IT officers tasked to help assemblies digitise revenue collection IT officers tasked to help assemblies digitise revenue collection

By Afedzi Abdullah, GNA

Elmina (C/R), March 13, GNA - Dr Nana Ato Arthur, Head of Local Government Service has challenged IT officers in the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to use their expertise to digtise the process of revenue mobilisation in their assemblies.

This, he believed would minimise leakages and improve the Internally Generated Fund (IGF) of the assemblies and ultimately contribute to achieving the Ghana Beyond Aid Agenda of the Government.

Dr Arthur underscored the important role of IT officers in enhancing revenue mobilisation of the assemblies and encouraged them to be more innovative by developing softwares that would help the assemblies raise their visibility.

He was speaking at the opening of a two-day capacity building workshop for IT officers from the Regional Coordinating Councils and District Assemblies in the Greater Accra, Western and Central Regions.

Organised under the auspices of the Office of the Head of Local Government Service (OHLGS) with support from the Inter-Ministerial Coordinating Committee on Decentralisation, the training was attended by 64 IT officers from the three regions.

The IT/Management Information System (MIS) officers in the RCCs and the Assemblies are responsible for local area networking, functionality of computing system, setting up and deployment of applications in respect of GIFMIS, HRMIS, IT documentations, trouble-shooting of computer systems among others.

Dr Arthur explained that the training was necessary to ensure that the IT officers were abreast with new development in the sector and to enable them to give off their best.

He said the training provided a platform to share best practices, learn from it and also reward those who did well in the evaluation of the 2018 performance contract.

Dr Arthur urged the IT officers to be committed to the training to improve on their knowledge and skills and use them to benefit their respective assemblies especially in the areas of data for planning and budgeting purposes.

He also spoke about the Tax Revenue for Economic Enhancement (TREE) project which was ongoing in the three Regions saying lesson are being learnt from the project and would soon be extended to other assemblies.

“We are learning from what the TREE Project which is not in all the assemblies, so we are learning from what they have built for us in Central, Ashanti and Western Regions for us to be able to cascade the effects in all MMDAs”, he said.

He also indicated that the Service was securing financial clearance to recruit more IT officers, Physical planers and other staff for the assemblies with inadequate staff.

The IT officers would be taken through topics such as “Public Service IT and data protection, Hard ware and trouble-shooting, basic networking, ICT security” among others.

GNA 

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