The Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Affairs (MTCA) and the National Tourist Board (NTB) have received funds from the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) to implement a sustainable tourism development and promotion project. The project aims to help Sierra Leone owns a tourism agenda aligned with trade policies and conducive to sustainable pro-poor growth; and increase the presence and perception of the country in the international market as an attractive tourist destination.
The emergence of advance technology is now serving as a driving force to the application of e-governance systems by almost all states, government departments, agencies, businesses, private sector, customers and citizens around the globe in the smooth and smarter implementations of their diverse activities. E-Governance which could also be referred to as electronic governance is viewed as the application of information and communications technologies to the functioning of government processes to ensure simple, moral, accountable, responsive and transparent governance. It is also seen as the use of ICTs by governments for the exchange of information with citizens, businesses and other government departments that promote faster and more efficient delivery of public services. The application of this system further improves internal efficiency, reduce costs, and increase revenue generation; enhance the restructuring of administrative processes which finally leads to greater improvement of the quality of services.
Implementation of e-governance requires basic change in work culture and goals orientation and simultaneous change in the existing processes. It is fitting to meet a culture of maintaining, processing and retrieving information through an electronic system and use that information for decision making.
The Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Affairs has made extreme efforts to improve on the administrative, infrastructure, internal and external information handling but the movement towards e-governance have been at a snail pace due to the following factors such as lack of ICT literacy and awareness regarding benefits of e-governance among staff, partners and service providers, underutilization of existing ICT infrastructure as most departmental computers are used for only word processing, poor attitude of departmental staff to technological changes, lack of close coordination between departments and IT solution developers and finally resistance to the re-engineering of departmental process in order to implement e-governance projects successfully. The Ministry and the Board still have the strong determination of aligning its programs and policies to the demand of the electronic era that will enhance it to effectively compete within the regional and global tourism markets.
In the implementation of this project, the MTCA and NTB intends to use part of the funds to recruit the service of an ICT/ Management Information System expert to develop an e-Governance System for the Tourism Sector.
Contact: Procurement Committee
National Tourist Board
Lumley Beach Road, Aberdeen.
Freetown—Email–info@ntb.gov.sl.
