Digital maturity of the local authority

What does the city mean by “smart city”?

For KMA, a smart local authority is one where Services are ICT- based, with a centralised database that is accessible to all its units. This would make it possible for citizens to access information or make payments, for example, without travelling to the office premises.

“A Smart Kumasi City is envisaged to be an urban area that makes optimal use of varieties of interconnected Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and innovations available to better understand the challenges of the city, and efficiently and effectively use that to seamlessly bring together all its resources to plan, manage and sustain its efforts to achieve the desired economic, social and environmental goals of the city.
A smart office is one that understands and embraces modern technology to create an attractive and functional workplace, through a continuous change journey to increase employee and clients satisfaction and performance towards a holistic shared perspective.“

Randy Wilson, ASToN Local Coordinator

What relevant projects have been done to date?

KMA has the ambition for Kumasi to become one of the best cities in Africa for carrying out governmental activities with the use of digital technology. It is therefore pursuing plans and projects that will help build the capacity of its staff and departments to ensure this.

While the KMA has yet to produce a digital transformation strategy, it seeks a strong role for setting the digital agenda by providing additional infrastructure and reliable internet services.
Kumasi is conducting projects to digitise services in the territory, which fall mainly within e-government services, land registry, and transport.

Most pertinent projects on e-Government surround data collection in anticipation of developing digital systems for collecting, processing and reporting revenue. Heinz Integrated Ltd, for example, have conducted a project to update data on property rates in the city.

Transport

The Assembly is currently refurbishing the Department of Transport to provide it with reliable internet and well networked computerised systems. This is part of a pilot for the Smart Office concept being led by the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC).

Other projects with the Department of Transport include a pilot project with tech startup ShrinQ, which will digitise mini-bus (or ‘trotro’) management, including vehicle registration, number plate scanners, and mobile notifications.

KMA is a member of the Bloomberg Partnership Healthy Cities and BIGRS, which are helping them to concentrate on the issue of vehicle speeding as well as infrastructure modification for safety.

What are the plans for the future?

One of the KMA’s ambitions is to digitalise the management and regulation of ‘trotro’ and taxi networks. This is in line with its desire to ensure that a comprehensive database is established to serve as the basis for decision making on the improvement of terminal conditions, stopping places, toll collection, and upholding of the Assembly’s bye-laws on transport services.
With funding from AFD, the city is also engaged in feasibility studies for the operation of a Bus Rapid Transit service in the city.

A new headquarters for the city administration is being built to address the fact that KMA services are currently hosted in different buildings, and communication between them is difficult.