The National Information Technology Agency (NITA) says it has trained some 20 Municipal District Assemblies (MDA’s) in a pilot phase on data processing, data publication, data management and legal framework for acquiring data.

According to the Director of Operations at NITA, Eric Akumiah, the agency under the Ministry of Communications plans to, in June this year, roll out a national strategy to drive the process for the implementation of data acquisition, publication and management.

“We recently did a pilot phase where we have trained 20 MDA’s on data publication, data management and the legal framework of how to get data to work for you. We have now developed a policy as part of this process and this policy is going to get everybody in government to start opening up data to the format and standards that has been defined within the policy,” Akumiah said in a phone interview with GhanaWeb.

He added that essentially, NITA is leading the format and standards in terms of opening up data and how all the different MDA’s will use data.

Akumiah said the move is necessary to be a culture for all government agencies on how to open up data and use it for practical applications like the Ghana Smart Cities project which is expected to take off soon.

He disclosed that there is currently a Government Analytics Strategy pending a cabinet approval which will allow big data acquired, to be used for evidence-based decision making as well as open data for all.

“Once that is done, we will move it to the enforcement stage and then with the budget allocation, we will now begin the national rollout and with this we might make some impact in a year or two of having a certain critical mass of MDA’s using data for practical use,” he concluded.

Recently, Executive Chairman of Celltel Networks, Dr Prince Kofi Kludjeson said his outfit plans to create over 10,000 jobs for Ghanaians under the Ghana Smart Cities project, which is designed to provide an affordable nationwide Wi-Fi network.

The network, will require considerable infrastructure, which will be established in collaboration with the local government institutions and other strategic and relevant government agencies.