By Emmanuel Obisue
Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan has called on Permanent Secretaries to prioritise training and re-training of civil servants in their different Ministries, extra- Ministerial Departments and Agencies, MDAs, on Information and Communication Technology, ICT, in order to speed up the implementation of the ongoing digitalisation process.
She made the call on Tuesday at a service-wide “Webinar on Digitalisation”, organised by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, OHCSF, to sensitise federal civil servants across the nation.
Dr. Yemi-Esan took the audience through the level of implementation of the digitalisation process in the OHCSF and the efforts of the government in fast-tracking implementation such as development and documentation of Standard Operating System, SOPs, for all departments and units, firstly in the OHCSF and, subsequently for all Ministries.
She also touched on the establishment of scanning center, which saw to the automation of both policy and personal files from 2010 till date, training of Officers from different MDAs, development of digitalisation roadmap via a service-wide Roundtable on Enterprise Content Management held, recently, upgrade of Local Area Network, LAN, by Galaxy Backbone across MDAs, National policy on virtual engagement approved by the President in 2020, which every civil servant must be conversant with, amongst others.
While fielding question on the sustainability of this reform initiative, Dr. Yemi-Esan said that the implementation of the digitalisation process has been decentralized so as to be driven by the Permanent Secretaries in their respective MDAs.
She thus urged the Permanent Secretaries to ensure that digitalisation comes first in the order of priority in their budgeting, urging them to incorporate adequate training for all staff, as well as procurement of necessary tools to boost the process.
Yemi-Esan also advised on alternative source of funding other than the annual budget, such as collaboration with private partners, which the OHCSF is already leveraging on for the successes recorded so far.
While prompting civil sevants not to rest on their oars in ensuring the emergence of a dynamic and world-class civil service, the HoS also encouraged them to continue to be creative by exploring and making the best of the opportunities that they have while placing very high premium and pride on what they do.
A statement made available by M .A. Ahmed, Deputy Director, Communications in the OHCSF, noted that civil servants exhibited keen interest in the take-off of digitalisation within the Service. The attendance alone spoke volumes, as the Office recorded about 600 civil servants who logged in, while about 400 participated live on the official Facebook page.
