The next world is the e-world – and every country is positioning itself to either have a first-mover advantage or take advantage of what has already been done by others so as not to re-invent the wheel.
The next e-generation may not need the traditional physical brick and mortar schools, courts, offices and hospitals as we have now, since everything will be pre-fixed with ‘e’. Countries that do not start the change management process of moving their people, government, private sector business and economies ‘on-line’ will be doing a big disservice to their next generation of e-citizens.
It is heartwarming to see the Vice-President trying to champion actualisation of the existing e-government agenda in Ghana. However, there’s a need to institutionalise this process of digital transformation through a body.
This body will take a holistic approach with a blueprint of where we want e-Ghana to be in maybe 20 years instead of a piece-meal approach with no known specific destination for entrepreneurs, businesses and citizens to also plan and plug into. This is why we need a holistic regulatory approach – hence, a Digital Authority.
Looking at the big picture
Ghana’s main e-government agenda is supposed to revolve around six strategic goals with a separate comprehensive e-government strategic document. This policy was based on 14 pillars and intended to develop, deploy and exploit ICT for administration and service delivery within government and the economy.
There have also been the e-Ghana project and the e-GIF initiative. The e-Ghana project had three components intended to assist government in its ICT development, and the e-GIF initiative was meant to establish, among other policies, technical standards and guidelines in achieving interoperability among government organisations.
The realisation of this agenda has been ongoing with the development of ICT policy statements by various governments – with no known or published timelines for government institutions to digitalise their operations and allow the private sector to plug-in to complete the process.
Considering the infrastructure, legal, human capital, technical and technology development, educational capacity and specialised commercial services needed for this digital transformation, there seems to be no known value chain ‘end-to-end’ digitalisation strategic action plan.
Where is the ‘Dream’? How do we get there? What regulation and consumer protection is required? What do we envisage our education to be like? What do we envisage our healthcare to be like? How do we see the interaction between government business and the citizens etc.? This is where a Digital Authority, backed by law to galvanise both government and private sector thoughts as stakeholders for a common purpose, comes in. Leaving this to government manifestos and politicians who seldom continue with what previous governments have done will be disastrous for the next e-citizens. An independent body must be dreaming with the world so the digital divide for Ghana as a country is narrowed.
Dream of drones for shopping
Now that we have digital addresses in Ghana, I foresee a future when owning a drone will be like owning a car. There will be private drones and commercial ones. No need to physically go shopping. Those with private ones will send them to the fulfillment centres to collect groceries, medicines, fast-food and other purchases which have been electronically paid for. Those who cannot afford it will use the commercial ones to deliver or collect their purchases. The commercial ones will either be like taxis you can hire as ‘dropping’, or you share with others who have made orders in your locality.
There will be the ‘trotro’ drones as well, for the ordinary citizen who cannot afford the taxi. There will be different models like we have Mercedes and Toyota, having different functionalities. Basically, drones will be used to deliver and collect parcels.
This will lead to skill and business model disruption in their present form, but also create new ones. The mechanics or ‘fitters’ will need to learn robotics; our schools will need to teach robotics – it’s repairs and maintenance; the Aviation Authority will need to find a way to regulate the national air-space, including drone piloting licence; the police must have police drones to fight drone crimes or illegal activity; private security drones will be hired, hovering and watching over our homes instead of human beings. Road traffic will move to air traffic and accidents. Houses will now have to have ‘drone-pads’ for landing sites.
Anyway, robots have started delivering orders from shops to buyers in other countries. Of course, with the potholes in Ghana I doubt that we can even copy. Our best alternative is the airspace, but I guess my dream is far-fetched. And in any case, such dreams like any other ‘e-dream’ are for a Digital Authority – not the Data Protection Commission or the Cybersecurity Authority which are mandated to tackle specific areas of the digital ecosystem.
Present fragmented regulatory approach
The digital transformation process cannot exist without laws and institutions to govern the development, security as well as protection of consumers. The need to bring order and make sure we all fall in line has necessitated the passing of various laws, such as:
- The Electronic Transactions Act, 2008 (Act 772) which has among others the following objectives of facilitating electronic communications and related transactions in the public interest: promoting legal certainty and confidence in electronic communications and transactions; promoting e-government services and electronic communications and transactions with public and private bodies, institutions and citizens.
The Act is also aimed at developing a safe, secure and effective environment for the consumer, business and government to conduct and use electronic transactions.
