The Ghana Institute of Languages (GIL), has embarked on an electronic information management capacity building training programme for its staff to facilitate its admission, registration and administrative procedures.
The training programme, which began last year and is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year, would enhance the capacity of the academic and administrative staff to significantly improve the institute’s documentation processes.
Mr Christopher K. Angkosaala, Acting Director of the GIL,made this known to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at one of the training sessions, organised for lecturers and tutors of the School of Translators (SOT) and School of Bilingual Secretaryship (SOB) at the institute’s Okponglo campus, near Legon.
He said the institute had contracted an information management system consultant to carry out the programme that would enable the public to access information about the GIL online.
Mr Angkosaala said the programme, which had begun with the SOT and SOB, and the School of Languages in Accra, would soon be extended to the other two campuses of the GIL in Kumasi and Tamale.
Mr Daniel P.N.L. Squire, Project Director of OSIS Software Application, consultants of the programme, said the application would serve a variety of purposes such as control of admission of students, registration and payment of fees, staff and students’records.
The system, which the GIL is introducing for the first time, will also enhance the accounting procedures of the institute, facilitate the printing of identity cards, and reduce manipulation of marks and students’ access to official records.
He said the programme would link up the three academic facilities, adding that the Kumasi and Tamale campuses of the GIL would be roped in so that registration of students could take place
anywhere through the internet.
Mr Squire said the recent training programme was the fifth so far held and gave the assurance that by the end of 2011, the institute would have finished with the programme and got the system working.
All accounting staff and departmental heads of the GIL, he said, would undergo a similar training programme.
Mrs Rosaline Dan-Dzide, a tutor in Bilingual Secretaryship,who commented on the programme, said it would facilitate her work and reduce favouritism and other examination malpractices
associated with the conduct of examinations.
“It will also institute a systems control mechanism whereby students would be obliged to pay their school fees.
“I recommend that everyone goes through the course because it will enable participants to improve further on their work, “she stated.
Mrs Dan-Dzide said the only challenge she saw with the programme, was that, though provision had be made for awarding marks for students’ attendance, it would not be used to assess students’ performance.
Mr Akwetey Henry Matey, Information Technology Manager of the GIL, told the GNA that the new technology would replace the manual system of keeping records.
“We realised that whenever students come for records, it become difficult to retrieve it for them so this course will go a long way to resolve some of these problems.”
He said the manual system of keeping information and records was quite cumbersome hence the decision to adopt the new system that could generate several documents such as transcripts, ID cards, and certificates.
He expressed the hope that by the beginning of the second semester, the programme would be operational.