By Iddi
Yire/Grace Princess Tarwo, GNA
Accra, Oct 4, GNA – The Office of the Head of
Civil Service (OHCS) is to introduce online services for most of its human
resource facilities.
Nana Agyekum Dwamena, the Head of Civil
Service said the online services to be introduced include recruitment, graduate
entrance examination and staff appraisal instruments to enhance service
delivery to staff and the public.
He said the OHCS would also roll out other
online mobile applications to provide service and information to civil service
and the public.
He noted that the success of the drive to
improve service delivery for the public and the private sector would depend on
Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) adopting a new paradigm of improved
and consistent service delivery to citizens and the private sector.
Nana Dwamena made the disclosure on Wednesday
in a speech read on his behalf at the Sixth Procurement and Supply Chain Summit
in Accra.
The summit on the theme “Electronic Government
Procurement: a tool for effective Public Procurement” brought together over 150
procurement and supply chain practitioners in both the public and private
sectors of the country to dialogue and formulate ideas on how to improve the
practice.
The African Development Bank through the Ghana
Institutional Support Project provided support for the organisation of the
summit.
Nana Dwamena said public procurement was one
area where government spends enormous resources to pursue its development
agenda and for the provision of goods and services.
He said despite the existence of the Public
Procurement Laws such as the Public Procurement Act 2003, (Act 663), and the
Public Procurement amended Act 2016 (Act 914), to guide the procurement
functions as well as other related legislation and procurement regimes of the
development partners, the practice of procurement was still fraught with the
problems due to the high interface of procurement officers and the public.
He said the introduction of electronic
procurement in the public sector was therefore, very necessary to cut down the
high incidence of human interaction likely to create situations that might
engender corrupt and unethical practices.
“E-Procurement will cut down the cost of doing
business with Government as it will speed up the processes and minimize
unnecessary interferences,” Nana Dwamena said.
“The E-Procurement process will be effective
if the capacity of the procurement and Supply Chain staff of the Civil Service
is enhanced,” he added.
He said the core mandate of the Procurement
and Supply Chain Management Department of the Civil Service; which was leading
in the organisation of this summit, was to recruit, train, retain and deploy
public procurement professionals to the various Metropolitan, Municipal and
District Assemblies (MMDAs).
He said currently, the Procurement and Supply
Chain Management Class of the Civil Service had 200 professionals, with varied
experiences and specialties in the field of Procurement, Contract Management,
Logistics, Transport Project Management and Inventory Management.
He said the OHCS, as a Central Management
Agency, had the distinct mandate to provide the requisite leadership, manage
the human resources and promote the organizational development of the Civil
Service to enable it to respond positively to modern trends in development.
Mr Ebenezer Essilfie-Baiden, the Acting
Director, Procurement and Supply Chain Management Class of the Civil Service,
said the introduction of e-procurement would go a long way to ensure
transparency in the procurement and supply chain management.
Mr Collins Agyemang Sarpong, President, Ghana
Institute of Procurement Supply, said because of digitisation, the Institute
had also moved from manual procurement to e-procurement.
He said most of the multinational companies
operating in Ghana had already embraced e-procurement over 10 years ago;
declaring that, it was about time the government goes in that direction.
GNA