Audit and accountability in the government of Ghana: A records management perspective

Abstract

The exponential growth of and reliance on Internet services, and the waning level of public confidence in public and private organisations across all sectors of society using such services are creating a crisis of trust. Cloud computing is defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as 'a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or services provider interaction'. Laws are jurisdictional municipal, regional, national, or multinational and their influence is defined and restricted by borders between cities, provinces or states, countries or groups of countries. The procedural and authority controls on reliability typically exercised over the creation of traditional records and data can no longer be assumed in the online environment. The object of trust must be identified before the requirements and obligations of the trust relationship can be articulated.