There is no iota of doubt that the Education Minister’s weekend revelation raises serious, cracking questions about Ghana’s Digitalisation Agenda. There are moments when a seemingly ordinary administrative encounter exposes a much deeper national problem. The Education Minister’s recent working visit to staff of the Ghana Education Service (GES) who were processing documentation for onward submission to the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department may have been one such moment.
The Minister went to acquaint himself with the state of affairs surrounding the processing of payments and arrears owed to teachers, particularly against the backdrop of the agitation that has culminated in industrial action by teachers. What he reportedly encountered, however, appeared to shock even him: piles of paperwork being manually processed in an era when Ghana has spent years proclaiming digitalisation as one of the defining pillars of modern governance.
His reaction was telling. “Why are we doing that? Why should teachers at this age be filling forms?” And then came the obvious solution: “The only way we can do so is using an IT infrastructure system.”
One would have thought that such a statement was coming from an ordinary citizen discovering the problem for the first time. But it came from the sector minister responsible for education — a ministry whose administrative machinery oversees one of the largest public-sector workforces in Ghana. The question therefore becomes unavoidable: After all the talk about digitalisation, was it a foofaraw or what? If not, why is the Ghana Education Service still neck-deep in paper-based administrative processes?
It looks as though touted digitalisation was torn between policy and political slogan; otherwise, one cannot simply fathom how and why, given the circumstances with GES. For successive governments, digitalisation has been presented as a transformative instrument capable of eliminating bureaucratic bottlenecks, reducing human interference, improving efficiency, enhancing transparency, and curbing corruption.
Ghana has heard this narrative repeatedly. We have been told about digital government. We have been told about paperless administration. We have been told about interoperable databases, electronic transactions, and technology-driven public services. Yet, if a teacher's promotion, salary adjustment, allowance, or arrears can still become entangled in files, forms, signatures, physical movement of documents, and manual processing at the headquarters of the institution responsible for administering Ghana's pre-tertiary education system, then something is fundamentally wrong.
This is not merely an inconvenience. It is a contradiction. It is particularly disturbing because GES is not an obscure government agency operating at the margins of public administration. It is the institutional machinery through which the state manages the largest segment of Ghana's pre-tertiary education workforce. If digitalisation is genuinely a national priority, GES should arguably be one of the institutions at the forefront of its implementation.
Instead, the Minister's own observations suggest that an institution supervising teachers who are increasingly expected to integrate digital technologies into teaching and learning is itself struggling to digitise some of its most basic administrative processes. That is the definition of institutional incongruity.
This is where exactly it lies: ‘Teaching Digitalisation while Administration Remains Analog. There is an almost comical irony in the situation. Teachers are being encouraged — and in many instances compelled — to embrace digital pedagogy. They are expected to acquire digital competencies, integrate technology into classroom instruction, use electronic resources and prepare learners for a digital economy.
But when the same teachers need their own promotions processed, their arrears paid, their records updated or their entitlements regularised, they may still have to navigate a labyrinth of paper forms and manual bureaucratic procedures. Unbelievable! How can the teacher be expected to lead Ghana's children into the digital future when the institution responsible for managing the teacher has apparently not fully entered that future itself? The contradiction deserves more than a ministerial expression of frustration. It demands an institutional response.
It was not surprising to see the minister objurgate the practice as a source of corruption and raise the corruption question. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Minister's revelation is not merely that paper is being used. Paper, in itself, is not corruption. The problem is the vulnerability that an inefficient paper-based system creates. Whenever an administrative process depends excessively on physical files, manual verification, multiple signatures, and the physical movement of documents from one desk to another, opportunities for delay, disappearance, manipulation, and unofficial payments increase.
Teachers have for years complained about difficulties associated with promotions, salary placements, allowances, arrears, and other employment-related entitlements. Where such processes are inadequately digitised, the person controlling a file can inadvertently — or deliberately — acquire disproportionate power over the person whose livelihood depends on that file. That is where the danger lies.
A teacher who has legitimately earned a promotion should not have to become an itinerant petitioner, moving from office to office in search of a document that should be traceable electronically. A teacher who is owed arrears should not have to depend on personal connections to determine whether his or her documentation has moved from one administrative desk to another. A teacher entitled to an allowance should not have to wonder whether a file has been deliberately delayed, misplaced, or returned for another round of paperwork.
