The Federal Government spent a total N152 billion in the execution of digitization projects in 2021. This was made known by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Ali Pantami, at the closing of 2021 Service Wide capacity building programme on e-Government at e-Government Training Centre, Abuja, yesterday, said the money constitutes the total sum approved by NITDA for CBN, NNPC, CAC, Immigration and Customs, among other agencies of government for 2021 digital projects.
According to him, the figure represents a quantum leap from the N9 billion spent in 2019 and 2020.
He said the capacity building programme for civil servants was part of Federal Government’s e-Government Master Plan aimed at digitizing every government process in all MDAs.
The training is a train-the-trainer programme targeted at selected civil servants who in turn are expected to go back to train their counterparts in their various organizations.
About 1,376 civil servants from 48 MDAs have been trained under the scheme. This comprised 890 trained in 2021 and another 486 trained in 2020.
In addition to this program, the Minister said the Ministry established two virtual platforms coordinated by NITDA and Galaxy Backbone during the COVID-19 lockdown that also trained about 110,000 citizens across the country.
He said: “Our target is to train selected officers that will go back to train other civil servants.
“From January to December 2021, NITDA approved execution of 499 projects, including backlogs from 2019 and 2020.‘’In 2021, the approval given by NITDA to agencies for digitization amount to N152 billion, this is a major improvement on the N9 billion approved in 2019 and 2020 put together.”
With this feat so far recorded, the Minister said the ministry plans to double the achievement in 2022.’’
He encouraged the trainees not only to apply the knowledge acquired for the improvement of the public service but also extend it to their colleagues.
He also charged the Public Service Institute to exceed the 2021 target this year and ensure that the entire Institute was fully digitised before the end of 2022.
He equally enjoined it to ensure that the training was extended to all the states across the country.
Meanwhile, the Minister has assured that the Federal government will migrate to paperless government by 2030.
He said all necessary measures had been put in place to achieve the objective through the National Policy for Digital Nigeria.
In her remarks, Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Dr Folasade Yemi-Esan, said the result being celebrated in the digitization process was a product of collaboration between her office and the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy.
With ongoing collaboration with NITDA, she said most part of the public service would be digitized by the end of the first quarter of 2022.
She also challenged the trainees to go back to their MDAs and replicate whatever knowledge they had acquired.
“This is not the end of the road, the champions need to go back to their MDAs and replicate what they learnt, that is the way to go.
“With 65,000 civil servants and 500,000 public servants, this is how to bring everybody on board. Without collaboration, the public service will not move forward,’’ she said.