The Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Mr Dasuki Arabi, has advised state governments to emulate reforms by the Federal Government aimed at repositioning the public service.
Arabi gave the advice on Thursday, shortly after a meeting with top management of the Zamfara State civil service.
He stated that the Nigerian public service was gradually being repositioned through digital transformation, as a result of the intervention of his agency and that there was a need for such reforms to be replicated at the state level.
He said he called on all the states governors to key into the directive of President Bola Tinubu to create their bureau of public service reforms.
He stated that Tinubu had been particular about such reforms as it remained key to better service delivery in governance, and to help bridge the gap between what the government was doing and the people.
He said his agency was currently partnering with critical stakeholders to introduce and promote the adoption of technology to deepen accountability and transparency in the operations and services of public institutions.
“Whatever we do at the federal level, if we are not able to get it cascaded down to the states, we will not succeed.
“Data has shown that everybody that works under the federal government is between 2.7 and 2.9 million.
“Now, when you take this number of people out of the 220 million people, that means a greater percentage of us are in the state, and that is what makes this visit very important,” he said.
According to him, such reforms at the state level have become so important so as to have uniformity in terms of the transformation that the federal government wants to drive, especially the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Tinubu.
Arabi also said his engagement with stakeholders at the state level was to ensure that public servants understood the tools for such reforms, and were able to use them effectively to improve the quality of public service.
He said part of the reforms was for states to digitalise governance, adding that digitalising the system would help reduce the cost of governance and ensure transparency for the citizens to track the activities of the government.
Arabi commended Gov. Dauda Lawal of Zamfara State for sending such a high powered delegation to understudy BPSR which he believes will help the state, in terms of the achievements.
“We are seeing the results of some of the interventions but we want the state to do more, key into the reforms, especially around the digitalisation of process,” he said.
On his part, Mr Ahmad Aliyu, ESQ, the Zamfara State Head of Civil Service, said that they are in the Bureau on the instruction of the His Excellency, the executive Governor Dauda Lawal who has initiated various reforms policies in the state and had made tremendous achievements.
He said that they are at the Bureau to study about digitalisation and digitisation in public service, operational guidelines as well as challenges around reforms.
Aliyu Umar Aliyu, FNIPR, FIIM
Head Strategic Communications (BPSR)
