Ghana’s Right to Information Bill: Opportunity for SDI as a Technical Infrastructure

Information is an important resource in the 21st century knowledge-based society. Access to public sector information is being viewed as an important path to strengthening democracy, good governance, public service and sustainable development. Ghana is about to enact a right to information law (now The Right to Information Bill) to provide a legal framework for making public sector information accessible to the public. However, while the legal framework is necessary, it is not sufficient to ensure real access to public sector information by the public. This paper highlights the need for designing policy and institutional frameworks in general and a technical infrastructure in particular for actuating the provisions of the anticipated law. Therefore, the paper assesses the opportunities and imperatives for building SDI, at least, as part of the technical infrastructure for making public sector information discoverable, retrievable and usable to the public. Steps are then proposed for creating the SDI, including building institutional mandate, creating a metadata catalogue, digitalization of analog data/information and the development of plans to strategically manage and enhance the organic growth of the SDI. The paper is significant in that it makes anticipatory contribution to the discourse on the design of policy and institutional frameworks in general; and technical infrastructure in particular to support the implementation of the Right to Information Law in Ghana