Felix Logah
The Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection (MoGCSP) has developed a Social Welfare Information Management System (SWIMS) to aid in the execution of functions in the ministry.
This was revealed at the 2021 MoGCSP Annual Summit in Accra under the theme “Innovations for Service Delivery.”
The summit was a two-day event aimed at organizing key stakeholders to review the Ministry’s performance in the implementation of policies and programmes in 2020/2021 and develop strategies to ensure a safe environment for all vulnerable groups.
It also intended to create a common platform for all stakeholders to share experiences and develop practical solutions for Covid-19 recovery targeted at the vulnerable.
Speaking at the event, the Director of Projects at MoGCSP, Felix Logah, explained that the creation of SWIMS was part of the ministry’s effort to improve digitalization. He explained, “SWIMS is a software that has been developed by UNICEF and given to the MoGCSP meant to help us work on our case management. This means that all the issues we have handled, for example, child maintenance cases or even missing children and trafficking cases, are entered into the system to create a unified collection for easy identification.”
He stated that the system has been set up to allow everyone, including the public, easy access to information about the different departments in the ministry, therefore making it easy for individuals to know about the activities and projects occurring in the ministry.
Mr. Logah also revealed that the ministry is working on digitizing all its records some of which include the digitization of all data on LEAP beneficiaries which has been completed and is currently functioning and also the digitization of all the previous data ministry has in its archives.
He explained that the digitization of all these platforms is being done with the aid of the Ghana National Data Centre (NITA) and added that digitalizing this information will give the ministry a quick reference and will help keep records for research purposes and future reference.
Chairperson of the event, Dr. Afisah Zakariah, stressed the importance of the ministry to embrace innovation as it can enhance society’s capacity to be productive. She added, “Innovation can help alleviate social challenges which include social exclusion, inequalities, among others. For this reason, the ministry needs to adapt to the use of advanced technologies to improve the quality of its service delivery.”
By Abigail Adeyemi