The National Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM) has engaged stakeholders and relevant government agencies to develop a policy framework for deploying artificial intelligence in Nigeria.
It stated that it was necessary to gather all the necessary organs of the government to begin the first stage of policy development that would help operationalize such powerful technology.
The Director-General/Chief Executive Officer of NACETEM, Dr. Olushola Segun Odusanya, during a sideline interview at the Policy Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence in the Public Sector event in Abuja, said the dialogue is necessary. Being an agency whose mandate is to train middle and high-level manpower, among other things, it aims to infuse new technology into the public sector.
“We felt it was necessary for us to gather all the necessary organs of the government to begin the first stages of policy development, and that is, first, to dialogue in several forms and then hopefully develop a framework that will help us use such powerful technology.
Citing instances, the DG said, “We have seen the war in Ukraine and how it’s been prosecuted, and how information is being shared from the frontlines. All of these are vestiges of new technologies that are available.”
“It is important that we begin to understand what’s happening around our environment. So, we have representatives from the head of service, who are managing the new FCSSIP, which is the instrument that has been used for digitalization, professionalization, and so many other things.”
“For us, we begin to talk together among ourselves. We have the Nigerian Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies.”
“Also, looking at a point to start discussing to form a framework that will help us guide the use of artificial intelligence in many of our operations.”
“At this moment, we may not be able to tell the number of children we have who are of school age and who are going to school. We don’t even know accurately how many of us are actually Nigerians, and these are instruments that could help us get all those planning tools.”
“The job of NACETEM is to help the government plan better and give eyes to the government so that those who make decisions will have informed decisions. This is why we are gathering together for us to begin the levels of dialogue. Among the things we also do at NACETEM is, we see ourselves as a finishing school.”
“Those who go to university can now come and get certification and go online to learn more things and get certification that will help them become digitally literate, among other things.”
“From January next year, we are going to be offering training that allows people to get that finishing opportunity that allows them to be able to work anywhere in the world and hopefully also work progressively for the years’ progress.”
“So these are the body of things that make us feel that if we’re going to use such a powerful tool, it’s also important for us to begin to dialogue about the framework under which we will use such tools so that we don’t go out of context, and we do not use some difficult parts of these technologies, actually very powerful.”
“The participants will learn from this dialogue a lot about the different forms of artificial intelligence. The easy one is what I’ve talked about, where you order a vehicle to take you around.”
“But there are more serious ones where all the machines begin to communicate together and begin to think and act like humans. We have artificial intelligence that is very easy to use. We have the ones that can operate on its own.”
“When a machine begins to operate on its own with less human intervention, there must be some form of regulation on how much of it we are going to use.”
“Already in NACETEM, we have already started using it to coordinate our meetings. Everybody who works in public service knows that we spend our time talking about the minutes of the last meeting and collecting grammar and all of the time that. If we aggregated the time we spend in doing things, we realize that we could save time.”
“Using artificial intelligence, we have phantom note-takers, we use to control information. Or we can even listen to the minutes of the last meeting while driving, without having to set up all that time that we spent.”
“So, it’s about efficiency in public service. We are trying to gather our best thoughts together, and that’s why you can see a ground square of different arms of government from trades and investments, to SGF, to agriculture, to information on innovation science, coming here to discuss and form the first stages of the dialogue.” He added.
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