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.