Nigeria’s civil service office is now fully digital – HoCSF

The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HoCSF), Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, has said that her Office has gone fully digital and no longer works with paper.

Yemi-Esan who disclosed this at an event to mark the 2023 Civil Service Week said the digitalization of the Office is a pointer to the evolving digital revolution taking shape for greater efficiency, in its day-to-day workflow.

She added that the switch to paperless operation is resulting in remarkable time and cost savings for the government.

Apart from digitalization, Yemi-Esan said the groundwork for the implementation of a Performance Management System (PMS) is going on in earnest, signalling the phasing out of the old paper system of assessment.

According to her, PMS, a globally accepted reviewing and rating mechanism, is more effective and objective and capable of improving workers’ and organizational performance, when fully deployed.

Represented by the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Dr. Nasir Sani Gwarzo, the HoCSF said the just-launched revised Public Service Rules (PSRs) is more practicable and is going to strengthen the system, enhance performance, as well as foster growth, adding that the Service is witnessing tremendous improvement in the initiation and implementation of policies, plans and reforms under its present leadership.

The 2030 target

According to the immediate past Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, all Federal Government offices are expected to go paperless by 2030 as measures have been put in place to achieve the objective through the National Policy for Digital Nigeria.

The former Minister also disclosed that the Federal Government had spent a total of N152 billion on digitalization in 2021, the amount, he said, was “a quantum leap from the N9 billion spent in 2019 and 2020.”

He stated that the amount constitutes the total sum approved by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Immigration, and Customs among other agencies of government for the 2021 fiscal year.

“The target of the Federal Government is to make sure that by 2030, we achieve a paperless government where emerging technologies like Blockchain that have data integrity and many more are guaranteed,” he said.
Pantami maintained that the achievement of a paperless government was feasible owing to the government’s desire to digitize its processes. He noted that the Federal Government was committed to the implementation of digitizing its processes for effective service delivery.