FG Unveils New Public Service Rules

• Federal Government issues new Public Service Rules, effective immediately
• Nigeria is committed to digitalizing public service to meet global standards and improve resource utilization
• Office of the Head of Service goes digital with work processes, including scanning files and processing correspondence electronically via Enterprise Content Management (ECM). All MDAs expected to join digitization initiative by 2025

The Federal Government has issued new Public Service Rules, which will go into effect immediately.

Mr Olawale Edun, Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Monetary Policies, made the announcement at a public service lecture on Thursday as part of the activities marking the 2023 Civic Service Week in Abuja.

The theme of this year’s service week is “Digitalization of work processes in the public sector: A gateway to efficient resource utilization and national development.”

The Federation’s Head of Civil Service (HOCSF), Dr Folasade Yemi-Esan, stated that Nigeria was fully committed to digitalizing public service to meet the required global standards of service operations, thus the need for digital policy in the service.

Following the very extensive work carried out to put in place the required mechanisms for the smooth transition from physical handling of tasks, I am pleased to state that the office of the Head of Service has gone digital with its work processes.

By this, I mean, all the personal and policy files have been scanned and stored in digital format; workflow processes are now transacted within the office digitally, she said.

According to Yemi-Esan, all official correspondence in the form of memos and internal and external circulars is processed electronically via Enterprise Content Management (ECM), one of the pillars of the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan 2021-2025 (FCSSIP25).

She explained that the initiative was intended to transform the Federal Civil Service into a world-class service that recognized the need for digitisation of public service.

According to the HOS, all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) are expected to join the digitisation initiative by the end of 2025.

From the service-wide perspective, all MDAs are running with the digitisation programme and are at different stages of implementation; with a mandate for all to achieve full migration by the end of 2025.

It is pleasing to note, some MDAs have also deployed some ECM solutions for their workflows, she said.