The plans are part of an initiative by NITA, the information and communications technology (ICT) policy arm of Ghana’s Ministry of Communications, to improve transparency and efficiency of government operations.
The network will connect the north and south of Ghana and international submarine gateways on the country’s eastern corridor using 100Gbps capable coherent technology.
It will be made easily expandable to support anticipated increases in future demand, with the government intending to extend use of e-services to other sectors including health, education, justice, immigration and parliament, over the next few years.
Alcatel will also work with local IT hardware and services provider IPMC to build a data centre to host all of the e-Government project information. The site will use HP equipment and host a Genesys helpdesk solution, a performance rating platform and e-learning systems from Saba.
“By delivering a new network and data centre, Alcatel-Lucent will enable us to streamline government processes between central and rural divisions and provide a consistent external view. This is an important step towards realising the vision of giving our people access to a range of critical services how and when they need them,” said William Tevie, director general of NITA.
Alcatel will implement voice communication, email and other data services and manage the complete operation of the e-Government network, including the backbone, data centre and services for three years.
As part of the agreement, the vendor will train NITA employees with the intention of transferring responsibility of the full network over to them after the three years.
The e-Government programme is financed and facilitated by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), an office of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs tasked with combating poverty through the promotion of human right and economic growth.