Digitisation is therefore not simply about replacing paper with computers. It is about removing unnecessary human discretion from processes where such discretion can become an avenue for abuse.
To me, this is more than inefficiency, and I term it a governance failure. If the Minister is right that some GES personnel have been hiding behind the paper-based system to engage in practices detrimental to teachers, then the issue transcends administrative inefficiency. It becomes a governance problem.
And if such practices have persisted for years, the question must be asked: Who was responsible for fixing the system? Someone designed it. Someone supervised it. Someone was responsible for modernising it. Someone received complaints. Someone had the authority to act. Someone failed to act. That is why this matter should not end with the Minister expressing disbelief during a weekend visit.
There must be institutional accountability. If officials deliberately frustrate legitimate entitlements because the weaknesses of the system provide opportunities for extortion, manipulation, or other misconduct, those officials must face the consequences. And if senior managers knew about the weaknesses and failed to correct them, accountability should not stop at the junior officer sitting behind the desk.
I must give this thunderous call to the quarters that matter: the Reset Agenda must reach GES. The Mahama-led administration has presented the idea of a national reset as a commitment to doing things differently. If that reset is to mean anything in public administration, it must be visible in institutions such as the Ghana Education Service.
A reset cannot simply mean changing policies, changing officials, or changing slogans. It must mean changing systems. The Education Minister therefore has an opportunity to transform this disturbing revelation into a landmark administrative reform. He should personally take a deliberate interest in the complete digitalisation of GES personnel and payroll-related processes — from promotion documentation and validation to salary placement, arrears, allowances and other legitimate benefits.
There should be an integrated system through which a teacher can submit an application, track its progress, receive notifications and know exactly where a transaction is stalled. The system should leave an auditable electronic trail. No officer should be able to make a teacher's legitimate entitlement disappear into an inaccessible file. No teacher should have to pay money merely to get a legitimate administrative process moving. And no bureaucrat should be able to hide behind a mountain of paperwork to frustrate accountability.
Amid all the nuances, heads must roll at the end of it all where necessary. But digitalisation alone will not solve the problem. Technology can expose corruption, but it cannot substitute for accountability. If investigations establish that individuals have deliberately exploited the weaknesses of the existing system to extort teachers, manipulate records, delay promotions or frustrate legitimate payments, administrative and, where appropriate, legal action must follow.
Heads must roll where culpability is established. This should not be viewed as witch-hunting. It should be understood as institutional cleansing. The teacher is perhaps the most important human resource in Ghana's education system. When a teacher earns a promotion, allowance, or salary adjustment, the state has a responsibility to ensure that the entitlement reaches the beneficiary efficiently and transparently. A system that makes teachers repeatedly fight for what they have already earned is not merely inefficient. It is unjust.
Now that the Minister has seen it, the teacher is not taking respite, looking up to what happens next. The Education Minister has now seen the problem. More importantly, he has publicly expressed his disapproval of it. That creates an important moment of accountability. The question Ghanaians — and particularly teachers — should now ask is simple: What happens next?
Will the Minister's discovery become another interesting political anecdote that disappears after the cameras are gone? Or will it trigger a comprehensive audit and digitisation of GES administrative processes? Will government identify the bottlenecks, expose the perpetrators of abuse where they exist, modernise the system and establish a transparent mechanism through which every teacher can track his or her administrative transactions?
That is where the real test lies. Because Ghana cannot credibly boast of being a digitalised country while teachers are still being made to carry paper from one office to another to access benefits they have already earned. The contradiction is too glaring. The hypocrisy is too costly, and the consequences are too serious to ignore.
If the digitalisation agenda is genuine, GES must not be left behind. If the reset agenda is genuine, this is precisely the kind of institutional dysfunction it must reset. And if corruption is indeed hiding behind the paperwork, the paperwork must no longer be allowed to hide the corruption.
The Minister has opened the door. He must now walk through it because I personally want him to succeed in that office as a minister. This time around, what he must take cognizance of is this: Ghana's teachers deserve more than promises. They deserve a system that works. Simple!
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