The Data Harmonisation Bill, 2025, is to help provide a legal basis for data sharing, standardisation, and system integration across public and private institutions in Ghana.

When it sails through and becomes law, ministries, departments, government agencies, and regulated private entities would have to align their data systems under a single national structure to promote secure and consistent information exchange.

According to NITA, the bill forms part of Ghana’s digital transformation efforts aimed at removing duplication, improving public service delivery, and enabling government databases to communicate effectively.

After the public submissions and recommendations, it will go to Cabinet for approval and then forwarded to Parliament for passage.

Speaking in a radio interview on Accra based Class FM on Tuesday [Oct 21, 2025] the Director-General of NITA, Mark-Oliver Kevor said the bill would make it mandatory for all public institutions to integrate their systems and adopt uniform data standards.

“We have put out a draft bill for data harmonisation so that all government systems can talk to one another,” he said. “Once this bill is passed, no public institution should be working in isolation. Data must flow securely between them to make citizens’ lives easier.”

Dr Kevor said the proposed law would create a coordinated network linking core national platforms such as the Ghana Card, the Ghana.gov service portal, and sector databases in health, education, and social protection.

NITA, he added, would serve as both the regulatory and technical body responsible for enforcing interoperability standards while protecting data privacy and security.

To demonstrate how the system could operate, Dr Kevor mentioned that an institution such as the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) could use digital trust services to help verify and authenticate academic certificates from Ghana for outside institutions.

“What we are going to do is to make sure that every school certificate is digitally signed and time-stamped,” he said.

“Once it is digitally signed and time-stamped, it becomes globally verifiable. Anybody can sit in Indonesia and check whether the certificate you are presenting is authentic.”

He said such digital verification would help prevent fraud and strengthen confidence in Ghana’s credentials and e-governance systems.

Dr Kevor added that harmonising data across institutions would cut bureaucracy, lower operational costs, and improve transparency. “Right now, when you go to one agency, you have to fill the same forms you already did somewhere else. This bill will stop that duplication,” he said.

He called on citizens, academia, and the private sector to take participate in the consultation process to ensure that the final law reflects national priorities.

“This is a national law that will define how government manages and protects the data of its citizens in the digital age,” he said.

If approved, the NITA Data Harmonisation Bill, 2025, will mark a major step toward building a secure and connected digital governance system for Ghana, allowing smooth data exchange among institutions and strengthening trust in digital public services.