NPA unveils e-document records centre to improve operations

The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) has commissioned an e-documents management and records solution centre at its corporate headquarters in Marina, Lagos, to improve seamless customer-based services and operations as well as data storage.

The Acting Managing Director, Mohammed Bello Koko, who unveiled the centre, said it is the strategic intent of the authority to sustain competitiveness in the sub-region by giving priority to documents’ safety through automation and digitisation.

Koko stated that in adherence to the authority’s plan to deploy a 360-degree document management solution, by migrating from physical archiving to digitisation via Electronic Documents Management Solution (EDMS).

He said at the moment, the authority has two other functional retention centres in Apapa and Port Harcourt to serve the Lagos and eastern ports respectively, noting that this is in addition to another record centre undergoing automation located along the Apapa port area.

The NPA boss added that the speed and seamless nature of the EDMS in records storage and processing has a bearing on the organisation’s desire to achieve customer satisfaction and excellence, while promoting the ease of doing Business.

He said the automation is very much in synchronisation with the authority’s drive towards attaining compliance status of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).

He noted that the documents’ management solutions would institute a clear regime of improved accountability and transparency in addition to strengthening the NPA’s auditing system and training process to world class standards.

Koko added that the centre, which is of the American model, will not only serve as a source for information storage and retrieval, but as a reservoir of data of enduring values.

Koko further expressed confidence at the realisation of the NPA’s vision of deploying a single window to access records across all port locations, adding that the documents solution centre is expected to serve as an antidote to vandalism, theft and arson.

The NPA boss, however, added that before the end of 2021, the pilot project of the end-to-end documents’ management solution would have been achieved.