Congratulations! :  Ministry of Gender wins IMANI Public Sector Award

The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection has won this year’s Public Sector Leadership Award organised by the think thank IMANI Center for Policy and Education.

The awards ceremony, organised on Thursday December 22, was to recognise state institutions that performed tremendously when it came to being easily accessible to the public. The Gender Ministry came up tops out of 51 institutions in the country with 67 percent.

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No institution in this scored 70 percent or more according to the think-tank’s own methodology. In scoring the state institutions, IMANI looked at whether the state institutions had websites, whether the websites were regularly updated with policy documents and whether the documents were accessible in other formats (such as audio) for persons with disability. IMANI also explored the activeness of these state institutions on the social media.

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According to Kofi Bentil, the vice president of IMANI Ghana, the think-thank had become known for criticising (and suggesting alternative solutions in some instances) government policy and as such the annual awards are a way at rewarding public institutions that are striving to make commendable effort to serve the people of Ghana.

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“We spend a lot of our time looking at the public service and essentially criticising. What we do is to seek out the ones which may be going off, or may not be doing as much they should be doing and our job is to call them to order…These awards are to the effect that sometimes it is not only criticism that works.

Sometimes when you praise people, it works better…[So] we try to take some time off to look for the bright spots. Even if they are not perfect, we still are looking for those who are striving towards perfection and moving in the right direction.”

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The Electoral Commission came in second place for its effective use of social media during this year’s elections. The Ministry of Health was third, the National Health Insurance Authority was fourth while the National Commission for Civic Education rounded up the top five for this year.

The least inspirational public institutions were the National Sports Authority, Ministry of Justice and Attorney General, National Youth Authority, National Commission on Culture and the Sports Ministry.