The Minister for Communication and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has emphasised the need to empower the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) with a Legislative Instrument (LI) to enable the agency effectively to regulate and enforce the laws in the ICT ecosystem in Ghana.
She noted that there are laws intended to regulate ICT in Ghana but due to the absence of a backing of the Legislative Instrument, it is very difficult to operationalize them.
“If you want to register service providers, they will ask you, how are you going to do it? We can’t just make it up if we go on. Since 2017 we have been working on operationalizing the Act but this is a very broad sector” Madam Owusu-Ekuful said.
The minister disclosed at the NITA organised brainstorming ICT stakeholder conference to review the draft content of two Legislative Instruments (LIs) for the NITA Act, 2008 (Act 771) and the Electronic Transactions Act, 2008 (Act 772) which are being prepared to be put before Parliament that they are trying to work with the Public Procurement Agency (PPA) to ensure that all procurement of ICT goods and services are done with the input of NITA.
“Just like the Attorney-General is the legal adviser to the government, we see NITA as the ICT adviser to the government,” the Minister said.
She expressed worry over how the service providers have been left to dictate the pace of Ghana’s digitalization agenda without the policy maker determining when, how, where and why.
It is as if people come up with products and we just say it is a good idea, let’s do it but is it part of the implementation of your own policy and is it in line with your own objective as a government? That gap has also been identified and this is where NITA should be the heart of the ICT Ecosystem and see to it that everything that we are doing is in line with the implementation of the policy that we have decided to guide this process” the minister for communication pronounced.
The Director General of NITA, Mr. Richard Okyere-Fosu expressed how important this exercise is, not only to the Agency and the government, but also to all players and consumers in the ICT sector.
He said, “NITA has existed for 15 years without these key legislative instruments (LIs) which are considered essential operational tools needed for NITA to function fully and effectively”.
“We want to hear the voices, we want to consult with them and get their opinion on what we are trying to do with the LI, and as you said Ghana is a country of laws, NITA was established by a law, the NITA Act, act 771 and in fact, electronic transaction act is also one of our underlying acts, act 772, these were the primary acts and typically by law after you bring the primary legislation you must come up with the secondary legislation to help you with your operations,” Mr. Okyere told 3FM.
“If someone is sitting in their bedroom, using online and ordering goods or services from China, Amazon, Alibaba or whatever and he is selling it, there is no recourse for it if something goes wrong with the product. So, we must know whoever is in the system, who is doing something with ICT so that at least we know the ecosystem, be able to quantify those who are in the different sectors and be able to provide these sorts of information to GRA as and when they need it” he stressed.
By Samuel Afriyie Owusu|3news.com|Ghana