The acting Chief Information Officer, Mr. David Owusu Amoah, over the week-end exhorted officers of the Information Services Department (ISD) to go beyond the department’s mandate.
He made this statement in his welcome address, when a workshop was organised for 54 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Information Officers (MMDIOs), including 5 Regional Information Officers (RIOs), drawn from the northern belt of the country at the Radach Lodge in Tamale.
The acting director intimated that the core mandate of the ISD, which is to disseminate information and receive feedback, has faced several challenges over the years, and now, in contemporary media pluralism, it was incumbent to carry out some realignment to meet the trend, and therefore, advised officers to collaborate with the Ghana statistical service to meet this objective so they can add value to communication.
The workshop, which was organised by the research division of the ISD in collaboration with the Ghana Statistical Service, was meant to abreast officers on research methodology.
Mrs. Linda Baffour Awuah, acting Head of Research Division, ISD lamented that the research department has come of age in the face of challenges but opined that all was not lost, since the outfit was undergoing realignment in contemporary times.
Mrs. Baffour Awuah exhorted MMDIOs, who are field officers, to collaborate with RIOs to transmit report on time and maintain the trust and confidence government has for the department.
The research director, who was also a resource person, cautioned MMDIOs not to “cook” report from the field, emphasising that “raw” reports represent the people’s opinion. She also implored officers to be intuitive to develop interviewing skills to make their output
qualitative.
Resource persons, drawn from the Ghana Statistical Service, including Mr. Anthony Amuzu-Pharin and Mr. Justine Oko Quarshie together with Mr. Seth Kwei from the Ghana Revenue Authority, led the officers through topics, ranging from the Concept of Data Collection; Ethics and Instrument of Data Collection Methods; Identification, Reading and Interpretation of maps to Domestic Taxation.Earlier on, Samsung tablets were presented to RIOs by the acting Chief Information Officer, on behalf of the Deputy Minister of Information, Hon Fatimata Abubakari, to be used by MMDIOs for purposes of data collection for research analysis.Led by the resource persons, the MMDIOs and the RIOS went on a successful mock data collection operation in the Datoyili area.
