Nigeria has tasked all permanent secretaries, directors and other management staff of the civil service to begin ICT capacity-building programmes in all government departments for the effective application of ICT in discharging their duties.
The head of service of the federation, Professor Oladapo Afolabi, who gave the charge at the first national conference on outsourcing held in Abuja, says the directive was in line with the e-government programme of the current administration.
Afolabi says government was in the second phase of an overall programme which aims to ensure that all civil servants were not only computer literate but also use ICT tools in carrying out assigned functions.
“Officers should be encouraged to communicate their non-confidential documents, letters, minutes of meeting and request for proposals between them and their superiors through their secured official Web site,” he says.
He also adds that the staff would be using the official Web site as platform for training until appreciable skills are acquired to position them to depend solely on ICT tools in transacting government business.
In 2002, Nigeria introduced the Computer for All Nigeria Initiatives which provided all civil servants with a laptop at subsidised rate of $400 each.
Investigation at the office of the secretary to the government of the federation (OSF) revealed that more than 85% of the entire country's federal civil servants benefited from the programme.
Idris Musa, an administration officer at the OSF, says government was able to acquire laptops and distribute to the civil servants at affordable rates, which were deducted from their salaries over a long period of time.
“The problem we noticed is that most of those who bought the laptops sold them, or did not put them to use as required by government,” Musa says.
Adeyemi Amosu, an assistant director with one of the ministries, says the laptop programme was not properly articulated and so could not achieve the set objectives.
Civil servants were being given laptops when they did not have enough computer literacy to use them, he says.
Chijoke Martins, government liaison officer of the Nigeria Internet Penetration Initiative, a non-governmental group campaigning for computer literacy in Nigeria, says the government directive was long overdue.
“It is unfortunate that government business is still conducting in an analogue manner in this country in spite of the fact that it is on record that almost every civil servant owns a laptop,” he says.
Most of the low cadre civil servants interviewed say the integration of ICT tools into government business was good but wondered how that would be achieved.
The civil servants (who wish not to be named) say the directive would require each office having a functional computer system as against the current practice where only the supervising director in the department has computer set and a secretary to operate it.
“We cannot use our money to buy operational tools for government; if government is serious about migrating its services from analogue to digital, then adequate preparations, including the purchase of enough computers, have to be done to show seriousness on the part of government,” they say.
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