- The Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) that established The Data Protection Commission (DPC) as an independent statutory body established to protect the privacy of the individual and personal data by regulating the processing of personal information.
- The Cybersecurity Act, 2020 (Act 1038) establishing a Cyber Security Authority (CSA) as a body corporate to among others regulate cybersecurity activities in the country; and promote the development of cybersecurity in the country to ensure a secured and resilient digital ecosystem.
The Data Protection Commission’s (DPC) vision is to “protect the Privacy of the Individual and personal data by regulating people, processes and technology”; and the vision of the Cyber Security Authority (CSA) is “a Secured and Resilient Digital Ghana” with a mission “To Build a Resilient Digital Ecosystem, Secure Digital Infrastructure, Develop National Capacity, Deter Cybercrime and Strengthen Cybersecurity Cooperation”.
The various Acts with different Regulators involved in regulating aspects of the digital ecosystem may be duplicating efforts using same or similar methodologies, dealing with same data subjects and information but not sharing resources – including human resource and information – effectively and efficiently.
We should not start creating various regulatory bodies for various aspects of the digital ecosystem, but have a single ‘birds eye’ view of e-Ghana as to where we want to go and how we intend to get there as fast as possible but safely. We need to avoid a regulatory ‘turf-war’ in the future, and have a single Regulator such as a Digital Authority that will still deal with data protection, cybersecurity issues and also development of the commercial aspects – not forgetting consumer protection.
There is an opportunity for the digital industry to avoid the fragmented regulation of the financial services industry – where instead of having an efficient model of a single umbrella to take care of all aspects of financial services, we have the National Pensions Regulatory Authority for pensions, Security and Exchange Commission for the securities market, Bank of Ghana for the business of banking and National Insurance Commission for insurance business. At times, all these Regulators have a single regulatee who gets ‘burnt-out’ with prudential returns and various inspections all-year-round using about the same core information.
The Digital Authority
The digital ecosystem involves aspects relating to transactions and commerce, information security, data protection, legal as well as the technical and technological aspect. Governance and management must also be considered. Players include suppliers (both government and private), customers, trading partners and third-party data service providers. Each aspect requires some form of regulation, but they are all interconnected and revolve around protection of the consumer as well as facilitating the development of that space.
There is need for a culture change by way of new ways of digital life, and change management methodologies will have to be employed. It is not all about the security aspect or data protections, hence the Cybersecurity Authority and Data Protection Commission by their mandate are not cut out to create the future digital Ghana – especially development of the commercial, transactional and business aspects.
A Digital Authority will therefore consider in a holistic manner all the various areas to lead the digitisation, digitalisation and digital transformation of the Ghanaian economy, especially the e-government business agenda. Once e-governance is achieved, the private sector by way of businesses as suppliers and the citizens as buyers will plug into the ecosystem.
The digital platform area – an environment the youth are comfortable with – is a big opportunity for young entrepreneurs with little or no initial capital to create a market and reach out to potential clients. For their safety, Plug and Play secured websites with payment systems, e-marketing and especially e-taxation tools already embedded may have to be deliberately developed to not only protect them and reduce the cost of having their own businesses as ‘start-ups’, but also nudge them to go online with an opportunity to expand the tax net to SMEs. This is definitely not and cannot be the mandate of either the Cybersecurity Authority or the Data Protection Commission, but rather a Digital Authority.
This Digital Authority can then have various divisions to take care of cybersecurity, data protection, consumer protection, business development and others that may be needed to not only regulate but champion the Digital Ghana agenda. The Digital Authority’s main mandate will be to safely move the Ghanaian economy on-line and lead the digital transformation agenda.
Conclusion
The future is the digital world, and Ghana as a country must digitalise its economy to be able to plug in. The present traditional economy in terms of job creation from government’s side is ‘choked’ and the youth are being encouraged to be entrepreneurs. The only platform they understand is the digital platform; hence, there is a need to nudge them to be e-entrepreneurs and be protected. The regulation of the process of the digital economy transformation must be legally institutionalised through a Digital Authority.
This Digital Authority will be responsible for the big picture and the e-dream, and an opportunity to harness the limited and specialised skill set available in regulating the safety aspects as currently mandated to the Cybersecurity Authority and the Data Protection Commission; as well as the commercial, business and developmental aspects where there seems to be a regulatory gap.
The author is a Chartered Banker, holds an EMBA (IT Management) an LLB and LLM (IT & Telecommunication) (contact: [email protected] visit : Kofianokye.blogspot.com )
