The Minister of Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekful, has disclosed that during the 2012 election petition, judges at the Supreme Court refused to accept digital evidence during the hearing of the case.

At the official Launch of the Industry Forum and Inauguration of Independent Assessors in Accra on Tuesday, October 22, 2024, she expressed worry over the development, stressing the need for the Judiciary to stay abreast with the digital age.

"When we took office in 2017, there was no cyber security framework or legislation. There was no regulatory framework for cyber security, We have developed some capacity programmes on cyber crimes.

We realised that for us to build up our systems quickly, we appointed the National Security Advisor and tasked him with a job of developing our cyber security systems.

"So, we extended our programme to train judges, police attorneys, and everyone else involved in the criminal justice system on cybercrime and digital evidence. One thing I found sad was that during the election petition, the judges refused to accept the digital evidence and insisted on paper, and I thought that was a shame, she noted.

She stated that despite efforts by the government's digitalisation agenda, there still remains a gap to fully integrate technology into our legal process.

"The whole world is moving to digital evidence. The whole world is moving towards digitalisation. So, if our judges are not abreast with digitalisation, they will set us back," she stated.

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JKB

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