‘Information management catalyst to driving government goals’
Lagos State government has charged top civil servants to ensure proper dissemination and management of information to the public.The government said this was necessary to place government in the right perspective.
Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, spoke in Lagos at the opening of a two-day training on “Positive Perception of Government Programmes: The Role Of The Lagos State Civil Service.”
According to him, proper information management would showcase government’s competence, fairness, and caring.He stressed that they were also critical ingredients to placing government in the right perspective.
He said: “A lack of any one of them is enough to weaken legitimacy. For instance, if the government is perceived as unfair, then its legitimacy is reduced even if it is otherwise seen as being competent and caring.
“Indeed, it is difficult to argue or disagree with the postulations above, hence I had gone to some length to identify these parameters. This is essential to define how information management by civil servants in Lagos State ought to be.”
The Commissioner for Establishments, Training and Pensions, Dr. Benson Oke, represented the governor at the event.He explained: “What influences the will of the people is information and the way it is managed. This is why every responsible government would place premium on the establishment, maintenance, and sustenance of a modern, robust, effective and scalable information management system.
“The responsibilities for all these fall on the civil service. In most democracies, the civil service represents the ‘permanent government’ that must be equipped to adequately advise the government of the day, implement government programmes, and effectively communicate the reasoning behind government-sanctioned programmes to the citizens.
“The net effect is that, if civil servants are well-equipped to discharge these tasks, the programmes of government would be positively perceived by the populace and would receive the needed support for success.”
He stressed that the training would expose civil servants to how they could be better equipped to accurately, effectively, and positively communicate government decisions, actions, and programmes to the citizens of Lagos State and the world at large.
The governor stated that it was imperative for one to begin to see how civil servants could creatively utilize data to generate ideas and communicate government actions and performances.
He said this was necessary to ensure positive perception of government by the citizens.The governor challenged the state civil service to come up with data-backed and data-inspired ideas. He added that many government agency executives have important messages to deliver, and the success of their communications is crucial to the agency’s success.
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