The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Akufo-Addo, on Monday, 22nd October, 2018, commissioned the National Communations Authority’s Computer Emergence Response Team, and the Revenue Assurance and Traffic Monitoring Centre, also known as the “Common Platform“.
Describing these projects as “essential building blocks for the realization of Government’s vision of a digitised Ghana”, President Akufo-Addo noted that, for him, these projects signify more than that.
“They represent key milestones in our nation’s journey towards becoming well-resourced, self-reliant, efficient and secure, within the context of cyberspace, telecommunications traffic management, and revenue assurance,” he added.
With Government having spent the last 21 months of its stay in office implementing a number of initiatives aimed at driving the country’s digitization agenda, the President indicated that “it is critical that we deploy the appropriate instruments to secure our nation, our people, our businesses, and our way of life.”
President Akufo-Addo, therefore, commended the National Communications Authority and the Ghana Revenue Authority for taking steps to guarantee the revenues of government, and, also, ensure that regulators and telecommunication operators work together to this end.
In execution of the protocols for the Computer Emergence Response Team and the Revenue Assurance and Traffic Monitoring Centre, the President indicated that “we should see to the transfer of knowledge to enhance learning and the acquisition of skills by Ghanaians to man this project.”
As Co-Chair of the 2030 United Nations Advocates Group of Eminent Personalities for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he indicated that these two projects fit directly into the SDGs.
“The creation of a state of the art, well-resourced cyber security response centre, such as the NCA-CERT, is key to attaining some of these goals. We have committed ourselves to building a resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation so we can attain Goal No. 9, which ‘addresses three important aspects of sustainable development: infrastructure, industrialization and innovation’,” the President added.
He, thus, urged other critical sectors of our economy, especially the energy, transport and utility sectors, to collaborate with the National Cyber Security Centre to develop their computer emergency response units, as well to deal with any eventuality which may occur.
”As we commission these two essential facilities, I am charging the Commissioner General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, through the Minister of Finance, to continue to develop and roll out new and innovative ways to broaden Ghana’s tax net,“ President Akufo-Addo indicated.
He congratulated the board, management and staff of the National Communications Authority (NCA) and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), and their respective Ministers for a good job done.
“The work has just begun, and I trust that with the investments made in both human resource and infrastructure, we will see the results of these soon”, President Akufo-Addo said.
