The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Communications, Mr. Musa Istifanus, has called for the continuous use of emerging technologies at workplaces especially the public sector to drive service delivery in the country.
He stated this recently during a facility tour of Nigeria’s Digital Bridge Institute (DBI) in Abuja. DBI is the training arm of the nation’s telecom regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC.
The Permanent Secretary stressed that he intentionally brought the Directors of the Ministry to enable them see the kind of training and digital literacy they would require for the staff of Ministry of Communications and to collaborate with DBI.
According to him, deploying emerging technologies in Information Communications Technology (ICT) is one sure way of enhancing productivity, transparency and effectiveness in the Nigerian public service. He stressed that to be able to effectively deploy these technologies, public servants must be trained and re-trained on digital literacy skills.
“I find this place actually good that is why I want the management team to see the facilities in order to send their staff for training in the Institute”, he stated. He therefore urged his Directors and the management of the DBI to collaborate on appropriate training needs for staff of the Ministry.
The Acting Administrator of DBI, Mrs. Viola Askia-Usoro while explaining the mandate of the Institute said: “As the foremost ICT institution in Nigeria and the biggest, we cannot only concentrate on capacity building we must push for ICT penetration from the aspect of policy development and implementation.” She canvassed that computer literacy at the point of employment for every civil servant should be changed to digital literacy.
“If you ask one if he/she is computer literate, the person will respond in the affirmative but when you ask the person to type a document you’ll probably notice the person’s challenge. But if it is digital literacy which is measurable, benchmarking can be done in this regard because you’ll see evidence of the person’s skills.