WorldStage Newsonline– The Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), has urged local government councils to strengthen digital governance to enhance effective service delivery.
The Director-General of the Bureau, Dr Dasuki Arabi stated this on the sidelines of a two-day capacity building workshop for council chairmen, permanent secretaries, Directors-General and Executive Secretaries, on Thursday in Gombe.
The training was being organised by the Bureau in collaboration with the Gombe State Bureau of Public Service Reforms.
The theme of the workshop is: “Strengthening Government Digital Platforms: Security, Accessibility, Efficiency, and Accountability.”
Arabi said strengthening government digital platforms would aid improvement in service delivery to the people, promote accountability and transparency.
This, he said involved improving digital governance, service delivery and citizen engagement through technology, focusing on security, accessibility and accountability.
He said that a critical aspect of strengthening digital governance centred on investment in capacity building for public servants at the state and local government levels.
Represented by Oguntuyi Olusegun, Head, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the Bureau, Arabi said digital transformation remained one of the best tools to drive quality service delivery in contemporary times.
He said the federal and state governments had done well in building the capacity of their workers through reforms and trainings, which yielded positive results.
The BPSR helmsman urged the councils to replicate such reforms and invest more in capacity building on government digital platforms towards improving service delivery and transparency.
“Our call is that the local government chairmen must invest in capacity building.
“There is no amount of technology you deploy, if there is no capacity building within, there is no way they can get the optimal benefit from it.
“And then for the public servants that participated in the event, they need to go back and take some of these capacity building skills on their own.
“There are lots of online trainings and capacity building platforms that they can engage in to help them in their official tasks,” he said.
Arabi also enjoined workers to embrace national mentorship programme to raise young leaders and public servants towards building a better future for the country.
Mr Abubakar Hassan, Director-General, Gombe State Bureau of Public Service Reforms, said that about 95 of the participants had been trained on digital governance.
Hassan said the training focussed on how the digital platforms could affect citizens’ engagement, especially how those at the grassroots could be easily reached using e-governance.
“We intend to achieve the mentorship; we need to see how those who have been trained will teach those at other levels so that they can bridge the gap existing in the service.”
Also, Sani Haruna, Chairman, Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) in the state, lauded the initiative.
He said strengthening local government administration required collaboration between government at all levels.
Haruna reitrated commitment of the councils to collaborate with federal and state government to bridge existing gaps.
