South Sudan’s Ministry of Finance launches official website

South Sudan’s National Ministry of Finance and Planning on Tuesday launched it’s official website to promote transparency and accountability.

“We have agreed on 11 areas of priority reforms that we are making progress on, and this website will give us that chance for us to share all that we are doing with you (citizens) and all our development partners,” Dr. Dier Tong Ngor, the Minister of Finance and Planning said during the launching ceremony held in Juba.

Dier said the website launched under the theme “Availing Economic Information for Transparency, Accountability and Public Consumption aims to strengthen e-government and avail information about activities of the ministry.

 “The website will make us be more transparent and also to be more accountable, and we have also talked about the new digital age whereby information sharing and also moving to e-government,” Dier said.

Eng. Napoleon Adok, Director General of the National Communication Authority (NCA) said more needs to be done to achieve digital independence.

“We might have got our political independence but we are in the process to achieve digital independence. All these nice things are not hosted in our country,” Adok said.

Adok urged the ministry to put mitigation mechanisms to protect the information on the website.

“Being online is to be enabled to protect yourself online, the cyber security there has to be mitigation mechanism that is put in place to make sure that this website and content on it remain with integrity,” he said.

Firas Raad, World Bank Country Manager said the site should contain sample information about budget.

 “In other countries, there is what is known as people’s budget where the annual budget is explained to a very simple term to average citizens where the revenues are coming and how the money is expensed,” Raad said.