ICT Competencies of Project Management Personnel at Local Government Level in Ghana

In a drive towards the attainment of a paperless mode of managing projects and its delivery, the Government of Ghana in the last few years, has embarked on several policy initiatives to achieve this objective in public organizations. The challenges associated with the paperless drive do not lie solely with the deployment of software and hardware. The degree of success also depends primarily on the capabilities of personnel operating the software programs and hardware tools available within the specific Local Government Organization. Regardless of the appropriateness of software programs for project management and project delivery, studies indicate that project managers must have some basic requisite knowledge and competencies in ICTs to compliment the deployment of technology to make their organizational performance and effectiveness useful. With the introduction of policies such as the Information Communication Technology for Accelerated Development (ICT 4AD), there comes the need to review the literacy level of personnel who will be utilizing these programs to ensure success of project deliverables. This paper assesses the capabilities of project management personnel at the local government level using quantitative method hinged on a goodness of fit test. This study also reviews the Information and Communications Technology literacy and competency levels of personnel in charge of projects management administration at the Local Government level. The conclusions indicate that personnel at this level are not be adequately prepared to operationalize the ICT enabled paperless system. The recommendations for successful implementation of paperless management of projects and programmes at the local government level requires an overhaul of the capacities of all project management personnel and local government staff as a whole through training and education