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16.09.2004 General News

No Computer Literacy, No Appointment -Dr Glover Quartey

16.09.2004 LISTEN
By GNA

Accra, Sept. 16, GNA - Chief Directors of the various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) must acquire computer training skills by December 31 to be able to access information in their operations or face the consequences.
"What I am saying is that henceforth the appointment of a Chief Director in the service would be based on how literate a person is in computer training and how well that knowledge could be applied," Dr Alex Glover-Quartey, Head of the Civil Service said on Thursday in Accra. He asked Chief Directors to put in place strategies to enable their Deputy and Assistant Directors acquire computer lessons by June 2005 so they could all help transform Ghana into an information-rich, knowledge-based world.
Speaking at a day's workshop for chief directors and regional co-ordinators of MDAs, Dr Glover-Quartey said it had become important to train the directors because as civil servants, they played a critical role in facilitating government's policy and projects. He said the Service had made negotiations with the Kofi Annan ICT Centre for Excellence to organise computer training for the directors at a highly reduced charge.
Dr Glover-Quartey announced that as part of measures to train all civil servants in the use of the computer, a Civil Service Computer Training Centre was to be established by October at the Civil Service Training School with the assistance from the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). The workshop, under the theme: "Commitment to the Development of Agency-Specific ICT Policy Statements" discussed the ICT policy statements of the MDAs and recommend their necessary modifications to fall in line with the overall national ICT Policy for accelerated development.
Mr Albert Kan-Dapaah, Minister of Communications, who chaired the function, said government had shown its commitment in ICT by supporting the implementation of certain basic e-government systems and had in regard of standards and norms, also registered all Ministries' Internet protocol addresses as well as assigning domain names for them. He said the flow of information was fundamental for active participation of the citizenry in the business of governance and the civil service should be seen as contributing to that function of democracy.


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