How Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation saved me from a difficult situation – Yemi-Esa

Article from The Guardian

Head of Federal Civil Service, Mrs Folashade Yemi Esan.

The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, . Folashade Yemi-Esan, has spoken of how Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation saved her from unexpected difficulties associated with the passage of her budget by the National Assembly when she was appointed to the position in 2019. 

At a recent public event in Abuja, Yemi-Esan observed that but for the intervention of the foundation, she would have had a very difficult first year in office.

“We have been able to do a lot in the last four years, but it was not easy initially’’, she said in a sombre tone to a packed audience of Nigerians and foreigners.She added: “I became Head of Service in 2019, just before the budget process closed, and so I went to the National Assembly to get our budget approved. But while waiting for our budget to be passed, Mr. Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede came to see me in the office to congratulate me on my appointment. He briefed me on his foundation and its initial contacts with the Office and the teething problems it had encountered, and noted that the foundation was desirous of moving forward on the partnership. He then proposed to give technical assistance to the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) and support the digitisation of the Office.”

“I just want to make a difference in the work you do”, Yemi-Esan recalled Aig-Imoukhuede telling her in that meeting. The Head of Service and her team and the foundation thereafter signed an MOU to digitise the work of the OHCSF and this involved the foundation providing the resources, funding, technical assistance and the vendor to digitise the operations and activities in the OHCSF. 

“I told Aigboje, ‘We don’t need your money. Don’t give us money. Just ensure that you implement the programme to the letter’, she recalled. 

The foundation placed adverts in the newspapers, selected vendors and paid for the software; and thus began a complex and difficult process, which sought to replace manual and paper-based operations with automation of the processes that enables civil servants to work online from any part of the world without dealing with physical files.

“So, with the support from the foundation, we were able to continue our work in spite of the difficulties we experienced in getting our budget approved. The foundation saved us from a very difficult situation,” she said, adding that the digitisation programme has succeeded far beyond expectations and the technical support from the foundation is huge.

“Everybody around me has been touched and the mentorship is superb. As busy as Aigboje is, he makes out time to meet with us regularly,” she revealed.
The foundation believes that only an automated public service manned by well-trained professionals can deliver development in Nigeria. Its MOU with the OHCSF therefore contains shared responsibility in reforming the civil service with the digitisationprogramme at its core. To achieve this, the foundation plays multiple roles including providing funding, project planning and management, vendor management and capacity building, project quality assurance and stakeholder management, while the OHCSF makes its staff available to participate in trainings and project implementation; provides devices, internet and power to enhance digitisation. A steering committee of both organisations is responsible for oversight and monitoring. It meets regularly to review progress and deal with hiccups.

An integral component of the programme is focused on changing the mindset of civil servants to accept automation as a new way of life, and this entails advocacy, change management, project management, stakeholder categorisation and management. The overall objective is to make the civil service more efficient and resilient to deliver quality service. As in many projects, there have been many hurdles and this include lack of standard operating procedures, insufficient devices and poor funding, high level of digital illiteracy, poor internet connectivity, poor power supply.
, absence of guidelines on use of personal IT devices, lack of official email addresses and poor email use culture for those who had. But both parties have determined to scale them as they arise.

So far, the outcome has been outstanding. The digitisation programme has positively impacted on the work of the 1,100 civil servants in the OHCSF, and in addition, the work of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that can no longer take physical files to the OHCSF but have to mail them electronically. 

Director, Human Resources Management at the OHCSF, Gushes Raymond Uwaenyi, said: “The automation by the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation has made my work faster and easier. It makes filing and references to materials in files far easier than it’s ever been. I can easily track any file wherever it has gone; you will be able to follow up to know if there are any challenges right where you are sitting.”

He recalled that when he travelled out of the country recently, he was able to keep working “because the materials and information I need are always on the ECM (the enterprise content management system.”

To the foundation’s Director of Programmes, Chioma Njoku, the multiplier effects are palpable across the bureaucracy. 

“Civil servants in the OHCSF and across other MDAs have had to learn to document their standard operating procedures, learn to use Microsoft software, get more comfortable with technology and learn to use the ECM solution platform,” she said.

Last June, President Bola Tinubu sent a thank you letter to the foundation for its contributions. But its Executive Vice Chairman,Mrs. Ofovwe Aig-Imoukhuede, insists the work is not yet done. 

“Our long-term goal is improved efficiency in the civil service both at the federal and sub-national levels. We want to see a Nigeria and Africa where automation drives governance, the public sector works efficiently and effectively, and is responsive to changes and the public they are called upon to serve,” she noted. It was gathered that so far, the foundation has spent over N500 million on the digitisation programme.