The understanding that active citizenship have a direct link between transparency and accountability has led to a considerable amount of debate over the years about the need for governments around the world to deepen their engagement with citizens.The Parliament of Ghana is committed to engage with their constituents since it’s the arm of government that directly represents the people. This is in recognition that responsive governments and empowered citizens are important conditions for inclusive and good governance.However, despite attempts to promote engagement between parliament and citizens, there still remain a large population of Ghanaians that parliament is out of touch with; citizens who are not aware of how parliament works and how it relates to their daily lives. These segment of the citizenry loosely referred to as ‘Democratic Outsiders’ are in fact a majority of the population in Ghana. Our presentation on ‘Promoting effective governance using technology’ will provide evidence on how we are working to close the feedback loop between citizns and Parliament of Ghana. Through“Connecting Citizen to Parliament”
http://www.assurances.gov.gh project, the Committee on Government Assurance (CGA),
http://www.parliament.gh/committees/31 seeks accountability for the people of Ghana using its oversight mandate to ensure government delivers on its promises and assurances. The project since 2014 has sought to transform the majority of ‘democratic outsiders’ in Ghana into active participants by providing digital platforms (online, SMS, WhatsApp, Mobile App and Social Media) through which citizens can amplify their concerns, complaints, satisfactions, suggestions or displeasure on politics, public policy or general governance issues towards causing improvement in service delivery and holding duty bearers accountable.