By Adnan Adams Mohammed
The Chief of Staff, Dr. Julius Debrah, has called for a comprehensive redesign of Ghana’s administrative architecture, urging state institutions to eliminate bureaucratic silos and re-engineer public services directly around the daily journeys of citizens.
Speaking alongside renowned customer experience expert Professor Robert E. Hinson in the latest edition of The Citizen Experience Corner, published by the Business & Financial Times (B&FT), Dr. Debrah emphasized that government efficiency must be measured by how seamlessly citizens access state services, rather than by institutional convenience.
Dr. Debrah highlighted that fragmented civil service operations currently place an unfair operational burden on ordinary Ghanaians seeking routine government approvals and documentation.
“Government agencies were originally built around institutional boundaries and administrative convenience, but citizens do not live their lives in organizational charts,” Dr. Debrah stated. “When a member of the public wants to start a business, build a home, or secure vital documents, they shouldn’t have to act as an unpaid project manager coordinating between five different ministries. We must redesign public sector delivery around the actual journey of the citizen.”
Reinforcing the administration’s focus on structural modernization, Professor Robert E. Hinson highlighted the necessity of aligning public policy with integrated digital frameworks and modern service-delivery models.
“Public sector transformation is no longer just about digitizing existing paper processes; it is about completely reimagining the service delivery ecosystem,” Prof. Hinson noted. “If an online portal simply replicates the same redundant steps and bureaucratic friction of a physical office, we haven’t solved the problem. Institutional collaboration, shared data platforms, and a unified citizen-first mindset are essential if we want to build a public service that truly serves its people.”
Dr. Debrah reiterated the government’s commitment to implementing cross-agency service integration, streamlining administrative bottlenecks, and enforcing rigorous service-level benchmarks across all public sector institutions to enhance accountability and public trust.
