‘Adopt technological growth for poverty reduction’

Accelerated growth of technology-adoption by government and businesses is an essential tool for addressing the challenge of poverty reduction in the country, Mr. Solomon Adiyiah, Principal Consultant, eSolutions Consulting, has said.

“The public sector, which is heavily dependent and generally overburdened, is convoluted with manual processes. This impedes data collection and reporting methods, and has invariably led to poor service provision, corruption and fraud.

“Ghana is seriously lagging in the use of information technology to provide government services, and this issue has been exacerbated by the lack of appropriate technical skills and a robust network infrastructure,” he said.

Mr. Adiyiah made this observation in Accra at a media interaction aimed at creating a common platform for industry players and policymakers to brainstorm on ideas to help improve organisation’s operations through best-practices in business and IT strategic planning and transformation, business process improvement, technical project management and outsourcing.

It was also to share experiences in the IT industry - meant to promote the ethos of value-based business and technology consulting in the country.

The programme brought together IT experts from the sub-region, representatives from government agencies and private sector operators as well as media operators.

Mr. Adiyiah said: “The country is competing with other African countries for foreign investment, and administrative functions must enable foreign companies to operate efficiently and effectively. These expectations must drive political action to speed-up electronic government initiatives in the country.

‘The provision of effective business and IT consulting services will help the country’s corporate institutions make the necessary advances in the field of acquiring new technologies to help create new high-tech jobs and generate growth in both public and private sectors.”

He emphasised that different organisations have different attitudes toward change; eSolutions Consulting works to understand each client’s specific goals and constraints and create a tailor-made programme that meets their objectives and fits with their organisational culture.

These include identifying opportunities to realise quick savings - perhaps by taking over the management of the existing IT environment right away. This optimised IT environment will cost less to operate and maintain, and will enable the organisation to concentrate on its core business.

“Drawing on our experience, we believe we can help organisations improve on their operations through best-practices,” Adiyiah remarked.

eSolution’s current clientele base in the country includes Vodafone, AngloGold Ashanti, Cocoa Board, Volta River Authority, Ministry of Communications, Ghana Health Service and Internal Revenue Services.

eSolutions Consulting is a consultancy company with service offerings and solutions specifically developed to meet the challenges facing organisations operating in Ghana and Africa as a whole. Its consultants developed the Ghana Government Enterprise Architecture framework, which focused on a technology blueprint for the computerisation of the public sector.