Accra, Feb 16, GNA - Mr Kwaku Ofosu-Adarkwa, Chief Director, Ministry of Communications, on Monday, reiterated the need for the decentralization of the government's ICT policy to ensure effective implementation especially at the local level. "It has been asserted that many e-government projects initiated under the governance transformation processes have failed to achieve the desired outcome, notwithstanding the huge investment," he said. Mr Ofosu-Adarkwa said this at a five-day Digital Literacy workshop organized by the Ministry, in collaboration with Microsoft, for participants from the Ministries, Department and Agencies. The Digital Literacy programme is to help participants to access basic computer concepts and skills to enable them to use the technology to develop new social and economic opportunities to promote government's businesses.

He said the training had become necessary to bridge the ICT supply gap within the Public and the Civil services and position them for the implementation of a comprehensive electronic government programme to improve service delivery. "The Ministry shall collaborate with the Office of the Head of Civil Service to operationalise the scheme for IT classes in the public service, which has been developed with the support of UNDP", he said. Mr Ofosu-Adarkwa called on participants to become change agents in the governance transformation process, "and this is why I wish to request that all of you actively participate in the course modules outlined under the digital literacy curriculum". Mr Okay Ice, Regional Development Manager, Microsoft, Ghana, said the training for system administrators would be carried out in March. He said Microsoft was poised to help developing countries in the use of ICT to achieve efficiency in the government machinery.