Former Members of Parliament attend ICT training

Mr Kosi Kedem, President of the forum for former Members of Parliament, has said the lack of  a national computer policy and networking has brought about wastage, a negative and inefficient use of the computer.

He said members were aware of the ill fated, inefficient and badly managed computer systems of the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service automated system for Customs data,the compromised SSNIT database, Ministry of Education's unreliable integrated personal pay data base and the Ghana commercial bank computer system.

Mr Kedem said this at a day's Information Communication Technology (ICT) training programme for former members of Parliament in Accra recently.

He said the nation bemoaned the upsurge of computer or cyber crime and fraud, and had to live with the pain of people using the computer to store, disseminate and promote pornography and other immoral activities.

'We look on helplessly as our websites are used as a platform for insults, promotion of tribalism and political and religious bigotry and intolerance', he noted.

Mr Kedem expressed surprise that in the absence of a national computer and information technology policy, the government was trying to distribute free computers to schoolchildren, and had also tried to build network systems such as the GCNET, and was also creating a fund to promote the use of ICT, and warned that all these would come to nought if there was no policy on ICT.

''Without legislation on the use of ICT, people should be prepared for unlimited abuse of the computer with its attendant undesirable evils such as computer pornography, cyber crimes and fraud,'' he said.

He expressed optimism that only a national ICT policy and legislation would bring sanity and ensure the proper use of the computer for national development, urging the government to consider a proposal made by him on the issue of national computer policy in  Parliament in 1996.

He said there was the need for the government to set up a national advisory committee on ICT, which among other things, would advise government on the proper use and application of computers in national development.

GNA