By Olawale Ajimotokan
The federal government said its collaboration with the Africa Initiative for Governance (AIG) has led to the initiation of plans to obtain relevant International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) certification for the civil service.
The Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folashade Yemi-Esan disclosed this in Abuja, at the formal handing over of 26 manuals of the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) by the Chairman/Founder of AIG, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede.
She said the ISO certification is an independent, non-governmental, international organisation that develops standards to ensure the quality, safety and efficiency of products, services and systems.
The HoS said the civil service is also working with SERVICOM which will play a very important role in ensuring compliance and effective implementation across MDAs.
The SOPs were developed within six months for the departments in the Office of the Head of Service to assist officers understand and document their business processes, which is a fundamental prerequisite for digitalisation.
Yemi-Esan, noted that the main objective of SOPs was to develop an effective system that complies with industry-specific regulations and standards, to significantly reduce or avoid operational errors as well as unwanted work variations.
She stressed the SOPs would also ensure the repeatability and consistency of the performance of any type of process and help employees to perform complicated tasks, particularly those in which remembering every detail of a procedure can be difficult or in which a precise sequence of steps is essential.
And given the SOP Manuals are important to the seamless implementation of the Enterprise Content Management Solution (ECMS), the HoS said approval has been given for their immediate service-wide development of SOPs, starting with the Federal Civil Service Commission, Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, State House and the Federal Ministry of Transportation.
She said the civil service cannot afford to lag behind or continue to do things in the old order and expect new results, adding in order to keep abreast, it must continue to be dynamic and innovative.
“It, therefore, behooves us as custodians of public interest to avail ourselves of opportunities such as the SOPs will present to us to improve our capacities and competencies for enhanced productivity and self-development instead of always depending on support from the system,” she said.
Speaking earlier, Aig-Imoukhuede commended the HoS for continuing the process she met in the office, without which there would be no sustainability.
He reiterated that the adoption of SOPs was a bold step for the good of the service and Nigeria, in general.
According to him with SOPs in service, Nigeria will not be the same again.
