Estonian authorities reveal how digitalization has helped fight corruption; Dr. Bawumia pushes for same in Ghana

The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has been on a working visit to Estonia this week with a Ghanaian delegation to hold talks with authorities there on the two countries' digitization journey, framework, and impact.

While Ghana has made remarkable strides in the past seven years in digitizing Ghanaian society, Estonia is a global giant in the area, widely regarded as the most digitally advanced country in the world.

During one of the meetings with Dr. Bawumia in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, officials of e-Estonia Academy, one of Estonia's national digitalization agencies, revealed how the decision to digitize the nation and public services has eliminated corruption, which they said was endemic before the advent of digitalization some 20 years ago, after independence.

"We inherited a very corrupt public system, and there was an urgent need for us to do something," said a senior official of e-Estonia.

"Digitalization has really helped us to sanitize the system and weed out corruption. As one of our former leaders used to say, 'You cannot bribe a computer.'"

Apart from removing human interface in public service delivery, digitizing Estonia has also helped the country maintain efficient revenue generation through a transparent tax system, where people and businesses easily file their tax returns online from the comfort of their homes.

Estonia's success story in fighting corruption through digitization is in line with Dr. Bawumia's quest to ensure the same happens in Ghana.

Dr. Bawumia said by digitizing many public services such as the application and renewal of driver's licenses, passports, NHIS registration, port clearance, among many others in Ghana, human contacts have been significantly reduced, and corruption will be dealt a fatal blow once all these services fully integrate their database with the Ghanacard database, which would not require holders of Ghanacard to physically show up at other offices or agencies to access service.

Even at this growing stage of Ghana's digitization process, Dr. Bawumia maintains, with verifiable data at the DVLA, Passport office, and the ports, which show a considerable leap in revenue generation under online service, against meager revenues generated before digitization.

For instance, in 2016, before the application of passports went online, the passport office processed a total of 16,232 applications with revenue of GHC1.1m.

Following the introduction of online application, the same passport office, in 2021, received and processed 498,963 online passport applications with a total revenue of GHC56.7m.

Data at other service providers also show a significant increase in revenue, which, hitherto, would have ended up in private pockets.

At one of his meetings with the Estonian authorities, Vice President Bawumia reiterated his commitment and confidence in using technology to fight corruption in Ghana.

"As you have rightly said, a computer cannot be bribed, and that is where we are going. Digitalization is an effective tool to fight corruption. You put in place an effective system, which automatically fights corruption. That is the goal, and we are on track."

Dr. Bawumia's delegation includes Minister of State at the Ministry of Finance, Mohammed Amin Adam, as well as representatives from Ghana Revenue Authority, Volta River Authority, National Information and Technology Agency, and private sector IT and Fintech companies.