Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The Federal Government is set to train, at least, 25,000 civil servants by 2020.
The first and second batches of 3,500 (1,500 in the first batch and 2,000 in the second batch) will be trained next month by Manpower Development Institutions (MDI) in the country.
The Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HoCSF), Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, made the disclosure, yesterday, during a meeting with the chief executive officers of MDIs, where the 2019 needs assessment report was presented.
According to her, the report followed the Training Needs Assessment (TNA) Survey of employees Service-Wide, to facilitate the development and delivery of targeted and impactful training programmes across the service.
Oyo-Ita said 1,076 civil servants on Grade levels 7-17 were requested to complete the survey, out of which 670 responded, for which they requested for training that are relevant to their areas of competences, contrary to general trainings in the past that were seen more like welfare package and for select few.
The head of service said: “This is the first time we set out to do a detailed analogy of what the needs of the civil service are, according to their own interpretations. All along, the trainings that have been done have always come from outside and imposed on us. Now, civil servants were given opportunity, through a survey, where 1,076 questionnaires were distributed to them and 670 responded.
“From these 670, an evidence-based assessment was carried out through data analytics from which we arrived at our findings. From these findings, we’ve discovered that some of the preconceived notions people have about civil servants are wrong. For instance, a good number of the civil servants are computer literate, hence, there is no need for rudimentary computer training. Almost 80 percent of them have gone beyond that, so, we now know that computer training will now be on the intermediate level. For those surveyed, the civil servants senior management cedar, prefer trainings on policy management, in areas that will guide them on leadership skills and so on. The middle cadre like from levels 10-14, were more interested in project management, strategic human resource.”