FACILITATING GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION AND SERVICE DELIVERY --- Promoting Electronic Government and Governance Policy Context The civil and public services play a key role in the socio-economic development process of Ghana. And the crucial role that ICTs can play in improving the efficiency of delivery of government services; in reducing (in the long run) the operational cost of these institutions and in bringing government closer to the people has been acknowledged. The deployment, exploitation of ICTs to support the operations and activities of the civil and public services has been recognized as key to the institutional renewal, re-engineering and the modernization of the civil and public service. It is however acknowledged that: the mere deployment of ICTs within public and private sector organizations and institutions does not necessary translates into improvements in productivity, efficiency and service delivery which collectively could impact on the overall developmental process of the country. In other words, the deployment of ICTs within public institutions and business organizations and entities will have little or no impact on the nation’s development process if not accompanied by a number of organizational and procedural changes as well as changes in attitude to work and work ethics. It is acknowledged that for ICTs to have a real appreciable impact on Ghana’s development there is a need to address a number of critical success factors and conditions at the institutional and organizational levels. ---Some of these include making changes in unproductive organizational systems, structures, procedures and processes, as well as addressing poor attitudes to work and unproductive and inefficient work ethics which could hinder the effective exploitation of these technologies to improve organizational efficiency service/produce delivery, productivity and reduction in operational cost. The Policy Statement Acknowledging the crucial role that ICTs can play in the delivery of Government services; bringing government closer to the people; and in facilitating the implementing of the Government’s decentralization policy to support the activities regional and district administrative units, the Government is committed to the deployment, exploitation of ICTs to support the operations and activities of the Civil and Public Services as part its commitment to the modernization of the civil and public service to facilitate administrative cost reduction and the promotion of effectiveness and efficiency in the delivery of government services to the people of Ghana. The Government also recognizing that electronic government and governance initiatives have been demonstrated in a number of countries as crucial for improving government service delivery to the public and bringing government closer to the people is committed to putting in place and implementing a comprehensive e-government and governance strategy for Ghana. In this connection the Government shall be putting in place the necessary mechanisms to facilitate the development of this strategy soon after the release of the Policy Document. This policy commitment shall in addition contribute to addressing some of the other identified developmental challenges facing Ghana, including: the challenges limited human resource capacity 41