All public services will be fully digitised to ensure effective and efficient delivery to citizens, the Minister of State for Public Sector Reforms, Lydia Lamisi Akanvariba, has said. 

Speaking at a workshop on the National Public Sector Reform Strategy (NPSRS II) in Accra yesterday, she added that the strategy was being finalised to provide a whole-of-government framework to guide reforms across the public sector.

“What we want to see is effective and efficient provision of government services. That is why we want every organisation to be digitalised,” she stated.

She said her ministry was working with the Ministry of Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations and the National Identification Authority (NIA) to integrate key service providers onto one platform. 

Ms Akanvariba said NPSRS II cut across ministries, departments and agencies, including Local Government, Finance, Communications, DVLA, Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) and the Passport Office.

The strategy, sponsored by the World Bank, she said, built on lessons from the first phase which targeted institutions such as CHRAJ, DVLA and the Passport Office, among others.

“We have learned some lessons in relation to the enrolment of the programme. Sometimes, there are delays in the release of the funds, which now we want to improve on,” she noted.

She cited plans to reduce queues at DVLA, expand the 24-hour premium passport service to all Ghanaians and complete CHRAJ’s case management system to enable Ghanaians to access services from anywhere.

Following the validation, the document will be sent to the Chief of Staff and then to Cabinet for approval before going to Parliament. Meanwhile, it is expected that the document will be ready by the end of the year.

Ms Akanvariba said the committee had also established a monitoring and evaluation team to evaluate the policy when implemented to measure its success annually.

For his part, the Head of the Civil Service and Vice Chairperson of the Technical Oversight Committee on NPSRS II, Dr Evans Aggrey-Darkoh, affirmed that the public sector must be reformed continuously to meet citizens’ growing demands and support national development.

Dr Aggrey-Darkoh said “institutions decay with time” and government must “do things differently” in a complex and uncertain world.

He added that reforms must target structures, systems, business processes and personnel capacity, with customer service at the centre.

“The quality of the services that we deliver will really measure our true relevance and our true value,” he stated.

Dr Aggrey-Darkoh said the strategy focused on digitisation to reduce human interface and corruption, deepening decentralisation, gender mainstreaming, ethical leadership, and linking pay to performance.

A Deputy Chief of Staff in Charge of Administration, Nana Oye Bampoe Addo, in a statement delivered on her behalf by her Technical Advisor, Kizito Ballans, said the strategy built on lessons from reforms since 1987, but placed stronger emphasis on implementation and measurable outcomes.

She said while progress had been made in digitisation, revenue mobilisation and procurement, challenges persisted, including fragmented coordination, weak performance management, bureaucratic delays and gaps in digital service delivery.

These gaps, she said, underscored planned actions, including stakeholder consultations, integration of reform costs into the national budget, stronger monitoring and evaluation, and end-to-end digital transformation to improve interoperability.