Audit Service engages Upper West stakeholders on mobile app
The Ghana Audit Service (GAS), has entreated citizens to make use of its mobile application to help the service to protect the public purse.
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It said the mobile application, which was launched in 2019, was to empower the public to send their complaints to the service with ease from any location from the comfort of their homes.
The Citizenseye mobile app is a digital platform designed by the GAS to collate information on the performance of government installations and public officials and acts of corruption from the public.
The app was sponsored by the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ).
Stakeholders’ engagement
Speaking at a stakeholders engagement organised by the service in the Upper West Region, the Operational Head of the Citizenseye team, Roberta Ntim, said the objective of the app was to allow the service to obtain information to aid in audit planning and executing audit assignments.
She said it was also to identify areas of public interest and special performance audits.
Ms Ntim said although the app had been launched for close to five years now, its use by the public had dwindled over the years, from 100 per cent in 2019 to nine per cent in 2022.
She said it was the expectation of the service that through sensitisation the public would become aware of the existence of the app and use it to rate and report service providers and public institutions.
She said it was also the expectation of the service that the participants would serve as ambassadors of the app and promote its usage among their colleagues and “also report fraud, waste, mismanagement and irregularities to the Auditor General.”
Activities
As part of activities to sensitise the public to the app, she said the service was holding stakeholders’ engagements in the northern part of the country, road shows and media engagements to whip up public interest in the use of the app to assist the GAS in the performance of its functions.
The participants were taken through a live demonstration of the app and were assured of their anonymity whenever they reported an issue or rated an institution.
The Upper West Regional Director of GAS, Emmanuel N. Botchway, also urged the public to make use of the app to report on the conduct of the service staff to help it get rid of the bad lots.
He said the service was aware that there were some bad lots among them and said it would require the support of the public to identify those bad lots.
He, thus, called on the public not to hesitate to report on the personnel of the audit service using the same tool.