Ghana’s information sharing infrastructure rolls out fully in August

The common ICT platform that will allow all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to share government information among each other will be ready next month, August, 2011.

The infrastructure which is provided and coordinated by Ghana’s National Information Technology Agency (NITA) will send information through WiMax base transceiver stations (BTSs) located close to Regional Coordinating Councils across the country.

A base transceiver station (BTS) is a piece of equipment that facilitates wireless communication between user equipment like mobile phones and a network with WiMAX gadgets.

An official at NITA tells ghanabusinessnews.com that the Greater Accra region has about nine BTS, Kumasi has five with the rest of the regions having at least one BTS.

“It means that once the network is fired-up, all the agencies will be able to share the same infrastructure,” Mr Tony Bediako, Director of Strategy and Architecture at NITA told ghanabusinessnews.com in an interview in Accra.

Mr Bediako reveals that “So in about a month or so all the agencies will start using the platform with their applications,” even though NITA has started supplying internet services to some of the state agencies from its core network based in Accra which is on a pilot base.

According to Mr Bediako, his outfit is also undertaking an acceptance phase that will allow all software and applications which are to be used by all the governmental agencies to be in conformity with the BTS infrastructure or platform.

“We are also doing an acceptance phase to make sure that all the BTS are going to work fine,” he said.

He encouraged agencies to use central location data whenever they want to share information such emails, correspondence and other relevant documents among other agencies.

By Ekow Quandzie