Vice President John Mahama at the Ghana Policy Fair held in Accra
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22nd April, 2010
POLICY FAIR: Worth Trying
The country is no stranger to fairs: there are now, on the average one fair every other month.
Since the 1966 first International Trade Fair, many more fairs have been born to industry, fashion, mining, housing and even bridal preparations.
While the fair-craze may be symptomatic of the Ghanaian copy-cat syndrome – where people rush to copy every new concept or business newly introduced on the scene (be it importation of fridges or….) just because they have smelled money, the idea of “removing the cloth from off the body” (to borrow the phrase from Ghanaian traditionalists), putting oneself on exhibition and inviting society to, as it were, come and admire one’s beauty, is welcome.
It may help increase sale or introduce the product or service to the public.
As if the country has not had enough of fairs, another one was launched last Monday. It is the Policy Fair, and it is the initiative of the Government of Ghana.
Launching it in Accra, a Deputy Minister of Information said it was the first attempt to “open up our ministries, government departments and agencies to the public with a view to enabling the citizenry to engage with the leaderships of those institutions and get to know what they are doing to develop the country”.
The Times thinks the idea of putting state institutions “on show”, so to put it, is an innovation that must not be shrugged off without a deeper consideration.
We make this plea because in this country it has become too easy to dismiss every move by every government as a gesture of “empty symbolism”.
We think the concept of a policy fair goes beyond symbolism.
If properly handled, it could be an effort towards the promotion of the principles of accountability and transparency.
In the hope that it will not be a nine-day wonder, but a biennial event, this paper can already imagine one crucial benefit: something to keep civil/public servants on their toes. A public servant who knows that his or her work is to be open to public scrutiny will, we think, be up and doing, ready to answer public queries.
The question, however, is: how much information will the MDAs be ready to give out during the fair. Knowing civil/public servants the way we do, we see this as the biggest challenge the fair is likely to face.
How much freedom will they have to disclose information without reference to their superiors?
This is preparatory to the take-off of the Right to Information Bill.
Also good for instilling customer-satisfaction consciousness in the public service, the one virtue that is conspicuously absent in government institutions, apparently because of the thinking that their services are not “for sale” or “for profit”.
Could anyone be so wrong! But they are not to blame. Having operated for decades purely as rendering service to government only, staff of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and the Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies are used to thinking in terms of “sale” only in terms of offering something in return for money payment, or profit only as the accumulation of money on the “credit” side of the balance sheet.
We submit that “for sale” and “profitability” go beyond those myopic meanings.
Perhaps the fair organisers could use the platform of the Special Dialogue Sessions to push a new line of consciousness among government workers.
We see in the fair, the greatest opportunity for the MMDAs to showcase the economic and touristic attractions of their areas.
This is the finest hour, a time to sell those potentials to the rest of the country, especially local and foreign entrepreneurs.
Since the 1966 first International Trade Fair, many more fairs have been born to industry, fashion, mining, housing and even bridal preparations.
While the fair-craze may be symptomatic of the Ghanaian copy-cat syndrome – where people rush to copy every new concept or business newly introduced on the scene (be it importation of fridges or….) just because they have smelled money, the idea of “removing the cloth from off the body” (to borrow the phrase from Ghanaian traditionalists), putting oneself on exhibition and inviting society to, as it were, come and admire one’s beauty, is welcome.
It may help increase sale or introduce the product or service to the public.
As if the country has not had enough of fairs, another one was launched last Monday. It is the Policy Fair, and it is the initiative of the Government of Ghana.
Launching it in Accra, a Deputy Minister of Information said it was the first attempt to “open up our ministries, government departments and agencies to the public with a view to enabling the citizenry to engage with the leaderships of those institutions and get to know what they are doing to develop the country”.
The Times thinks the idea of putting state institutions “on show”, so to put it, is an innovation that must not be shrugged off without a deeper consideration.
We make this plea because in this country it has become too easy to dismiss every move by every government as a gesture of “empty symbolism”.
We think the concept of a policy fair goes beyond symbolism.
If properly handled, it could be an effort towards the promotion of the principles of accountability and transparency.
In the hope that it will not be a nine-day wonder, but a biennial event, this paper can already imagine one crucial benefit: something to keep civil/public servants on their toes. A public servant who knows that his or her work is to be open to public scrutiny will, we think, be up and doing, ready to answer public queries.
The question, however, is: how much information will the MDAs be ready to give out during the fair. Knowing civil/public servants the way we do, we see this as the biggest challenge the fair is likely to face.
How much freedom will they have to disclose information without reference to their superiors?
This is preparatory to the take-off of the Right to Information Bill.
Also good for instilling customer-satisfaction consciousness in the public service, the one virtue that is conspicuously absent in government institutions, apparently because of the thinking that their services are not “for sale” or “for profit”.
Could anyone be so wrong! But they are not to blame. Having operated for decades purely as rendering service to government only, staff of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and the Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies are used to thinking in terms of “sale” only in terms of offering something in return for money payment, or profit only as the accumulation of money on the “credit” side of the balance sheet.
We submit that “for sale” and “profitability” go beyond those myopic meanings.
Perhaps the fair organisers could use the platform of the Special Dialogue Sessions to push a new line of consciousness among government workers.
We see in the fair, the greatest opportunity for the MMDAs to showcase the economic and touristic attractions of their areas.
This is the finest hour, a time to sell those potentials to the rest of the country, especially local and foreign entrepreneurs.
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