NITDA DG Pledges Digitization of ICPC to Aid in Tackling Corruption

 

The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, has affirmed that automation of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) will boost the ante in tackling in the country.

Inuwa made this declaration when the ICPC led by its Chairman, Dr. Musa Adamu Aliyu, SAN, and members of staff of the Commission paid a courtesy visit on him in his office in Abuja.

Inuwa affirmed the Agency’s readiness to collaborate with ICPC in order to aid the digitization of its services and monitoring corrupt practices in public institutions, adding that automation is a journey and not a one-off process.

“We have over two hundred and ninety-three processes to automate but we are selecting them one after the other to achieve the goal of the Agency.

“We do this for other Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) also, we have other initiatives in place to help them achieve digital transformation”, the DG NITDA said.

Inuwa highlighted “NITDA organises a lot of trainings and has a technical Working Group which started about three years ago, and saddled with the task of training representatives from different MDAs who are later asked to nominate people that will become champions to promote digital transformation in their respective organisations.

“We train them on e-Government and digital transformation in general, so that they can start the advocacy within their MDAs.

“Moreso, we help some MDAs through the journey, like two years ago, Shippers Council came to us, we helped them with trainings, they documented their processes and have started automation. Also, we are currently working with the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI).”

He explained that although technology is a tool, if the supposed users are not ready to utilise it and open to its endless possibilities, then, the expected results would never be attained.

The Director-General advised that if the Commission’s processes are not optimised and re-engineered, it will be difficult to automate their services.

The NITDA DG who took time to share with his visitors, NITDA’s digitization trajectory, with the aid of slide shows, noted the different approaches and workings of automation as adopted in the Agency, which he said is called “NITDA Digital Transformation Playbook”.

He narrated how tedious it was during the early days of his first appointment as NITDA DG, where he practically had to deal with treating tons of memos and mails manually and at the same time had to receive guests, stressing how the process then, affected the productivity of the Agency, which necessitated the need to build a high velocity organisation that will engender high performance and turn over the desirable results.

“To achieve that, we had to reimagine ourselves, take a closer look at our mandate to draw up salient points, then, we came up with a new vision of where we want to be as well as core values that will be binding on all in the Agency”.

“We had to develop a 2P2CT Framework (i.e People, Process, Content, Culture amd Technology) and deliberately disrupt the way we do things, so that we can come up with a new way of doing them,” he emphasized.

Inuwa acknowledged that corruption happens when there is a human contact, added that technology can help eliminate that.

“I believe if we can digitize government’s services, it will really address the corruption challenges we have in the country, he added.

DG NITDA therefore assured that the Agency is open to supporting the Commission in its digitization quest as well as collaborating on any other critical areas, adding “Digital Transformation is a journey, it is not a one-off initiative or project that you will execute and you are done, no, it is a journey which needs continuous improvement and we are willing to go on this journey with you.”

Earlier, the ICPC Chairman, Dr. Musa Adamu Aliyu, SAN, who summarily briefed the DG NITDA and his team on the purpose of the visit, noted that the possibility of fighting corrupt practices and other related offences without utilising technology is minute.

Aliyu stated “When you look at the mandate of ICPC, the first responsibility is to ensure that it helps in preventing corruption, then investigate issues of corruption, prosecute, where there is a clear case of corruption, established through investigation. So, with a lot of changes observed over the years, particularly, since the creation of the Commission in 2000, we believe that aligning or collaborating with NITDA to digitize our processes will boost our services and speed up deliverables.”

The ICPC Chairman harped on the importance of technology to the overall performance of the Commission, while expressing the optimism that the digitization process will make the organisation more transparent, accountable, and effective, which will invariably spur the Nigerian people to have confidence in the Commission.

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