Ghana Appointed TSAG and Study Group Vice Chairs

A Deputy Director of the National Communications Authority (NCA) in charge of Technical Regulations, Mr. Isaac Boateng has been appointed Vice Chairman to the Telecommunications Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG).

In addition, Ghana had four (4) other appointments to the International Telecommunications Union Study Group (ITU-T SG) Chairs and Vice Chairs slot.

Mr. Yaw Boamah Baafi will lead SG 2 as Vice Chair, Mr. Frederick Asumanu on his part will also lead SG 3 as Vice Chair, Mr. Kofi Ntim Yeboah-Kordieh and Mr. Kwadwo Osafo-Maafo will lead SG 11 as Vice Chair and SG 17 as Vice Chair respectively.

All appointments happened at the just ended World Telecommunications Standardization assembly (WTSA-20) which was held in Geneva in Switzerland.

In a communique issued by the National Communications Authority (NCA), it described the appointments as a “strategic position to continue with the frontiers of influencing global standardization making at the ITU, taking into account the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which Ghana is a co-chair.”

In addition, the Authority noted, “Ghana will also consolidate her gains over the years at the ITU towards the bid for the 5th re-election to the ITU Council, as well as Radio Regulations Board (RRB) for 2023 – 2026 during Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-22) in September, 2022. We congratulate the appointees for their achievements and wish them a successful tenure.”

Among duties Mr. Boateng would performed at TSAG are to review priorities, programmes, operations, financial matters and strategies for ITU-T’s activities, to review progress in the implementation of ITU-T’s work programme, to provide guidelines for the work of the study groups and to recommend measures, inter alia, to foster cooperation and coordination with other relevant bodies, within ITU-T and with the Radiocommunication (ITU-R) and Telecommunication Development (ITU-D) Sectors and the General Secretariat, and with other standardization organizations, forums and consortia outside ITU.

About Mr. Boateng

Mr. Boateng has been an ITU-T SG11 Vice Chair since 2012 until March 2022.

He is the Chair of the ITU-T Conformity Assessment Steering Committee (CASC), which has the mandate to select ITU technical experts to work with the conformity assessment and accreditation bodies and to assess laboratories with competence to test according to ITU Standards for future ITU mark and/or label on ICT products.

He is also the editor of several IT-T Recommendations and Technical Reports and well as the current Chair of SG11 Regional Group for Africa.

About Study Group 2

This Study Group is responsible for the operational aspects of service provision and telecommunication management.                            Its mandates primarily cover standards development in the areas of numbering, naming, addressing and identification requirements and resource assignment, including criteria and procedures for reservation, assignment and reclamation; routing and interworking requirements; principles of service provision, definition and operational requirements.

About Study Group 3

This Study Group is responsible for studying international telecommunication / ICT policy and economic issues and tariff and accounting matters (including costing principles and methodologies), with a view to informing the development of enabling regulatory models and frameworks. Study Group 3 also fosters collaboration among its participants with a view to establish rates at levels as low as possible consistent with an efficient service and taking into account the necessity for maintaining independent financial administration of telecommunications on a sound basis. Additionally, Study Group 3 is further tasked to study the economic and regulatory impact of the internet, convergence (services or infrastructure) and new services, such as OTT, on international telecommunication services and networks.

About Study Group 11

This Study Group is responsible for ‘signalling’, producing international standards (ITU-T Recommendations) that define how telephone calls and other calls (such as data calls) are handled in the network.  SG 11 is also responsible for the development of test specifications and coordination of ITU’s work programme on conformance and interoperability testing and counterfeiting ICT products.

About Study Group 17

This Study Group is responsible for building confidence and security in the use of information and communication technologies. This includes studies relating to cybersecurity, security management, countering spam and identity management. It also includes security architecture and framework, protection of personally identifiable information, and security of applications and services for the Internet of things (IoT), smart grid, smartphone, software defined networking (SDN), Internet Protocol television (IPTV), web services, social network, cloud computing, big data analytics, mobile financial system and tele-biometrics.