An information technology centre of excellence is to be established in Accra by the Ministry of Communications and Technology and the Indian government in line with government's policy of promoting transparency and accountability.

Mr Felix Owusu Adjapong, who announced this in Accra, said the government was "committed to promoting an open government through the sharing and distribution of digitised information to enable the citizenry to make informed choices."

Mr Adjapong was speaking at the opening of a three-day exhibition and conference on the theme: "Developing a knowledge society for West Africa," being attended by IT experts from the West Africa Sub-Region, organised by AITEC Ghana, an international information technology organisation and the Ministry of Communications and Technology.

"For the future, however, our goal is to ensure sound transformation of government to go beyond Internet-based provision of information to fully interactive services," the Minister said. He said the conference "will enable us to explore the challenges of our time, where globalisation, technological development and the liberalisation of markets have also become new driving forces in the creation of an information society."

Mr Adjapong said Ghanaians ushered in a new government with the hope that it would lead the crusade to effect positive changes in the way things were done to ensure operational efficiency, quality and timeliness of service delivery.

Mr Adjapong said the Ministry of Communications and Technology was created to facilitate the development of an efficient integrated nation-wide communications structure including an electronic government structure to support a transparent government system.

He said an electronic government involved using appropriately information technology in government operations with the aim of reducing and eliminating waste to sustain growth at all levels of governance. The Minister said for electronic government to be applied effectively in Ghana and the sub-region, a necessary requirement was the need for an effective networking to facilitate widespread information and communication.

He called for the training of human resources, saying there was the need to develop a new crop of staff with skills in information technology and networking to sustain viable electronic government programmes.

He said government ministries, departments and agencies had, as a first step, established their own "visibility in information technology through the development of their own web portals. "We intend in the long run to ensure that all portals will be linked to the national one so that a visitor to one portal will be automatically hooked to the entire information on Ghana." Mr Sean Moroney, Group Chairman of AITEC said there was the need to make electronic governance work since it was an empowering tool for democracy.