IBM’s Corporate Services Corp (CSC) team to Ghana has made an immediate, medium and long term recommendations to help the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipal Assembly's to streamline processes and harmonize operations across departments.
The recommendations will see the assembly deploying its operational processes and technology assets in an innovative way to support and supplement departments and units of the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipal Assembly's existing programs in the area of internally generated revenue collection, data management and planning, process and workflow management.
Other areas include internal and external customer service delivery, community engagement, communications, skills / knowledge transfer and capacity for enhanced services delivery.
The CSC team, which spent four weeks in Tarkwa, worked and provided consulting services to authorities on a new ICT enabled district assembly plan for revenue management; setting up a database management system & training of officials; strategy development for rolling out micro enterprise programmes and firms and change management, customer satisfaction, and Human Resource process improvements.
The team of IBM specialists told the media in Accra that the comprehensive set of "Smarter Services" recommendations and solutions would help the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipal Assembly to improve its capacity to manage revenue and ICT infrastructure, deliver education, healthcare and social services to citizenry.
The IBM CSC team said it identified gaps and developed recommendations, plans, and tools which would ensure that government agencies, businesses and citizens of the Tarkwa Nsuaem area benefit from IBM's Smarter Planet concept, which seeks to promote the use of cutting edge technology solutions, services and ideas in Business and Governance.
One key issue tackled by the CSC team working with the Department of Community Development in Tarkwa was the issue of economic empowerment for women and youths.
The CSC team developed a blueprint document, which identified the problems and challenges facing this section of the Tarkwa population and suggested a series of skills development ideas and programmes for implementation.
The blueprint also explored external funding options to support the Community Development department's economic development programs.
The key recommendations of the CSC team are that the Tarkwa Nsuaem Community Development team should be empowered to support communities, there should be increased knowledge sharing, awareness and coordination with other government agencies to leverage existing programs and educate communities about them.
Design an end-to-end training package, which, in addition to skills training, includes benefits of group formation, basic business skills etc.
Key Deliverables of the CSC team to the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipal Assembly include a database management tool and the training of staff on how to use it, a manual on the processes for future training and detailed report containing recommendations.
Over the last four years, IBM has sent eight teams to Ghana to work with various public and private sector bodies as part of its corporate citizenship programme.
Several Corporate Service Corps (CSC) and Executive Services Corp teams have through their interactive leadership consultancy programs in Ghana have delivered high quality problem solving for communities and organizations in a number of sectors including health.