The Director General and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM), Dr Olushola S. Odusanya, has disclosed that Nigeria will be saving about N5 billion through the Federal Government’s digital migration of filing processes in governance.
Speaking on Wednesday at a workshop organised by NACETEM on the application of systems thinking and system dynamics for transforming public policymaking processes, the CEO said the migration of filing processes from paper (analogue) to digital will save the country a lot of money.
Odusanya noted that “imagine what the state government, local governments and the private sector are spending! So the federal government is thinking that if it saves that N5 billion and invests it in digital migration, we will save money”.
He pointed out that with the digitisation of processes, the efficiency of the system will improve, service delivery will improve, and people can have better lives.
“So that idea of cutting out paper usage is also one of the tenets of the Federal Public Service reforms. We are actualising it more or less by first migrating people into systems thinking.
“So by the time we now migrate everybody into digital platforms, the fundamental knowledge is already there. It’s just to migrate here to the platform that allows us to even provide services more efficiently while saving a lot of money,” the DG stated.
Odusanya explained that “systems thinking helps you to understand trends, to understand how things work, and then how you can influence adjustments that will be positive towards your own objectives, setting priorities.
“If you don’t understand how to analyse a system and how it operates, then you may be well in doubt to solve problems. So in problem-solving, you know systems thinking helps us significantly.
“You had all the examples given, examples of world food shortages. There are things that started yesterday, it was a progression. You follow through from certain actions. I know that certain actions precipitate food shortages more than others, and by the time you understand the system well enough, your knowledge also encourages you and strengthens you in a way that helps you to tweak that system, so your knowledge is fundamental.
“Gaining more knowledge is fundamental, and understanding how to read situations is key. We need to start using it as a tool in public service and among policymakers for them to understand that every policy action has a repercussion”.
He stated that “we have shared the example of the policy on the removal of oil subsidies. It has consequences in different areas, but with a systems thinking ideology, we are able to now manage the consequences in such a way that the positive attributes that contribute to overall economic growth are the ones you emphasise, and you strengthen and reinforce in such a way that everything comes together and what would have become apparently negative now becomes positive”.
The workshop is expected to create awareness among policymakers in order to make them grounded in making difficult changes and also being able to handle the consequences of such policies for the overall growth of the economy of the nation.
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