange of information communications transactions among others.
He said the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) was providing leadership for the applications of ICTs in the public sector by transforming government’s administration, information and service delivery for national development.
Solve challenges
He indicated that e-governance had the tendency to solve numerous administrative challenges, including data storage and management and would also facilitate decision making in local governance as well as revenue mobilisation in theMetropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).
The Head of Department of Adult Education and Human Resource Studies of the University of Ghana, Dr Samuel Badu-Nyarko, said the New Year School, since its inception in 1949, had been the platform and a place where many Ghanaians of all walks of life had congregated and learnt a lot about national affairs.
He said the aim was to offer the general public a platform to discuss issues affecting the nation dispassionately and offer solutions to them.
Issues Discussed
Dr Badu-Nyarko said for the past five years the school had discussed issues relating to water and sanitation, environmental degradation, youth empowerment and national development, oil and gas and healthy living among Ghanaians.
According to him, last year the school rolled out a five-year development plan which focused on the use of ICT as the driving force in the areas of education, government and democracy, health, agriculture and business.
Organisers of School
He said the organisers of the school settled on improving the local government system in the era of e-governance partly because many developing countries such as Sri Lanka, Jordan, Pakistan and lately South Korea have adopted e-governance as a basis for strengthening and improving their local government systems.
Professor Yaw Oheneba Sakyi, Dean of School of Continuing and Distance Education, said adopting an e-governance could ensure the efficient and effective provision and management of services, dissemination of information, increased accountability and performance management.
He said e-governance programmes could also lead to the development of an effective workforce, improved revenue generation and management, reduced cost of service delivery and increased local competition.